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Divided


lmu2002

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Hi everybody!

I'm a long time Cakewalk/Sonar user and just found this forum. Looks great! I want to contribute to this songs section and present a recent song. I made an EP length thing and this is the second track on the EP. I played all the instruments and vstis and I had a great singer on the vocals. Guitars and bass are BiasFx stuff. The hardest thing was to get this sound like a full band effort.

Any input would be greatly appreciated for future improvement.

Cheers!

Juha

https://youtu.be/meBwcq4PcLA

Edited by Juha Alanampa
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I like how you brought in that lyric "It's time to set free" around 3:18, neat effect!

Mix is nice, song is nice, too. Maybe her excellent voice is just a bit too clean and clear for a tune like this? I dunno. Nice guitars throughout.

welcome to the forum! Lots of nice helpful folks here.

 

cheers,

-Tom

 

 

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Thanks all! I thought it was a bit bass-heavy already. But bass seems a never ending fight in mixes. I never know when it's 'right'.

I agree on the vocals, some dirt would have been nice but I admire her effort as it is because it wasn't the easiest work flow and less than ideal situation in general.

Here's the other two tracks in case something else interesting comes up:

 

I wonder why the first link only shows text and these other two have  preview windows...

 

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Hi, Juha,

This is absolutely fantastic!?

Great writing and musicianship, excellent performances by both of you, and the mix sounds clean and punchy.

I actually think her vocals are outstanding and her voice is perfect for the genre.  Her vocals on Divided remind me a lot of Nightwish, which I really like, and the track sounds dynamite.

Excellent work, really good song!?

Best wishes,
Bob

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Terrific song and performances.  I like her voice as is; I don't think it's necessary to dirty it up.  However, overall, the mix sounds bright to me, as if, a high pass filter got used very liberally.  Perhaps by letting some low mids back into the mix would satisfy people's perception of the vocal being too clean.  Otherwise, this song is a gem!

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16 hours ago, Lynn said:

Terrific song and performances.  I like her voice as is; I don't think it's necessary to dirty it up.  However, overall, the mix sounds bright to me, as if, a high pass filter got used very liberally.  Perhaps by letting some low mids back into the mix would satisfy people's perception of the vocal being too clean.  Otherwise, this song is a gem!

Thanks Lynn! Very useful comment! I had to go back and see what I had applied etc. I didn't use eq when mastering except cutting some rumble below 30Hz. So it's up to the mix. No general or bus hpf there either. So the brightness comes from individual tracks. Brightness is a choice of course. I also tried some lo-mid boost for the mix to see what it does. It does nothing that I could hear as an improvement for the overall sound, just added boxiness. But for future mixes, I will certainly keep an eye when putting a song/mix together. I realise lo-mid being a blind spot for me where I don't pay much attention.

In general, I think the brightness comes from the vocal mic (Rode NT-2A) used, which was too bright for her voice imo. I didn't wan't to fight the sound with aggressive eq in fear the lead vocals becoming too dead, instead played along and adjusted the mix accordingly. I adjusted the rawness of the 's' by hand instead of a de-esser because I don't like what they do (maybe there is a beautifully working one which I just haven't found yet). I have seen comments the vocals being too much front (=loud) and too clear, even too articulate. Hard to say how a different mic would have worked but probably I would have had an easier job  mixing this. Perhaps a darker dynamic (eg. SM7B) would have driven the vocalist to sing harder and that would have resulted in a potentially grittier outcome. Who knows. Maybe better mixing and better mastering is the key. But  food for thought anyway for later efforts ☺️

Another challenge was to create a uniform 'album sound' for this EP. These three tracks are that much different from each other that I had to scratch my head more than once to achieve  a  fluent back to back  listening experience.  I don't know how it's usually done with variable material. But I spent  plenty of time working out a sound that satisfied my own requirements.

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