Indie acoustic song: "Miss Her So", remixed

I posted this song probably in 2010 or 2011 when I wrote it. But last weekend I redid the fretless bass and I remixed it.
Back then I used a Hamer USA fretless Cruise bass. The Hamer is a nice bass, but last year I got an Ibanez Gary Willis model fretless bass, which has a tone I like better. So I decided to redo this and a couple of other songs I used the Hamer bass on.

While I was at it, I also threw on a few of the Waves Signature plugins I’ve gotten since I recorded the first version of the song, and the Slate VCC plugins. On the vocal I have the VCC and T Racks Opto compressor. On the bass I used the Waves CLA bass plugin. On the acoustic guitar, which was an Adamas, I tried the Waves Maserati Acoustic Guitar Designer.
Also not on the original version was the drums. I used the EZ Drummer Vintage Rock kit. I know Toontracks just came out with an expansion specially for indie acoustic music, but I don’t have that yet. I turned up the room mics. I ran the EX Drummer kit through the VCC and the T Racks Black 76 compressor, which I found gives drums a vintage sound and brings out the room some more.

Nice song and singing. I can relate to the song – it describes my ex-girlfriend a bit, although in my case, she was a very bitter, negative person. However, I do miss her greatly.

The recording: I am not liking the acoustic guitar treatment at all. It’s very distracting on this tune, because it’s so bright, almost like a harpsichord. A normal treatment, which is to say a warmer, more natural treatment, would be better (for me).

The Maserati Acoustic Guitar plugin does tend to bring out the zing in an acoustic guitar. For strummed parts, that usually sounds nice. Perhaps in a more sparse mix such as in this song, all the brilliant high end isn’t necessary. I’m thinking of tweaking the bass tone as well.

I tweaked a few things and a new mix is up now.
I ended up taking the Maserati Acoustic Guitar plugin off the guitar, and just slapped the Sonnox Dynamics (just for the Warmth algorithm), the Slate VCC, and the Nomad Factory British EQ on it. At first I cut the low mids by 5 or 6db and turned the highs up by just 2db. I listened back to it and even pulled those EQ tweaks back a bit. The Adamas seems to have enough zing without any enhancing when mixing.
It can be easy to be fooled by bright, zingy acoustic guitar tones I guess.
Thanks for the input. Good call.

I tweaked the bass tracks too, pulled the miked track back and pulled back the high mid and treble, turned the direct (Ampeg SVX bass amp sim) track up.

I have a number of distant ex ‘encounters’ which were more along the bitter, vindictive, demented, sociopathic/psychopathic end of the scale! :laughing:

The lyrics certainly tell the story, but I wasn’t getting any real sense of a song structure? Is there a chorus as such?
I’m not sure how I feel about the delivery to be honest… the enunciation kinda sounded a little ‘matter of fact’ to me at times, and dynamically quite flat, though I note it picks up toward the end which feels better to me generally.

Mixing acoustics is something I do a lot these days. Generally I find I’m shelving the top end - often pulling them right down, and almost always carving off the bottom. This of course depends on your initial mic setup and other things happening in the arrangement/mix. They can quite easily start to sounds quite brash so sometimes some quite brutal EQ is required. Pick choice is a factor too!

:sunglasses:

:sunglasses:

The last line of each verse is a refrain. I think it’s a legit structure. Maybe not so often heard in pop styles, but in folk/acoustic/indie it’s occasionally used.

The contrast between the body of the song and the end was intentional. Up to the end, I was trying to do my intimate, breathy Michael Franks voice. I will work on putting more feeling into it. At the end I put a little more force behind it to drive home the punch line.

Thanks for these insights. I’ve got a pair of pretty nice acoustics, but the nice air and zing they produce can be addictive, and many plugin presets actually bring more of that out. In a fuller arrangement with other instruments, that might help the acoustic sit in the mix better, but I think I need to keep in mind that in a more sparse arrangement where the acoustic guitar is the main instrument, the tone will need more body and adding more air is often not necessary. Thanks!

A nice song that would be a strong song if it had a chorus…just needs to lift somewhere…kept waiting for it but didn’t come, such a pity there’s such potential in this song…Kevin

I like the vintage sound of it, great guitars! Think you might have added more instruments in the last part of the song but its not a deal breaker. You’re style is unconventional which makes it more interesting to me. I’m not an expert on Indie style, but I really like this. Michael.

Yes, the acoustic sounds MUCH better now. Well done. :sunglasses: I think the bass is a bit too high in the mix