Just thought I share a production I did for a client of mine recently. Matt wrote this as a tribute and dedication to some close friends of his, a couple who have recently retired. They ran a small studio - “Allegro” which is where Matt first recorded.
Matt sings and plays acoustics on this one and I fill in the gaps…
Cheers guys. I’ll pass the feedback onto Matt. Though I rather suspect the feedback he got from the folks that are the topic of this song will be his primary concern. I’m of course more interested in the technical mix/production side of things
Yeah, the production sounds good, I think it has a professional clarity to it overall. The guitars, drums and bass are sounded tight together, balanced and worked well. On the choruses though I thought the vocals got buried just a touch too much to hear them that clearly. The electric guitar parts were subtle enough and added to the arrangement. The staccato string section sounded fine too and was a nice change from sustain.
I’m a headphone listener so whenever there are things missing like the guitar just to the right at the start (a lot of metal songs I own do this too) it’s a rather odd imbalance on the ears but the shakers make it alright and it’s fine when the violin section to the left is introduced, and as quiet as it is, it still adds the balance required on headphones. I imagine it sounds good on speakers/monitors. Aside from those two minor things I thought it sounded good.
i think its a very good recording and all the levels are good apart from the snare which is a bit heavy and the vocals seem to have been de-essed a bit too much ,the esses sound like ths , i think it`s worth sorting vocal mics out at the beggining of a session or singing distance from mics ,popper stoppers and wot not and general mic technique which i personaly am rubbish at but i can hear where something has gone wrong .it can be a shame if the performance was great but the recording technique is under par.
Cheers. Sometimes getting the L-R balance right is, well… a bit of a balancing act! Particularly in situations like this where the opening arrangement is quite sparce. I didn’t want the acoustic centered though because that doesn’t work later as the arrangement builds. But I agree it can sound odd panned out to one side at the beginning, so adding shaker seemed like an easy solution - of sorts. I know some folks move things around a bit. I could, for example have had the guitar more centered and then simply pushed it out as the band comes in, but that too can sound a little odd at times. I’ve done it with pianos a fair bit though… where they are the solo instrument at a start of a song I usually keep them wide and full, but then when the other instruments arrive I’ll often then narrow down it’s width and EQ the bottom end right out.
I hadn’t really noticed this as an issue to be honest. As it happens Matt records his own vocal and just sends me the .WAV files through. I know he uses a Rhodes mic with pop sheild. One thing I am aware of though, that is an unfortunate side effect of Variaudio vocal tuning is that it turns ‘ssss’ into ‘zzzz’ That’s caught me out more than once. I don’t often use de-essers and I don’t recall off-hand if I used one on this mix or not.