[HAM] "Save Ours Seas" New song by Dan Bonow

[John Freund]

> Oh yeah. If you're saying that only now, you might have missed the
> earlier-posted "Too Blue." Dan's miracle-drummer, brother Tim, is back!
> <www.danbonow.com/public/TooBlue-3rdRoughmix.mp3>

Gotta tell ya, that is an excellent "open" drum sound you got there.  I
could go for a little more definition in the kick drum (see below) but the
drums are full and the brass has the necessary twinkle.  Tell me about your
mike choice and config.  It sounds like either just overheads and kick (is
the kick cheated to the left intentionally?) or maybe close mikes with well
chosen room 'verb.

Also the lead organ ain't the clone is it?

> >A bit o' compression on the voc
> More then? What sound are we looking for? I'm an amateur. I compressed it
> only enough to keep it from red-lining.
That's exactly what you want to do on the way in - if necessary.  In mixing
you're trying to get the vocal to sit in a consistent place within the
track, but the trick is to do it with without crushing the dynamics of the
performance or hearing the compression.  With Dan's exaggerated style you
might want to be a little more severe to even him out.  Start with a fairly
tame ratio (2 or 3:1) and drop the threshold a bit lower than you have it.
If the louder bits start to sound "boxy" (this shit is impossible to
describe - you'll learn to hear compression after you've used it a bit)
raise the threshold a bit.  If you're not getting the job done, boost the
ratio.  If you're crushing it too much you lose high end and the diction
will start to sound mushy.  Do yourself a favor and overdo it and twist the
knobs so you can recognize the artifacts of compression.  You can always
turn it back or start over again.  Attack is pretty easy to figure out but
when you figure out the rules of sustain and release let me know because I'm
still fumbling with that.

> >  and some subtractive EQ on the low mids/bass
> >and yer in bizness.
> 
> What kind of speakers are you listening on, John? The thing was thumpin'
> until I switched to my Event studio monitors, at which point I had to
> really boost the bass! Are you talking low-low, like ~60-80 Hz? He insists
> on that being strong. Or above? Your feedback is always appreciated.

I'm on my laptop so I'm using headmaphones.  In general you want to be
choosy about what you let occupy the low end.  Most of the fighting between
instruments in the low end is 180/200hz somewhere around there.  Definitely
notch that on the kick and you'll get some of your definition back,
especially with the kind of kick sound you have.  Again with the stupid
descriptors - take out the boom to bring out the thump.  And put high pass
filtering on everything that is NOT tasked with the job of providing the low
end for the mix - keys, vox, ESPECIALLY guitars.  

I don't profess expertise but I've done enough of it to have learned to
recognize where the problems are and every so often I figure out how to fix
them!

As always with rules of thumb, prepare to throw them out if your
instrumentation or performance is asking you to.  If you like any of my
mixes (and *I* don't always), I'll share with you that I have a tetris
approach to eq - if the guitar really lives at a certain freq, then see if
the other instruments can live without so much of that frequency.  Once you
start doing that you'll be amazed how much you can bring "up front" and
still be able to hear it all.  Little tricks like scooping the mids out of
background vocals to bring out the lead...and so on...you'll discover (as
I'm sure you have) your own little bits of wisdom.

Hope any of this helps.

/John