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

[Scott Hawthorn]

At 07:29 PM 4/27/2008, John Freund wrote:
> > 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.

Wo, this is great stuff. Your recordings always sound superb. I'll have to 
respond in more detail L8R, but....
I've heard a lot of it before, and even used some of that, but needed to be 
reminded. In the meantime, while you were kindly typing all that, I did 
another mix. No hi-pass on the gits (or anything else, yet), but the bass 
is not so loud, the gits are better-defined (and the "nice" guitar is 
louder) while the organ wash (XK-1) is softer with the choppy organ (my 
C-3) louder.
<www.danbonow.com/public/SOS-3rdRoughmix.mp3>