Re: [proaudio] made with ProAudio overlay - "demonstrate"

["Wayne DePrince Jr." <waynedpj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Il giorno lun, 20/06/2016 alle 10.50 -0500, Reuben Martin ha scritto:
> On Saturday, June 18, 2016 3:29:35 PM CDT Wayne DePrince Jr. wrote:
> > ahoy all,
> > 
> >    i would appreciate any comments: technical, creative, positive,
> > negative, whatever! thanks sincerely in advance for taking the time to
> > read/listen, and please share the suite if you think someone might dig it.
> > 
> 
> I'm quite impressed. You clearly put a lot of effort into this.

ahoy Ruben,

	thanks so much for taking the time to listen and comment, especially
in so detailed a manner.  i apologize for my long-delayed reply, but as i had
mentioned in the original post we have been on the road for a long time after
releasing this, and have not had enough stationary time, online access and
electricity to respond properly :)

> 
> technical stuff:

	i really really appreciate these comments, especially since i am
obviously still in the process of learning how to record better.  i have CC'd
the engineer who mixed and mastered the suite Rich Wielgosz 
http://richwielgosz.com who will probably find this information very useful as
well.  and even though i am not looking to learn how to mix and master myself,
it is definitely handy to know about the process in order to record in a way
that fits.

	most of this suite's recordings were made in bedrooms, bathrooms and
closets with little or know knowledge of best practices, mixing, mastering,
etc. (see drum recording setup below).  obviously these random locales,
coupled with my lack of experience and equipment, produced not a very high
-quality set of recordings for Rich to work with ;)  however, we were very
happy with the results he obtained.  we were always going for a "homemade"
sounding record, which i guess was hard to avoid given the quality of the
recordings.  however, we did not want to sacrifice clarity, which seemed to be
difficult given the source material.


> - A lot of the elements are very up-front in the mix. It makes the dynamic 
> range sound a bit too crushed and too many things are competing for
> attention. 
> It's need more "space" and "depth". 

	i had lots of things going on at times, and overarchingly very
specific requirements regarding the stereo space, particularly for the 4
characters' vocals, as well as some "musical instrument characters" (i.e. "the
demonstrate organ").  their positions in the stereo picture are tied to
various themes and motifs in the suite.  unfortunately this definitely
handicapped Rich and what he could do with making space.  also i think more
dynamics were needed frequency-wise to give more depth.  unfortunately those
frequencies were just not there in the source (see below).

> Perhaps when mastering try to apply 
> dynamic compression in mix groups and less so to the final mix as a whole.

> If 
> you're not already using it, multiband compression also helps a lot in 
> maintaining dynamic range while still imparting that cohesiveness to the mix
> you get with compression.
> 

	another requirement was in attempting to use only FLOSS
plugins/effects, again perhaps limiting what we could accomplish.  i remember
in particular not having much luck with the FLOSS multiband compressors we had
found. 

> - Spatially, many elements are either way too much in the center, or panned 
> too hard. It needs more of a finer nuance in the spatial spectrum. You'll
> find 
> this will help provide separation to elements as well so that they are not 
> getting lost in each other. 

	LOL.  yes, i had gone back and forth with Rich on this, and against
his advice (and yours) i kept the hard panning.  again, i was aligning certain
characters/elements' stereo position with their motifs/motives.  looking back
maybe the differences are too pronounced, at the expense of clarity.  this is
something i will have to consider more for the next suite.

> Something I've found besides panning that works 
> well (as long as the source is already stereo) is to send to another bus,
> use 
> a mid-side stereo plugin to cut out all the center info so you have just the
> side content, and then mix that back in to double up the the unique stereo 
> content only. Varying the level that it is mixed back in acts to streach out
> the spatial image to whatever level you want, but is very different in 
> character than panning. It works well with sources or mixes that are stereo,
> but not very wide and need more spatial separation.

	wow, very interesting.  besides the synths, most of the takes are just
mono recordings, so could this still be done?  or should i be looking into
recording even vocals/guitar/bass in stereo?  to be honest i am still learning
about mid-side stereo (i have seen it also on portable recorders), but i
believe Rich will understand this better.  regardless, thanks for the idea!

> 
> - Lots of the content is very lush, but the drum kit sounds very thin. Now 
> some of that may be due to artistic decisions, or limitations of recording 
> resources, but I would try to get more presence and tone out of the kit.

	again, i believe that this has to do mostly with our "recording
process" for the drums: with *some* research beforehand on how to record
drums, we mainly just hung up whatever mics we could find in a cheap practice
studio ;)  attached you can see a pic of our attempt at an XY using our main
mic for the room and a Shure SM58 clone in front, with a kick mic that never
really worked.  we had even more mics for other tracks, but to be honest the
XY sounded the *best*.  again, lots to learn for next time.

> 
> - Bass line needs more meat on the low end. Some of it is just that the bass
> line is an octive too high, but even then it also needs harmonics added to 
> give it more body. Trying using the Bass Enhancer from the Calf plugins.

	great ears!  unfortunately i did not have access to an actual bass
guitar, so i just used my electric guitar (same as on the suite) for recording
the bass lines.  we did try to drop the notes an octave artificially, but the
results were not good.  we also tried to enhance the bassy-ness of the sound,
but there was just not enough there to enhance.  and thus the final result
definitely misses that low end as you noted.  this is another lesson for the
next suite: if you want a bass sound, use a real bass!

> 
> creative:
> 
> - You should look into the leslie simulator Robin Gareus made for setbfree. 
> (http://x42-plugins.com/x42/x42-whirl) It might pair well with with some of 
> the synth instruments you are using.

	neat, thanks for the tip.  we used a Leslie simulator plugin on the e
-piano, mostly evident on track 5, that really made it fill space nicely, so
right on.  will keep in mind for future synth tracks as well.

> 
> 
> Very nice stuff, I really like track 8.

	ahh, the "happy" climax of the suite ;)  so glad to hear it.  it seems
like tracks 7 & 8 are the favorites thus far.

	again, thanks so so much for listening and sharing your thoughts. 
 they are very useful as we are starting to record the next suite.  if you are
interested in hearing it, feel free to subscribe to our very very occasional
mailing list (really just for releases, of which there has been 1!) at 
http://lists.in-giro.xyz .

	sincerely, thanks again.

peace, w

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