Hi Evert sorry I missed this. Guitar so nice and clean. Sad to relive this I bet. You sound a little like ringo in this. Great words in your chorus. Vox could come up 2 dbs. Really a laid back vibe in the song itself. You have to put these feelings to music and you have done an exceptional job. Congrats bud
I second that. The voice is missing substance. Its an amazing voice. It deserves more bandwidth 
. I would push it forward to the breathy zone.
Just listened to this…
First thing I gotta tell you is simply that your mother would be very moved by this song, Evert. Beautiful song. Love the guitar, love the lyrics, love your vocals.
And, oh, the guitar! So full. I’m curious what kind of guitar you’re playing here, and would love to hear a bit about how you recorded it (mics, room treatment), and even your effects.
Your playing is quite nice. Really enjoyed this. It’s full and natural. Your playing is so sweet. You have a nice “feel” for the guitar. Wonderfully solid and pleasant to listen to.
In fact, your guitar playing is so beautiful and so prominent, that ironically I think it needs to be scaled back, 'cuz it actually takes front and center, making your vox take a back seat. The bigger part of it is going to be making your vocals louder of course, but there’s prob’ly some complementary EQ so the guitar doesn’t compete so much, and maybe a little EQ also to make it fuller. The bass and guitar are right up there up the center and are too much competing with your vox.
I wanna hear the words more AND the harmonies (very sweet).
Little less low end. I’m also wondering about maybe a little M/S on the guitars to get 'em out of the way.
So, TBH, I’m thinkin’ “our lovin’ man, JT” – your guitar reminds me of him. Note how prominent and central his vocals are, and how the guitars complement the vox and “serve” the vox. Here’s his Sweet Baby James album on Spotify. Check out Sunny Skies or Sweet Baby James.
Your lyrics are powerful. Really like this. I’m moved by this. On a personal note, my dad died in March, from COVID. He was 92. He made national news, actually (he’d have been very pleased with this! ) for being the first casualty to the coronavirus in Wisconsin.
Thank you for sharing! I can relate. I’m sure many of can. This is truly beautiful.
P.S., seriously, do share about your treatment of the guitar. It’s strikingly good.
Thanks Tes. I don’t think my guitar chops are comparable to James Taylor, but its a nice compliment none the less. The way I recorded it it was as follows:
I used my old Taylor 420 with not so new Elixer strings. Elixers last quite a long time and I tend to ignore the advice to replace the strings with just about every new take (I heard some one actually say this on You Tube). I just don’t like the sound of very new strings. They rattle to easily and have too much high sizzle. The sweet mid frequencies are overruled by high FQ’s. It’s all right if you use an acoustic as an extra rhythm instrument in the background, but not if the acoustic is the main instrument. Only my opinion of course, but I heard Warren Huart say the same thing recently 
Its a stereo recording using 2 different mics (because I don’t yet own an identical stereo pair): I use my large diaphragm condensor (I forget the brand, It’s a lesser known German mic which did once get a very favorable SOS review) on the 12th fret position about 30 cm (1 foot) away pointing only very slightly towards the sound hole. The other mic was a Rode M3 (not the most expensive small diaphragm condensor by a long shot!) pointed again 30 cm away at the lower part of the guitar body just beyond the sound hole. This mic placement is tricky, move around too much and comb filtering might completely ruin the sound. Its a stereo recording but I used a stereo tool (I think I used the Nugen Stereoizer to make sure it was not too wide - about 50 degrees left and right if I remember rightly). I wanted it stereo to get a fuller sound, and I wanted it out of the way of the vocal in the stereo field (as you suggest!). But not hard panned all the way because it would not sound like its coming from the same source as the singer.
I’m trying to remember the details by the way but have no access to my studio: having a short holiday elsewhere!
I used my trusty dynamic eq TDR Nova (in my top 5 of favorite plugins) to get rid of some slightly annoying resonances (the "Gentleman’s edition of Nova has a an AI algorithm that analyses this for you and you can decide to use/ tweak what it comes up with or not). After that I used Waves MV2 to bring up the level of the softer parts (giving it some attitude in the process) followed by another eq (probably the Slick EQ also by TDR), but I can’t recall how I used it. I think I had another compressor on the mixbus, probably an LA2A clone (was it the Thrill Seeker? not sure what I used) as well as some tape emulation. There’s some small room reverb as well as a little bit of hall verb. And that’s about it.
I put some hall verb on the main vox as well come to think of it. Although I would have dialed in quite a lot of pre-delay that might still be the reason it’s not up front enough. One thing I need to check out, when I get back to my studio…
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Evert, this is an excellent post. Very cool. I love, love, love the sound you got on your guitar.
Now, I don’t have a Taylor – mine is a Takamine – but I have everything else (sort of) in your chain. Really appreciate your detail in explaining how you did this.
I also use a large & small condenser (a Studio Projects C1 and a Shure SM81), but I’ve always switched so I have the larger condenser at the low part of the body and the SM81 by the on the neck, where you have your large. So, am I screwed up for doing it that way?
The Nugen Stereoizer was my last purchase. I love that plugin. I hunch that was a significant part of the sound you got. Just gorgeous. Would love to know what kind of settings you used. Could you PM me? Really nice.
I use the Nova as well, but not a lot. I have difficulty knowing how to do the dynamic EQ thing. I wasn’t aware of the AI thing. Will maybe need to check it out.
I have the MV2 from the gold bundle. Cool plug but I haven’t used it a lot. Love your use of it here.
So if you listen to my guitar at the intro of Wings for You, you will hear what I did with my Takamine. Like yours a lot better.
Would love your thoughts on my treatment of the guitar there. I got some rock solid feedback on that mix, and haven’t had a chance to repost, but I will. worked on it a little bit but swamped with work. This COVID-19 thing is complicating my life too much. Ugh.
So my next mix on Wings is already better, but not done. I’m trying to make it a priority to get to it, but things keep coming up.
Thanks, man.
I know how you feel. In my case complicated by the fact that we just sold our house and are looking for another in an other part of the country…
Anyway had a chance to finally work on the mix and take heed of all the good input. I completely changed the bass line and to a lesser extent the piano line. more or less allong the lines of @Lophophora’s suggestions, and started fresh with the plugins on the vocals. Got a chance to evaluate my upgrade from Izotope Nectar Elements to Nectar 3 . I also put the lead vocal more up front than the others by reducing the amount of slap-back and reverb and I added a little ‘warmth’ in the low mids which was suggested by a couple of people. I also used a different (vintage) limiter in Ozone. Not sure if that’s a good choice, it tends to flatten the waveform more and I’m not sure that’s what I want in this song. The difference might just be too subtle for my ears, but I must say it was very late and I was way too tired to be able too do any critical listening. <edit next day I changed the mixbus limiter to the default Ozone Maximiser. However I did add a subtle bit of mixbus glue (about 1.8 dB of gain reduction) from the native Instruments ‘Supercharger’>
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the results.
I’ll fit in the new mix in the first post.
Listening to it again I feel the lead vox are too much up front now, but I’ll wait for your comments before i start fixing again.
Evert, I love this.
This is so powerful. Man, your guitar is so beautifully mixed. Gorgeous.
Definitely an improvement over v1. I really like the vocals being louder. It adds to the impact cuz I can hear it more effortlessly and also can hear the emotion in your voice better.
A few suggestions:
Vocals - Definitely an improvement with them being more front and center. I think it’s just a smidge too loud, though, only cuz it feels unbalanced with the rest of the mix. Doesn’t “sit” comfortably with the rest of the mix. Feels like it’s on top. My thoughts: bring it down a tad (reference that Sweet Baby James piece, above). It is very dry, which I do like, but a touch of verb would help it sit better. Or at least bring back some of the slap delay. I didn’t listen in my Sennheisers, but I hunch that a little boost in the high end would help.
Your vocals are gutsy and “real” and drip emotion. A bit pitchy though. Smooth that out and you are sittin’ good.
The other piece is to bring the BGV up. They are nice, but too soft. Actually potentially very powerful. Bring 'em closer to the volume of the main vocals. Maybe do some autotune on the vocals.
Strings - watch the cutoffs at the end of string phrases. Like at -1:49. They end too abruptly. Makes it sound very MIDI. Fade it out more smoothly.
Balances are great. Love this a lot. Nicely done. Hope that helps. Gotta run but I’ll check in later.
Evert, on another note, just curious. What DAW do you use?
Thanks for listening closely and your suggestions @Tesgin. I’ll try them out.
I had them closer to the lead vocal, but brought it back down to bring the lead vocal up front. Maybe went a bit too far.
I did tune the lead vocal using Reaper’s Reatune by hand followed by the tuning program in Nectar 3, both quite lightly to keep the authenticity and emotion. I’ll check it with fresh ears to see if there’s anything left that stands out too much. I also used Nectar (the entry level version) on the background vox. Might try my newly acquired Nectar 3 full version to do some more tweaking.
Because of a comment on the lack of ‘movement’ in the strings I used a more powerful articulation. I have little experience with recording articulation (or drawing it in with automation). I tried but couldn’t get it to work. So I just changed it to a more abrupt type (forget what it’s called), and I think that’s the cut-off you heard. I should really check out how it’s supposed to be done… Right now I’m about 200 km away from my studio so I’ll have to wait till the weekend.
Oh I think I already implicitly answered your question concerning my DAW: it’s Reaper! I started out with Cubase many years ago but the updates were expensive. And to be honest, I hardly knew what I was doing 
. Reaper is ridiculously inexpensive and I really appreciate their business philosophy! It was not easy to learn to use, but I feel quite confident with it now (even if I only use a part of what it’s capable of).
New mix sounds great Evert. I’ll have to have a listen at home. I think I may have a few suggestions.
For some reason that’s what I was thinking, that you’re a REAPER guy. As am I. Maybe I was remembering that from another post somewhere. Anyway, Reatune is awesome. I used to be a Sonar Studio guy years ago. Switched to REAPER and never looked back. Absolutely blown away with its features and the support community.
And, yeah, your comment about authenticity and emotion: I agree. You accomplished that in spades here. It’s very moving. Again, bringing the vocals up accomplished making them the focus.
If you have a moment, I’d love your feedback on my post of Wings For You. Reason being I incorporated some of your feedback on my guitar work. Same plugins. I love, love, love Stereoizer. Spooky how much that makes a guitar sound more authentic. Thanks for the tips.
But yeah, @ColdRoomStudio will have great tips for you. This is a special song. Mix is very strong. Not only is your treatment of the guitars very cool, but your playing was excellent. Like I said earlier, you did your Mom proud. This is really nice.
Best,
Tes
Hey Aef,
I haven’t read any of the other comments, just going off of your second mix and having read your comments.
Love what I am hearing so far. There is nothing I would note that is not personal taste… and if it;s ok, I will place them below after I have finished listening. The additions are great, the strings/keys work well and that piano is perfect!!! Adds warmth but is also quite unsettling in a good way that compliments the song.
Mate, I can’t hear any “issues” in this at all. It’s got great push and pull and I love how everything (particularly the vocal spread and balance once you have all the voices going) fits together.
Ok, personal taste things
The main one is the bass. To me, a couple of notes get lost at times, but the main thing is (in my humble opinion) it is not strong enough. The bass could be your most emotive tool here but I feel like we hear the main note and it fades very quickly and is set back some. I don’t mean that the playing should change, but maybe fiddle with the compression and eq to even the notes out more and bring out more sustain.
I have pasted a link to a James Taylor song that highlights what I mean. The bass is simple but it moves you and carries the strength of the song. I tried to find one that fits in the zone of what you’ve done here.
That’s really about it. I love it! Well done, what a stellar rework. It is so hard to rework a song you love, let alone one that is unbelievably close and personal to you! Kudos!
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Yep, this is great Evert! Sounds great on my studio system. Here’s my only suggestion: Add a little space behind the vocal for the choruses. Whether that be some subtle, dark delays, or some heavily pre-delayed reverb, it will just lift those choruses ever so subtly, and really bolster the sonic “scene change” that happens.
Very nicely done!
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Thanks Dan, appreciate your comments, including those on the bass. I know what you mean! I’m not a bass player and find it difficult to keep it simple on the one hand (comments from @Lophophora) going back to the root note when I can, while the notes tend to be long and the sustain I would like is simply not available from the sampled instrument I use. I do have a real bass guitar, but when I try to play it I always end up with dud notes and such… Just not a bass player I guess.
Anyway I’ll give it another try. Maybe repeating some of the notes so they seem to have a long sustain? How can such a basic instrument be so difficult to get right? 
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Thanks Andrew! Well I have a room and a small hall reverb going as well as a slapback delay, but I’ve intentionally made the lead vox a lot dryer to get it to come forward more. The background vox already have quite a lot of verb on them. Are you saying I should put more reverb (or delay) on the main vox or the background vox? Or should I make the space their in even larger (large hall)?
Sorry Tes,
I’ve not been very reciprocal after all your great comments. I’m heading for your song right now!
Not necessarily. I actually prefer delays for this sort of thing. The best way I could explain it is by way of demonstration. Check out what I’m doing on This Vocal
Obviously that is a much noisier, raucous song, but the same principles can be applied in a subtler way.
That is a great thread which I now wish I hadn’t missed when it came around. I will try some of the more advanced tricks you have up your sleeve Andrew, sounds fantastic!
I wouldn’t re-record it as to me, there is nothing wrong with the playing. I’m wondering more if you can perhaps get some parallel compression or similar going (I’m no good with multi-banding although I love the concept).
I’m sure there is a better name and way to explain this but I often do the following:
I send the bass to another track and put a low pass filter on it so that I only get the low lows (maybe 150-200 and below but I can’t recall off the top of my head exactly). Then I put a pretty solid compressor on it to even it out and bring out the sustain of the note. Then I can set (or even automate if needed) that low end independently to taste.
But don’t re-record it as it is simply a personal taste thing and it is absolutely fine as you have it.
Good stuff!
Thanks again for all your great comments. I finally found some time to make what I hope is now my final mix. I think I took heed of most of your ideas. Had a lot of fun trying out Andrew’s delay and reverb tricks. I do think it improved the vocals on the whole, and specifically in the chorus. Even added a few (very subtle) throws in there. I redid the compression on the bass track with some sidechain comp (from Boz’s Manic compressor). I also noticed the piano track was not well in sync with the bass with a few notes way off, so I fixed that. The strings have a little more movement to them (mainly volume automation) and I panned them further out to the sides with some large room reverb (I’d forgotten the sends on the strings!). Lastly I added some more ‘air’ (from about +4 dB to +9 dB at 9,2 K) to the lead vocal with my go-to ‘character’ EQ (TDR Slick EQ). I’m not quite sure about that last move. In an earlier mix I emphasised the presence at around 1,8 K. Adding a lot of air seems to take away from that emphasis.
I just tried to add version 3 to the first post, but for some reason it wont work. So I’ll post it here.