Jclampitt's Two Bare Hands entry

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0 voters

Here’s my entry. I added this last one to bash this recording briefly, but then I deleted it. I figured I might as well just enter it into the contest so I can move on with my life lol.

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I edited the post to add the poll.

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Thanks I didnt know how.

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Dang, Jesse, this is a beautiful mix.

You did a particularly nice job editing the vocals. This was a nasty vocal track. Esses, plosives, some proximity effect stuff with the mic as he turned his head to and away from the mic. You made it sound like a nicely recorded vocal track. Smooth, clean, well-balanced. Nice EQ. Vocals sit nicely too. That’s for me the coolest thing about this mix.

Balance and EQ of the instruments is nice. I love the sound of the bass right in the beginning. Has a nice bounce to it (probably not the right word to describe what I like but it’s the best I can do).

Snare is great. Very natural. That thing was tough to tame.

Three little, little things, easily fixed: there’s something funny going on with the synth when it first comes in on second verse. Hard for me to hear cuz so soft but it doesn’t sound right. Some kind of envelope or something. It’s not smooth/clean.

On the bridge the first tom is too quiet, not balanced in volume with the second tom. Really not a big deal, but I noticed it, fwiw, cuz the toms on that part are so cool.

Only other thing (also easily fixed) is some weirdness after the fadeout at 3:13. It fades out but then comes back in softly.

Yup. Really nice job on this. Listened to it several times. I’m eager to hear how you went about your mix and how you approached the vocals and snare.

Gotta feel really good about this. Tough song. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks! I’m not sure what you mean about the synth, but I bet it’s the waves Maserati hmx plugin I got on there, I don’t know, I thought it sounded cool. It is doing some widening but it is a harmonics generator so it’s probably generating some harmonics. This was the first mix I used it on so I dont know the plugin all that well yet. You are right about that fade out at the end, I thought I had automated the volume down all the way, but I did not.

I just tried to widen things like the guitars and synth that I thought needed it. The vocals I did a little editing on to chop out some of the bleed, and I had them going through a kind of extensive chain of eqs and compressors, de essers and saturation, a tape sim and a slight bit of reverb… and then in parallel through some other stuff like waves adt for width, just barely blended in.

The snare wasn’t too difficult, I had the top and bottom mics pretty equal in volume, no samples, into a channel strip plugin with eq and compression and gate into a bit of reverb and then some more eq, saturation and compression in parallel.

In fact, pretty much everything in the mix has some kind of parallel processing on it, even the guitars and bass, but on the drums especially. I had individual drums like the kick and snare in parallel into the drum buss, which is also in parallel… it didn’t all seem so ridiculous and complicated until I tried typing out what all I did lol.

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Im sorry but i marked it down 1 for ignoring the room, a little too much - it’s an instrument, too… was still a great mix/ balance though… :+1:

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That’s just like, your opinion man… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Seriously though fair enough. I kind of minimized the room intentionally so that’s definitely a valid criticism.

I like the balances. Hmmmm… this is a tough, one because everything sounds pretty good really. But I guess the mix overall feels kind mid-rangey to me. It’s not drastic or anything, but it seems like the instruments are all kind of fighting for the same frequency range to get my attention and they are losing definition and clarity. Maybe the guitars are just a little too crispy? Sorry, that’s crappy feedback, but I’m really having trouble trying to figure out what it is for some reason - because this is really a very good mix!

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Nicely done. I feel like you have lost some of the energy by leaving out a lot of the room mics, but that is probably because i have heard it the other way so many more times. Nothing to complain about. good balance and tone.

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Hi Jesse, I really like your mix. Beautifully balanced, punchy and full. Very polished. From a frequency and balance perspective, I can’t fault it.

Everything else is down to personal taste. Do I hear some chorussy/microshift effect on the lead vocal? I’d prefer that widening type of processing to be a little more transparent on the LV.

Awesome job, mate - really nice!:+1:

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Yeah, now that it has been mentioned, I probably could have done a lot more with that, but it was my first instinct to minimize the room and go for more of a “studio” sound. Probably because I’ve never really mixed a live song and that is just what I am used to doing. I still stand by my mix, and it came out how I wanted it to, but I get how some might prefer more room sound.

That could be a number of things, I did have some widening going on with a plugin or three, I tried to keep it subtle but that is just kind of a sound I like. That said, I like the vocals in your mix as well, without much widening, so I may try for a different sound on some future mix.

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I’m came back to have another listen because the feedback I left earlier was really bugging me and I’ve been trying to put a finger on what I was hearing. As evidenced by the other comments (and mine) this is a really good mix - but something still wasn’t sitting right with me. So I pulled down your mix to listen in my DAW and played with an EQ and the balances all STILL seem really good. I think perhaps what I was describing as “midrangey” in my first comment is instead that maybe the final limiter being hit too aggressively and this fine mix is losing some dynamics and sonic quality as a result for the sake of loudness…

For my own education, would you mind hitting me up offline or posting a mix on your bash thread with no other changes but the limiter turned down like 3dB? I’m curious to see if I’m off-base here…

BTW, really solid mix! After re-listening with fresh ears this morning, my vote was adjusted as well. :wink:

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If you look at the last one I posted in my bash thread, it is exactly the same but quieter. The quieter version sounded slightly brighter to me. Let me know what you think.

There’s only a difference of .73 LUFS… PM sent - I don’t want to side-track things here. :slight_smile:

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So I’ve been comparing this mix to Andrew’s trying to figure out what I might be hearing. The loudness and crest factor and whatnot are virtually the same. Finally I EQ Matched the 2 mixes and found that @Jclampitt’s has more energy from 1.5k - 9k, which is making it “brighter”. (?) I guess that is perhaps what I’m hearing. In the end, I am concluding that perhaps I just like “darker” mixes which is certainly a personal preference.

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