Tears In Heaven

CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
Hey Wim,
Thanks for the compliment.
I wish I could have done this better, maybe I could have if I spent more time on it.

Addressing the string squeaks and a few pops/clicks was the most challenging part.
Although there are some plugins that can help. I choose to deal with each squeak individually, that takes some meticulous editing.
It would have taken me several hours to get it close to perfect, there are still some rough spots that could be improved upon.

Once I got those under control I applied some EQ and a bit of compression to the guitar track.
I then doubles the track for a little more depth and added just a touch of delay & reverb to finish it off.

My approach on Mike's vocal was similar.
I found all the spots where I thought the volume jumped a little too much and cut those back, trying to smooth it out through the entire song.
Again, I applied a little compression and EQ to carve out a better spot for the vocals to sit in the mix.
Once that was done, I doubled the track for some fullness.
Last step was to add add a little something extra to the choruses to make them just a little more exciting, that's not very apparent unless you listen carefully.

Finally, it was a matter of using the faders and a bit of compression to balance all the tracks to a cohesive mix.

I was anxious to get this done and posted, I'm not 100% happy with the result but it was close to what I hoped to accomplish.

Thanks again for a great song, It's obvious I'm not the only one who was impressed.
 
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PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
Nice job, care to share you approach?
It was pretty simple.
I started trying to knock out the string noise on a case by case basis, but didn't find anything I liked that didn't breathe pretty heavily on the guitar. You seem to have gotten around that. I tracked the guitar with a spectrum analyzer and discovered the loudest string sounds occurred pretty consistently at 2khz and 4khz. I centered notches around 2khz and 4khz, which seemed to be where his string noise lived. It didn't kill everything, but it took the edge off. No other processing on it.
On Mike's vocals, I used a method described here, referred to as vocal thickening. I grouped the thickening channels on their own bus, applied some light compression and added a little low end on the vocals and a little reverb on the group channel.
HIs original vocal was compressed just a little more than the thickened, with it's own minimal reverb (less than 6% wet mix) and it sits considerably higher in the mix than the thickened backing material.

Since Wim's guitar had some reverb on it in the original recording, I didn't add anything to his, but tried to match the timing and decay with Mike's vocals. I sent off a first mix and Mike said he wasn't too keen on the reverb, so I revisited this mix and knocked the reverb down so Mike's main vocal is nearly dry.
 

CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
It was pretty simple.
Wim's track, I left alone, except for two notches in EQ I centered around 2khz and 4khz, which seemed to be where his string noise lived. It didn't kill everything, but it took the edge off. No other processing on it.
On Mike's vocals, I used a method described here, referred to as vocal thickening. I grouped the thickening channels on their own bus, applied some light compression and added a little low end on the vocals and a little reverb on the group channel.
HIs original vocal was compressed just a little more than the thickened, with it's own minimal reverb (less than 6% wet mix) and it sits considerably higher in the mix than the thickened backing material.

Since Wim's guitar had some reverb on it in the original recording, I didn't add anything to his, but tried to match the timing and decay with Mike's vocals. I sent off a first mix and Mike said he wasn't too keen on the reverb, so I revisited this mix and knocked the reverb down so Mike's main vocal is nearly dry.
Got ya,
I didn't want to make Wim's track any wetter, but at the end of the day, I did add just a tad.
I liked Mike's original dry vocal track (thought it was more in keeping with EC's original song) but , when I mixed i with the wet guitar it didn't sound like it was in the same room to me.

I played with the verb and delay on the vocals quite a bit, still thought mine was just a little too wet but, I needed to move on.
Vocal thickening..........I was going in that direction but, It just did'nt work for me.
I thought the results I got made his vocal sound rather phasey.

As I said with a more time I think I could have done better.

It's all a learning experience.
 
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CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
One other thought:
I liked the spots where Mike's voice goes into vibrato.
I wanted to bring those part out just a little to make them more apparent.
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
One difference I noticed when I A/B'd Paparaptors & CaptainMotos mixes, is that the pitch shifting by a few cents up and down on each of the 8 vocal tracks that Papa used, fixes a flat note or two around 2:12.
Lloyd, I think you may have mentioned that in your the conversation that you sent me. I really didn't notice it till I did the A / B.
 

CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
One difference I noticed when I A/B'd Paparaptors & CaptainMotos mixes, is that the pitch shifting by a few cents up and down on each of the 8 vocal tracks that Papa used, fixes a flat note or two around 2:12.
Lloyd, I think you may have mentioned that in your the conversation that you sent me. I really didn't notice it till I did the A / B.

You've got good ears Mike, I did not hear that.

I could hear the vocal thickening throughout on Papa's mix though.
 
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