General Music Chat

well, Bill (P-JAZZ bassist) and I did a cpl of rough mixes of two tunes from our someday to be released upcoming CD. these recordings were done DIY w Pro Tools.

there's some things i'm not too happy about (besides my playing)...too much reverb on sax (bill's a little 'verb happy when it comes to sax) , instr volume levels, panning choices, etc but we'll address those later.

if anyone's interested, please check 'em out. sorry jimmy, the files are too big to put on my profile page.

Bill's tune "Coconut" https://soundcloud.com/planetguy-1/plan ... -rough-mix

and one of mine "Here Without You" https://soundcloud.com/planetguy-1/plan ... -rough-mix

Sounded pretty good, just some tweaking of the mixes needed.
Not sure the sax has 'too much' reverb on it, it just needs to have the same reverb as the rest of the instruments to make it sit in the same 'room'. In the first song particularly, it sounds like it was added after, recorded in a different place.
In the second song, the high hat/cymbals seemed to be way to the right. I guess if you were set up in a room where the drums were not centered this is what it would sound like, but on a recording, I prefer drums centered, not too widely panned (just like if you were listening from 15 feet in front of them.) That's just my preference though. I've heard a lot of non-pro engineers pan drums (specially the overheards) really wide.

right you are brendan.....steel drums on malletKAT. i prefer the sound of real steel drums, but my chops on 'em just aren't up to what i can do on the KAT.... even if it doesn't sound as good. thanks for checking the tunes and compliments.

mike, the first tune "Coconut" was recorded w drums, bass, sax, and malletKAT playing "live".... as in all tracked together "in the room". we pretty much tried to record everything together as much as we could...things just breathe better and hang together better that way.... and of course we're really playing off and reacting to one another.

i was switching between the steel drums patch and a marimba patch on the KAT. we later deep sixed the malletKAT marimba, and i overdubbed my for real marimba. i also ovedubbed the acoustic gtr....those overdubs were done in a different location (my place).

the amt of sax reverb on that tune isn't too bad (bill and i did some compromising there) but there's still more than the other instruments. a no-no for me since i totally agree w you re. all instruments needing close to the same amt of 'verb/delay for them to sound like they're on the same page.

the second tune "Here W/O You"....has way too much reverb on the horn for me. horn was recorded same session/same room but overdubbed.

the vibes (plugged in using it's p/us) and acoustic gtr overdubbed later at my place. i'm still toying w using the original acoustic vibes track that was recorded using mics...my vibraphone has a very good p/u system that does record well, and of course it's great in loud live situations...but there's nothing like a well mic'd vibraphone. sadly i wasn't crazy about my soloing on the "live take" so we did this more recent vibe overdub that you hear now. i need to go back and check the original take to see if i can live w my slop.

panning.....yep. bill had set up a drum "scene" in this preliminary mix and neither of us were paying much attention to it during this mixdown! i'm real big on presenting the mix as if you were sitting in front of a band playing w/o any real big/wide panning.

thanks for checking it out and the notes!