"Always Remember" - an original song by Simon Calverley (aka simon_plays_bass)

This poll may or may not help the decision on vocals volume. If you’d rather not answer, just ignore it. I have tried to set it up to be anonymous.

Can those of you who think the vocal volume is too low please let me know what speakers you listened to the recording on?

  • Phone or Tablet Speakers
  • Multi-purpose headphones or ear buds (e.g. the ones that came with your phone)
  • Ear buds for which “good for listening to music” was a key factor for you
  • On ear or over ear headphones for which “good for listening to music” was a key factor for you
  • Studio Monitors
  • Room speakers (HiFi or similar)
  • Something else
0 voters

Simon is there an overall question that the poll supports, like what media do you use to listen to music ? I might have missed something but the reason for the poll is not clear.

If you are talking about mixing, you need to create a master that has a consistent presence across multiple platforms. And that aint easy as there are so many. Are you seeking the most commonly use “speakers” ?

TIA
:smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

@TheMadman_tobyjenner Ah yes, a question would have helped. Apologies, and now corrected in the poll.

Indeed. Another rabbit hole to peer into :grinning_face:.

You may want to look at this from a few years ago.

https://community.justinguitar.com/t/getting-the-right-loudness-levels-and-mix/119812/1

There are element that refer to setting up for out Open Mics but the overall topic was loudness levels.

You will get a multitude of difference response to your poll, as folks will be using many different types of speakers or headphones etc. May advice would be to establish what streaming or sharing platform you intend to use and mix your tracks for the optimum levels of that platform. And a Loudness Meter like the one from Youlean, lets you dial that in and see where you are either cooking or falling short.
:smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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So after a couple of weeks more on the production, I’ve got to a point where I am happy with the song. The “Radio Edit” and “Festival Version” have been added to the initial post rather than being buried deep down in the thread.

I think the only suggestion I didn’t do anything with was with the toms in the bridge - I gave the reasons earlier in the discussion. A precis of what I did is:

  • Panned guitar and piano left and right respectively
  • Composed and recorded a guitar solo (as suggested by @Jenndye429 and others). It’s my first ever guitar solo. If you’ve any feedback on the solo please feel free. I may not (probably won’t) do anything further with this recording, but I may well end up doing others.
  • A good amount of learning how to / tips and tricks for eq’ing the various instruments and vocals
  • Raised the level of the vocal in the 1st verse and chorus
  • A bit more compression. There wasn’t much required as, other than the piano, I only needed to make smallish tweaks to the compressors I had added to the 1st version. If you are interested in compression you might want to look at the piano bit below.
  • Added reverb to vocals and drums. The guitars already had it via an effect pedal when I recorded. It didn’t help the piano and bass, indeed may have made them worse.
  • Removed one of the choruses for the “Radio Edit”. And maybe invented a new word for the “What version is this?” lexicon: “Festival Version”
  • Some finishing touches such as removing noise before the play started (it cam from the guitar); moved the last note on the piano forward (correcting a timing error from the recording); added a fade out at the end so that the end isn’t untidy.
  • Uploaded the track to the AI mastering tool on the web site of “Ditto” (an online distributor based in the UK). The recommendations for this drove a lot of the stuff I did with the piano (see the more detailed stuff on the piano).
  • Bought some studio quality Open Back head phones for mixing the song.

For those who are interested I’ll go into more detail on the things I did in the next post (hopefully today). I suspect this won’t be compulsive reading for many of you.

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So here is a more detail on a few items for those who are interested

Panning

Summary

I panned left (rhythm guitar) and right (piano) to -22 and 22 (about 7.5 mins either side of 12 o’clock). I kept checking with other amounts as I progressed, but always ended up here.

When listening to the mastered versions they seem to sit well on most devices. The exception was my kitchen radio (a digital one, from the earlyish days of digital radio). Once you are more than approximately 2m away from it, the speakers are too close for it to function as a stereo so it’s essentially a mono sound emitter. The vocal sounded too loud; a soundtech mate of mine said I’d essentially come across the problem sound engineers faced in the 50s when people went from mono listening to car stereos (though I guess I had it in reverse - untintended car pun, but I’m quite happy with it :grinning_face: ). The problem was correctable by using the radio’s tone button to roll of some high and and high mids - hence I decided this wasn’t something I needed to work on more. The other mono source I have (a 12" PA speaker) was fine.

Compression

Summary

I have set up compressors a few times in the past (it’s a common effect for bass players to tidy up our playing). So smallish tweaks other than on the piano. See the section on Instruments / Piano if you want more on this.

Piano;

Wow, this took some thinking about. The level was OK until I read about the mastering process. The article said keep all volumes below 0dB. I interpreted this as meaning all tracks and the master output. The piano was exceeding this to fit in the track. Unfortunately although the piano overall level was moderate there were 2 or 3 locations where it was peaking at higher than 0dB. What i eventually did was use a high threshold, sharp knee (0.1), highish ratio (8), quick attack (5ms), FET compressor to tame the peak; then the eq; then another much less severe compressor to deal with the rest of the track.

Next time I’ll use a synth. The dynamics of an acoustic piano seem to be a hindrance in a mix.

Reverb

Summary

I set up an auxiliary channel with a reverb effect (“Space Designer” in Logic Pro) and sent some of the vocals and drums to the same reverb.

I’d never really understood this use before. I think because sound engineers tend to refer to “setting up a send”, whereas if they are doing what I did they set up an auxiliary channel and send information to that channel. So I was confused by the terminology.

Eq

Summary

Most of what i did was based on Internet guidance.

I found eq before compressor in track processing sequences worked best.

I first put a high pass filter on everything except drums (even the bass to get rid of any sub frequencies).

Eq Vocals

Summary

I started with the plugin with the most promising description and worked from there. There was a harshness in the “you have” of the choruses. I learned a technique of sweeping the frequency range using a narrow bell curve filter to amplify and isolate the frequency; then attenuate at that frequency.

Eq Rhythm guitar.

Summary

It was a similar story to the vocal. It took a bit longer as i thought the irritating frequencies were below about 500Hz, whereas it was a boost i added around 3.5kHz that was the problem.

Eq Lead guitar

Summary

There was a promisingly titled plug in that got me most of the way there.

Eq Piano

Summary

None of the piano ones seemed to work. I ended up using an internet sourced cheat sheet

Eq Bass

Summary

I followed a cheat sheet. The high pass filter mentioned above plus a bit of a cut at 250 Hz and a boost at 800Hz.

Eq Drums

Summary

I didn’t do anything. It was recorded on an electric kit and i only had waveform for of the whole kit.

Instruments and Vocal

See also the eq section.

Lead guitar

Summary

Lead Guitar. It is my first guitar solo. Luckily I had done the lesson where Justin introduces soloing an month or so ago.

I had a Clapton solo tone in my head when I started. I didn’t get there, but I quite like what I managed to get.

Signal chain:
Guitar to Compressor (for sustain), in to Bad Monkey (Tubescreamer type gain with more eq options); a distortion set more like an Overdrive; a bit of chorus (i think); slapback delay to thicken the sound; reverb (plate i think); Ampeg SVT bass pedal with an 8x10 cab sim; then to audio interface.

Other Instruments

Summary

Not much really. Just whatever you see in the eq section.

Vocal

Summary

I raised the level in general (a few of you suggested this). I also had to raise the volume further in the 1st verse and chorus - it took me a while to work out the editing to do this.

“Radio” and “Festival” edits

Summary

I was a little regretful that I’d done a double chorus. However part of my concept was a catchy tune with easy lyrics for the chorus - so an easy enjoyable singalong. So I also wanted a double chorus at the end.

Towards the end of the process i realised I could have both with what i already had (no need to record again). I decide where to split and remove the tracks. The 1st attempt highlighted some messiness, but did then show me where i needed to make the splits. This was a pretty quick process.

How to do crossfades took a bit of working out. I also found it doesn’t work in all splits (it made the bass worse).

The radio edit is the original with just a single chorus (no profanities to remove for this radio edit :grinning_face: ).

The Festival Version is the original. The double chorus made me think of a Festival where everone is having a good time singing along with band. Hence “Festival Version”. :grinning_face:

Mastering

Summary

See also the compression / piano.

The mastering tool wanted 3 - 6 dB of headroom. I assumed this was just on the master and to the max level, so i dropped the fader so that it had the desired headroom.

The mastering did highlight some errors. I think i could have picked these up before submission to the tool. So i cost myself $15 more than i should have.

It sounds better after the mastering.

Listening Devices

Summary

I used the following listening devices during the production process:

  • Open back Studio headphones - stereo
  • Over ears with a good bass response - stereo
  • In ear buds with a good bass response - stereo
  • A digital radio (using its aux in) - effectively mono
  • A 12" powered speaker - mono
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Wow, you’re the master of documentation! :slight_smile:

I like it even better now - the stereo helps with separating the instruments.

I think your EQ work was pretty subtle, I would have needed to listen with more attention to detail to really detect your changes.

And the vocal is nicer like it is now! I would have raised it a bit less, but that’s a matter of taste.
It also sounds warmer to me now, but I possibly just feel it is, because those lower frequencies of the vocal were more hidden by some other instrument before, when the vocal was quieter.
Ah, I have to relisten - did you really put a reverb on the vocal - it sounds very direct to me!

And I think you’ve done very well on your solo! :clap:

THis is a pretty natural sounding mix. To me it’s a good thing!
If you want to make it sound more like most songs sound, it always astonishes me that EQing with raising rather the higher end and making some sources brighter makes the mix sound more exciting and clearer.
Maybe you did this already: It’s also helpful to listen to your track, then listen to some track you consider really good sounding and pay attention to vocal, then drums, then instruments and so on and see how it sounds different in volume or EQ or othe regards…

2 Likes

Nice work @simon_plays_bass :+1:t2::+1:t2:

Thank you for taking the time to document all your hard work! I enjoyed looking through the posts to see what you updated. I love getting into the songwriting and production weeds :laughing:

The vocal level is much better now :+1:t2: I agree with @domi7 that if you added reverb, that it was nice and subtle. I am personally not a fan of over produced vocals. I love to hear the natural character in a singer’s vocals and too many effects take that away for me. I’ve had to get used to hearing reverb added to my vocals when I record. Even that was hard for me when I first started :laughing:

Also great work on the solo! That section of the song sounds so much better and fuller now. I also think that taking away the double chorus for the radio edit was a good call :+1:t2:

My only constructive comment would be to say that the drums in the bridge section still feel a little out of place for me personally. The new mix definitely helped, but they are still a little jarring when compared with the song as a whole. I know you have an artistic reason for building them up right there, so please feel free to disregard this feedback :laughing:

Overall, thank you for sharing! I’m enjoying seeing your journey with this song :grin:

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