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Josephson_Junction
Advanced Member
United States
512 posts
Joined: Jan, 2012
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 Posted - 2013/05/17 : 21:30:41
I'm finally starting to get back into the loop of producing, although I'm struggling with the mixdown for the second chorus in a remix I'm working on.
Here's what it sounds like, and here's what it looks like.
The Rhodes-esque lead with heavy delay was initially the only track with the section's underlying chord progression. It felt too weak to me (its harmonics are situated firmly in the midrange), so I tried to beef it up via EQing, a bit of compression, as well as layering on an accent (which has most of its harmonics at the higher end)... although I may have just created a lot of mud.
I'm unsure if the acid is taking up too much frequency space; I may have to free some up as I plan to insert two other synths from the original (you should be able to tell which two I'm referring to).
On that note, does the FM "wow" sound too cheesy? Compared to the original, I've reduced the intensity of the high-reso frequency sweeping (which creates the "wow" effect); because the tempo is faster (20+ BPM faster), doing it in the same fashion as the original resulted in a jarring "pop" sound at the beginning and end of each note that wouldn't go away with EQing. My worry is that I made it sound cheesier by doing that.
If you have a suggestion or two regarding that or anything else I would appreciate it!
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Hard2Get
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United Kingdom
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Posted - 2013/05/17 : 21:33:16
I'll read all the text and reply accordingly once i have read it. As for the sound clip: sounds very Fade (2000's style). You're onto a winner there.
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Edited by - Hard2Get on 2013/05/17 21:34:08 |
Charger
Senior Member
Singapore
278 posts
Joined: Jun, 2012
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 13:34:12
quote:
The Rhodes-esque lead with heavy delay was initially the only track with the section's underlying chord progression. It felt too weak to me (its harmonics are situated firmly in the midrange), so I tried to beef it up via EQing, a bit of compression, as well as layering on an accent (which has most of its harmonics at the higher end)... although I may have just created a lot of mud.
If you want a cleaner lead, I would usually recommend this:
1. Create a duplicate of all the lead layers.
2. Create 2 submix bus or group channels. Name each of the groups the following: Dry Lead, Wet lead
3. Route each set of lead layers into the group channels
4. Add all the fx (e.g. delay, reverb, etc.) into the Wet Lead bus. Probably you might want to give the wet lead an eq with a hipass filter cutoff at around 200 Hz to remove the muddiness from the fx at the end of the chain.
5. Apply sidechain compression on the Wet Lead with SC inputs from your Dry Lead and adjust to taste
6. You can now adjust the level of the Dry Lead & Wet Lead groups to taste until you reach a sweet spot where your lead sounds strong enough with delays present.
I would say that such kind of parallel mixing does wonders in cleaning up my mixdown when it comes to layering and using fx in main elements of the track. You'll get the best of both worlds (Powerful & heavily fx lead). The main item that will do the magic would actually be the SC compressor regulating the output of the Wet Lead.
If you actually prefer running less channels on your DAW to save CPU power, I would recommend you to try to use delay plugins which have mix control (% mix) of the effected signal and dry signal, and you might realise that you could only use the delay or reverb fx sparingly if you want the element to retain its power, which is the limitation of series mixing of your lead.
Maybe I might be saying too much since I'm not a top producer who released no. 1 tracks on TID or stuff and you can choose not to listen, but that's as far as I can analyze from your screenshot and the audio clip.
Cheers.
__________________________________
For updates of my tracks & free downloads:
http://www.soundcloud.com/hedgehog-charger
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Edited by - Charger on 2013/05/18 13:39:14 |
Hard2Get
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United Kingdom
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Joined: Jun, 2001
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 13:41:47
quote:
If you are actually prefer running less channels on your DAW to save CPU power, I would recommend you to try to use delay plugins which have mix control (% mix) of the effected signal and dry signal, and you might realise that you could only use the delay or reverb fx sparingly if you want the element to retain its power, which is the limitation of series mixing of your lead.
That's what effect (aux) sends are for. Then you can use one effect on an infinite amount of channels. Also without watering down the original signal.
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Charger
Senior Member
Singapore
278 posts
Joined: Jun, 2012
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 13:54:20
quote:
Originally posted by Hard2Get:
quote:
If you are actually prefer running less channels on your DAW to save CPU power, I would recommend you to try to use delay plugins which have mix control (% mix) of the effected signal and dry signal, and you might realise that you could only use the delay or reverb fx sparingly if you want the element to retain its power, which is the limitation of series mixing of your lead.
That's what effect (aux) sends are for. Then you can use one effect on an infinite amount of channels. Also without watering down the original signal.
Ah yes, aux sends could save CPU power. That's also one more option for you 
But the only anal thing about aux sends are the Pre-Fader and post-fader option.
Pre-Fader = The control of the level of signal going out from your aux send is independent from your channel's fader (e.g. 0dB aux send with pre-fader option = 0 dB into your fx bus)
Post-Fader = The control of the level of signal going out from your aux send is dependent on your channel's fader (e.g. With -9 dB on your channel's fader, -4 dB on your aux send, you get -13 dB into your fx bus)
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For updates of my tracks & free downloads:
http://www.soundcloud.com/hedgehog-charger
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Hard2Get
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 14:12:03
Are you saying that being able to control this is a bad thing? Lol.
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Charger
Senior Member
Singapore
278 posts
Joined: Jun, 2012
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 15:40:07
quote:
Originally posted by Hard2Get:
Are you saying that being able to control this is a bad thing? Lol.
It's just troublesome, not something bad. 
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For updates of my tracks & free downloads:
http://www.soundcloud.com/hedgehog-charger
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Hard2Get
Advanced Member
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 16:01:37
In what way could it ever be troublesome? Lol. How is not having control over either of those things better? :P
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Charger
Senior Member
Singapore
278 posts
Joined: Jun, 2012
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 16:05:22
quote:
Originally posted by Hard2Get:
In what way could it ever be troublesome? Lol. How is not having control over either of those things better? :P
Tell me more, I'm interested to hear your thoughts instead.
EDIT: I think I got your point, you weren't happy when I was pointing out the fine details for aux sending. If I have offended you in any ways, I apologize.
Cheers
__________________________________
For updates of my tracks & free downloads:
http://www.soundcloud.com/hedgehog-charger
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Edited by - Charger on 2013/05/18 16:08:36 |
Hard2Get
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 16:13:53
No that wasn't my point lol. I am just confused as to why having a choice over whether the send is pre or post fade or not could be worse than having no choice at all :P It's nothing important.
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Edited by - Hard2Get on 2013/05/18 16:16:52 |
Charger
Senior Member
Singapore
278 posts
Joined: Jun, 2012
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 16:45:01
quote:
Originally posted by Hard2Get:
No that wasn't my point lol. I am just confused as to why having a choice over whether the send is pre or post fade could be worse than having no choice at all :P It's nothing important.
Basically, there are different objectives for using pre-faders and post-faders.
Pre-Faders: Your FX control is independent from your dry signal. This gives absolute freedom for controling the fx wet-to dry ratio and is probably good for bringing elements forward or backward with a hot reverb signal on the aux send as an example.
Post-Faders: Your FX's Wet-to-Dry ratio of your signal is relatively fixed and balanced to your dry audio channel when you pull down your dry track's fader. This will result in your dry signal being more prominent than your fx at all times.
Even having no options is a problem, you need to identify what type of fader option is the aux send by default to know the characteristics and limitation of it before using.
Therefore, if you have to choose between them without even understanding the use of it, definitely it'll screw up your mix big time, with over-EQing and going back to square one of having a muddy mixdown using the unintended option.
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For updates of my tracks & free downloads:
http://www.soundcloud.com/hedgehog-charger
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Hard2Get
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 18:39:08
Well i know what it means, i was confused as to why you think it's bad. But you answered that with this: 'Therefore, if you have to choose between them without even understanding the use of it, definitely it'll screw up your mix big time'.
Although if you don't know what the pre-fade button does then it's unlikely your mix would be so good to begin with that it would suffer because of it lol. But this is way off topic so i don't want to continue discussing it.
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Edited by - Hard2Get on 2013/05/18 18:41:37 |
Phobz
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United Kingdom
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13 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 20:15:06
What is this dry to wet ratio you speak of.
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Hard2Get
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Posted - 2013/05/18 : 20:23:35
quote:
Originally posted by Phobz:
What is this dry to wet ratio you speak of.
If you run a synth directly in to an effect processor then there is a control that controls how much of the original signal there is and how much of the effected signal there is. The wet signal is the effected signal and the dry signal is the original.
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Edited by - Hard2Get on 2013/05/18 20:24:06 |
Phobz
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United Kingdom
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13 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2013/05/19 : 10:04:45
Ah I understand that now that you've just mentioned how it works. I never really knew what was going.
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Josephson_Junction
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United States
512 posts
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Posted - 2013/05/19 : 21:04:41
Update: http://soundcloud.com/your-username-here-1/chorusupdate
One of the biggest issues as it turned out was that the delay for the rhodes hit wasn't terminating before the next MIDI On properly, I had messed up the automation during a bunch of previous drag operations.
quote:
Originally posted by Hard2Get:
That's what effect (aux) sends are for. Then you can use one effect on an infinite amount of channels. Also without watering down the original signal.
I've been forcing myself to use routing more as of late and it's definitely been helping on the mixdown, workflow, and performance side of things. I didn't quite grasp how stupid it was to not do that until I realised it would be like defining a bunch of different functions in PHP or C that all did the same thing, or at least extremely similar tasks.
quote:
Originally posted by Charger:
Maybe I might be saying too much since I'm not a top producer who released no. 1 tracks on TID or stuff and you can choose not to listen, but that's as far as I can analyze from your screenshot and the audio clip.
Doesn't change the fact that your advice is helpful.
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Edited by - Josephson_Junction on 2013/05/19 21:06:04 |
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