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I've just spent 2-3 days remixing this :D
(I've got stuck on the two new ones I'm working on, so I thought I'd take a break).

It was my first serious recording with the BR1600 in 2010. I was in such a hurry to post it because I'm so fond of the song itself. But I've always hated the old mix - I lost the essence of the guitars and choirs during mastering because the lead vox was so ear-piercingly sparkly in the original mix.

This is what got left in the box last time I worked on it. It's exactly the same performances, I haven't fiddled with any sub-mixes at all (the "band" and the various choirs), just their relative balance and EQ. And the lead's reverb has changed.

Unfortunately, the remix has brought out certain aritifacts on one of the guitars (known as "cling-film underwear" where I come from) I knew they were there, but hey, there is no way I'm recording and remixing the whole thing :D.

'Twas written in 1994. And, by the way, bits of it have been re-used since in other songs - I'm not sure what I do if I want to record those!!!

Fucking class. The backing vocals are out of this world.

                                                          henwrench

Cheers Henny :) - and I even managed to reduce the amount reverb I used on the lead vocal last time!!!

Wow Andy... this is a freakin pro recording. Absolutely floor'd me... Agree with Henny... Them backing vox are super kewl as well as the lead vox and all instruments for that matter. This is a track most of us only dream we could produce.... My hat is off to you Mr. R... AWESOME... LOVE IT.

Aside from the fact that the music was flawlessly composed and performed, the vocals are just fantastic!!

And as I've said before - Those "Ahh's" are freakin' epic! I can't wait to record something new so I can try some of your pointers.

Still a great song, and the new mix sounds good too. I prefer the old one though (which I fortunately saved in my AR folder :) ), but I think that's just a matter of taste.

Listening to your songs is always a pleasure - I'm already trying to infect friends. :)

Regards,
  Steffen

Great song Andy. Loved the vox.
B.

Stunning bit of work Andy....love it

I love the beautiful compostion, but the vocals are just superb!! Sounds a classic to me!!

Kari

It's a fabulous song, I liked the earlier mix st the time, this mix is really strong. The vocals really do sound good.

Cling film underwear.... I can imagine what you mean but I'm not sure that I heard it.

:D

"Cling-film underwear" was a term we used to use for crackly guitar leads, etc. And then it became a standard phrase to describe any extraneous noise of vaguely that type.

There aren't any guitar leads involved in this one, but one of the guitars has a string noise that could be distracting in the left ear on the first "son that she carried" line. And then, just before the big choir there's another noise that I think could be me shifting in my seat or something. It actually sounds to me like a slight digital clip, but it's not.

They were both present in the original mix, and I fought with them last time, but they weren't so noticable to me because of how everything had to be treated at the mastering stage. On this one, they are more apparent but I felt they were a price worth paying to get everything else - and I made no effort to fight them. In the general scheme of things they are hardly noticable... It's more of an "if anyone is listening as closely as I was... yes, I did notice, I know they're there, but they don't bother me too much..."


Yep, Stoman - I had a feeling that you'd prefer the old mix :). It has a lot going for it, a certain lightness, even thinness, that enhances the despair and heartbreak, and this operation has shown me that it didn't quite deserve the "dislike" I'd felt for it.

But, the sound of the guitars, and more especially the effect of the choirs was what blew my mind when I created it - and with the mastering I had to do on the original mix they did not sound anything like that on the finished article.

When I'd finished the remix, I felt like maybe I'd lost some of the heart-break by making it smoother and warmer. I wasn't too sure whether this was a bad thing because I hadn't intended that much heartbreak in the first place!

I was talking about it with one of my muses on alonetone, who seems to have very much felt the heartbreak in the original and I wanted to know what they thought. They came back with "bright and sparkly says it all (and also haunting) ...  it sounds w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l". That's pretty much what I was originally trying to achieve, "haunting" rather than "heartbreaking", and I definitely wanted "w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l" :D

i thought i commented on this already, maybe commented on the otherside.

braw, still not had time to dig out the old version to compare, but a good song is a good song and this is a freakin good song.

This is something else!
Great production, fantasic vox.
Just brill.

I'm Blown away.

What a beautiful story and the guitar work superb.

The vocals and the harmonies hauntingly beautiful.

Love the pace , the mix and the production.

They are all your songs so you can use them as you see fit.

Quote from: Nelson on July 28, 2012, 07:25:29 AMThey are all your songs so you can use them as you see fit.

Thank you for that :) put a big smile on my face - and in fact, it needs to be said to everyone that creates stuff, any stuff.

However, there is another side to it, which makes us forget it - we need the feedback, the "I like" and the "oh that didn't grab me so much" from other people.

I firmly believe we should all trust our own judgement, but that judgement is formed by what we perceive of what other people think. Not listening to others at all is bad, not listening to yourself is very bad.

Good is somewhere in the middle - you just helped me get back to the more balanced "middle" area on some things I'm working on at the moment - many thanks :)

You got 'wonderful' with this one Andy.

This sounds fantastic Andy! Thos led and backing vocals were so clear. Just awesome!

Really thoughtful lyrics too.
I thouroughly enjoyed listening to this one.

HI Andy . i loved the whole song just awesome. very clear diction in the vox. full
of presence and modulation. great job. and that acoustic., was super. this song.
has a captavating way of grabbing the listeners attention from the first note
congrats my friend cheers NEIL.!!

Awesome track. I just love the vocals. And the mix is quite good. I mean QUITE good.

Vocals are awesome. I'm amazed, this sounds so pro. How many backing vocal tracks are there? I love the armonies.

I recently learned how just a little of EQ does magic. Sometimes, to bring up a track, it's not about pulling up the slider, but enhacing the right frequencies.

Fabulous Andy absolutely fabulous. I listened to this on the other side a couple of times and I'm in awe of the whole piece. Where does the story come from? Top notch............Willie

I'm intrigued by the story also for this spectacular tune! I love everything about this tune, well done.
Rock On!

Thanks folks, been a bit busy (recording loads - hold on to yer hats in a week or so!! :D I'm even involved in a full-on collab with someone, I never thought I was gonna do that - especially writing the song together from scratch before recording, I've been creating the demo from the parts all day, waiting for the other party's verse lyrics and guide vocals at the moment. And it's all taking a bit of time... I'm exhausted).

Anyway, for everyone asking what this one's about and where the story comes from:

Er... out of my head :D

I was exploring the break up of my first marriage, but I don't think I actually knew it was breaking up at the time.

It was about not being able to go with someone's offer because of guilt from the past and, if it goes far enough, how the guilt could carry you beyond the grave... Something like that anyway (I've had a few brandies - hope this makes sense!)

Some of the imagery came from two places - memories of a UK children's TV program when I was younger, and Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles - particularly the "Baskerville legend" itself.

@ na_th_an, just listening to your "M.E.R. under the table", made me realise I forgot to answer your question (it was the brandy :D).

I don't actually know how many vocals there are now. When I did the remix I used the stereo submixes that already existed - they did the job, so I didn't have to investigate the mono tracks (and there's lots of them).

I think it's something like:

"Ooo & mmm" Choir - 8 voices
"Wailing" Choir - 4 voices wailing, 4 voices oo-ing
"Main" Choir - 8, possibly 16, voices. Might be as much as three parts, and probably doubled in octaves.

The "Ooo & mmm" choir provides the gentle bvox throughout and then a hefty part of the "bed" of the main choir at the end. It still doesn't sing any lyrics under the main choir though. Because there are no hard consonents in the parts, I was able to use large amounts of delay to spread it all further.

The "wailing" choir is only on the instrumental. It was meant to be just one voice giving us some sort of ghost wailing somewhere off down the hall, up the stairs, wherever... but it didn't work. I was about to scrap it, disappointed, when I tried doubling it, messing with the EQ and reverb. That was better. And then I thought "ghosts don't just wail, they moan", so I added the counterpoint oo parts.

The big "main" choir came afterwards when I was getting over-enthusiastic with my new BR1600 (this was the first proper track I did with it). I thought I'd finished, but just dialed up another layer of 8 tracks and started winging it. I kept falling around laughing as I was hearing the results. By the time my wife came home it was in this state (choir a bit louder), I thought it was just an exuberant joke I'd been having with myself and I was so proud of it. But she said, no it's part of the track, keep it on there.

Wow! That's a MASSIVE vocal section! No wonder that it sounds that awesome. I've created multi-part vocals in the past and it's exhausting. Once I cheated, I recorded my 3 or 4 armonies and then used chorus and track duplication with small delays to "multiply" them. It doesn't work quite well, of course.

When I began recording multi-tracked music in the early 2000 (the summer of 2001 I believe to have created my first proper album in the good ol' Cool Edit 2000 - 4 tracks and LOTS of bouncing) I was listening to Queen quite a lot and I experimented with multi-tracked vocals. I overdid it, but some stuff was interesting. It's very old, but I think I may post an example later. It's a shame that back then storage was sparse and I didn't keep the individual tracks, not even the bounced 4 tracks. Back then I knew nothing about mixing and it was a matter of luck 90% of the time.

Yep, Queen is where I come from too... Some other places, but for longer than I care to remember, I have periods of listening to just Queen. Can't do it at the moment though, I'm trying to "de-Freddie" a lead vocal I have to do...

This is a great song and your vocal performances, both lead and backing, are excellent. I've not heard the original mix but this one does it for me.....nice writing, performance, and remix. It's very deserving of my 1000 post (whoo Hoo !). Well done Andy.

Farrell