The Dressing-up Box - AndyR Original

[SE]

What a sound, quality all the way through, vox and that electric guitar are just fantastic, magic, magic!!!

[bruno]

Excellent sound and arrangement and recording. Well done.
B

[Redler]

This is epic!!

Very ambitious work and the final result is just fantastic! Well written and arranged song! Top class job on many ways! Special thanks for the superb vocals and harmonies!

GREAT JOB!

[AndyR]

Thanks folks

That five months - it wasn't all "go" during that time. Quite a bit of it was "oh I can't be @rsed... I'd rather lie on the sofa"

I got stuck several times - I couldn't play it, I couldn't sing it!

I had to rerecord the guitars, piano, and bass about 3 times each because I couldn't get it to sound as if it was moving anywhere. For example, notes got taken out of the bass part and given to one of the guitars instead.

The band mix has existed, almost in this state, for nearly a month while I was sorting the vocals out.

I've even given up on a couple of things I was planning, but they were to difficult to achieve. One of these was whispering courtiers under the repeating guitar figure. There were several ideas for this, one of which involved reciting "On a Certain Lady at Court" by Alexander Pope (it's on the internet). That was written about someone called Henrietta Howard who just happens to be the "lady behind" of the first verse and chorus of this thing. BUT! it would have taken another week or two of rehearsing and fiddling with it to make it happen!

Basically, that's kinda where the time went - rehearsing all the band and choir, getting them to learn to play together... which, of course, meant re-recording and rerecording as the parts changed (if the five guitarists in the chorus were playing what they thought was good, but it messed everything up when the bass and piano were in, then the guitar parts had to change).

I'm hoping to do something a little easier for the next one...

[Tangled Wires]

Well, I have had two listens and still don't feel like I have taken in the full magnitude and magnificence of this song.

So many shifts in moods and intensity, both musically and vocally, this is true creatively of the highest order in the first instance to have dreamed all of this up, and immense talent to deliver it in such a spell binding way.

The Choir parts sound incredible, and I think that I read somewhere previously that it is "all you", although each time I hear these multiple vocal parts in your songs I swear each time it does sound like you have recorded an actual choir in your house!

Sounds like it was a bit of a labour of love, but what has emerged out of it is right up there for me with some of your very best tunes.

[Gnasty]

Wow what a tune! So much going on but love the vocals and guitar the best!! needs a few plays is right!

Do you record the guitar with patch or a miced amp? Sounds like a compression pedal is used for lead?

[Hook]

This will take many listens, quite good my brother!
Rock On!

[AndyR]

Oops... typed a lot...

Ah... guitars.

Had a lot of fun with those. I tried both modelling (Vox Tonelab) and a mic'd up Laney CUB. The mic'd up amp tracking was attempt number two and it had some issues... A) The parts had to get re-arranged again, and B) Although it was a good sound, it wasn't what I was after - it was too "thick"....

So on the re-arrangement I went straight back to the Vox Tonelab. Seeing as I was using my Brian May Red Special, the obvious amp model was AC30, full-tilt with a treble booster into it. On the Tonelab, if you're using a treble booster for the effect, you can't use a compressor as well.

There *might* be some studio compression on the lead when I was mixing the guitar parts, I can't remember. Just listened to it, I'm not sure - if it was any other guitar I'd say yes, but a Red Special sounds like that on Neck/Middle out-of-phase (that was BM's pickup selection for solos like Bohemian Rhapsody - the moment you set it like that through a full-tilt amp you can see why, it's "compressed" and cuts like a very sharp knife).

And then, choirs:

Yep, it's all me. I wanted some female voices for texture this time, but Mrs R refused to go near the mic!!

I did consider contacting someone I've collaborated with before - but it would be almost impossible to get what I wanted remotely. So I went with my usual technique - get further from the mic (thinner sound) and wail!

This time I restrained myself and went for the minimum voices it took to get each effect. Eg. The "ooos" (which are actually "mmm", "oooo" itself didn't work), that's just 3 part, two voices to each.

After I'd got the voices down, I then organised them with panning and complimentary EQ. Eg some get a little boost at a frequency, others get a cut at the same frequency. I had trouble with the chorus backing singers until I realised I was panning them too wide... when I put them in a tighter V they fitted the track better. Also, the closer you put the separate voices to each other in the stereo field, the more you can get away with "bad" or "mismatched" parts. In fact, it seems to sound more like a "choir" if you have one soprano singing, one wailing, and another screaming!

BUT! Although this sounds very involved, I found it's not too bad if you have some idea about what the parts will be and plan it a bit. The worst bit is cleaning all the tracks of the extra noises in their "silent" bits (I'm doing it all on the BR, not a DAW). Same with the guitar parts actually - takes AGES. In fact, there was one point the whole project was stalled for a week or two because I couldn't face going in there and cleaning guitar parts before the bounce!

Cleaning

Talking of "cleaning". I'm kind of stunned by this mix and the improving effect that "cleaning" has had.

For some time (about 3 songs) I've been "topping and tailing" parts by recording silence over the lead-in and lead-out on each track. This removes the noises you make while waiting to play after pressing record, and the dash back to the stop button after you've finished singing or playing.

While I always used to clean loud noises, stuff I could hear in the mix. I used to believe that the quiet noises you can't hear over the drums or whatever "added to the vibe". But... it's not true. EVERYTHING that goes through that stereo mix uses up space, even the stuff you can't hear. And if the space is used up - what happens to the stuff you want heard? You can't hear it properly and don't know why.

For example: these choirs. When tracking anything I set a two-bar lead in so that I've "got the vibe" and enough space to start singing/playing. If I've just recorded 8 backing voices, there's 8 of me breathing etc, just waiting to come in. If I leave this in, I can't "hear" it. But... if I take it out, the band and the lead vocal sound a lot better.

But there's something else I've done rigorously this time - every single track (including bass and drum program) have a low cut at 50Hz. The reasoning is: you can't really hear down there, and I learnt recently that, apparently, vinyl can't reproduce down there. All the music I like was created for vinyl, so sod it, I don't need that bottom end - especially if I can't hear it on my various mixing speakers/headphones.

Now, I used to do this when mastering the whole mix - but the thing is, the mix is already buggered by then! All that stuff below 50Hz is taking up space to the detriment of what you can hear. Clean all the tracks before mixing, and you've got a better chance of making a better mix.

Actually, the same applies for the top end. I understand that vinyl couldn't reproduce much above 16KHz, so mastering for vinyl cuts everything above 16K. Unfortunately, the BR1600 doesn't have a lo-pass (High Cut) filter - or I can't find one, anyway. So you have to improvise with shelf EQ, which doesn't work so well - it takes out a load of stuff BELOW the frequency you set. So I do my "high cut" on mastering, because the mastering EQ goes all the way up to 20KHz (the ordinary track and effects EQs only go up to 16KHz).

The rule is - Anything you can't really hear, REMOVE IT, because it uses up valuable energy/headroom (space) in the mix...

And it seems to work. On this mix, I can hear everything I put into it - in the past, that hasn't always been the case!! I'd fling a wall of stuff at it, hoping it might produce a "vibe". This time, although it's still got a few on there, there's a lot less parts than I'd have used in the past to achieve the same effect. And it seems that, even when you want more, less sounds like more!!

[chapperz66]

The 50 hz cut is interesting.  I'll have to give that a go.  Do you fiddle much with the mastering tool kit on a song-by-song basis?  I must admit I get a bit lazy by the time I get to that stage and tend to plump for the mix-down kit which I adjusted a bit although I can't really remember what I did to it.

On subsequent listens to this song I think that a factor in the clarity comes from the arrangement.  There is a lot going on a lot of the time - but never too much - and there are moments of beautiful sparseness.  This results in stunning dynamics.

Paul



 

[AndyR]

I used to fiddle with the mastering toolkit a lot. Not so much now. Now I tend to test on the Mix Down, Live Mix, and Pop Mix defaults. If one of them sounds wonderful straight out of the box, that's it, "job done".

I do tend to add "dynamics" during mastering by riding the master fader.

If I do mess with the preset, it's usually one or more of these:
1) EQ on the way in, eg taking some top off at 20K
2) The bass cut if required
3) The Mix after the multiband EQ - especially if I use the Live Mix. I turn the top band down.
4) If I want to get loud, I turn the limiter on and adjust between that and the mix... then boost the  Out.

I no longer mess with the cut-offs into the multi-band compressor, nor the compression settings. I used to, but I found that that way lies disaster!!! You can get a HUGE sound and "fix" a mix... but my ears aren't experienced enough to hear everything, so it's usually at the expense of something obvious I didn't notice. Eg, I've lost the backing vocals, or some background acoustic jumps out at you (and I don't notice it until I've posted it!!)

Instead, I took some advice I read - DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FIX/CHANGE A MIX WITH WHATEVER MASTERING TOOLS YOU HAVE AT YOUR DISPOSAL... YOU'RE NOT GOOD/EXPERIENCED ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN BOG IT UP... MASTERING ENGINEERING IS A HIGHLY SKILLED JOB.

Whether or not that's actually all true, it's worked for me... I've got better results since I started obeying this rule!!

I do have one question - what do you do to the mix before Mastering? I end up with a Mix, and a Normalised (100%) copy of the Mix. I try mastering both and usually use the Normalised one. I've read somewhere that Normalised to 80% might give you better options... but I didn't get too far when I tried it.

After Mastering, I take a copy of the Master, and Normalise that. if the Normed version is a noticable volume improvement, I'll use that, otherwise I'll use the straight Master. This is because a few songs back I found the Normalised Master distorted... no idea what it thought it was doing... the Master itself sounded clean.

===============

Thanks for the comment on the dynamics . I actually struggled hearing any dynamics myself when I'd first finished... I was really worried I'd made it too thick all the way through. Because I'd been hearing it so often, I wasn't noticing the increasing and decreasing instrumentation was giving me plenty of interest.