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Old 12-10-2011, 10:26 PM
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Doug Young Doug Young is offline
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Part 2 :-)

Here's what I did with the raw file as far as mixing it. This goes with my earlier comment about production tools, and there're a lot more toys here to spend your $2K (or much more) on as well.

No guarantee this is better than what you did, and I won't be offended if you don't like it, its just what I would do with this, keeping in mind your preference for reverb! Here's my mix:

http://www.dougyoungguitar.com/mp3/redavide_mix.mp3

What'd I do?

1) Used Izotope RX to try to declip the file. You can't really completely repair digital clipping, but RX tries, and does a pretty good job of guessing what should have been there. I also used RX to do a little noise reduction on the tail, where it was most noticeable.

2) Loaded the cleaned up file into Logic, and trimmed the head off to where the music starts, and trimmed noise off the tail, fading it out slightly to try to make the remaining noise less noticeable on the end.

3) Raised the level of the intro by a few db, just because it was my favorite part :-)

4) Used a TC Electronic Powercore plugin called Dynamic EQ to tame some of the boomy bass notes. This gizmo is basically a multiband compressor sidechained to an EQ, so that I can EQ specific frequencies when they exceed some threshold, but leave them untouched the rest of the time.

4. Used Logic's Stereo plugin to simulate a stereo effect. This basically works by EQing each side in a complementary way, so that the overall signal is the same if summed to mono, but one side has less of some frequency, while the other has more, and so on. It works pretty well, tho 2 actual mics in stereo would be better.

5. Added a bit of room reverb with a Lexicon Native plugin. I find this reverb works nice for masking bad acoustics somewhat. It adds its own room sound, which kind of blends with and smoothes out the actual room sound, if there is one.

6. Added a longer more dramatic reverb with a UAD plugin, the EMT-250 plate emulator. This is a really lively-sounding reverb that seemed right for this track. I used some predelay to create a sort of audible bounce to when the reverb comes in.

7. Used Izotope Ozone, a mastering plugin, to add a bit of compression, some maximizer-style limiting, some overall EQ, and a little more stereo enhancement, plus bring the final level up close to the max.

And that's it. There's still some harshness there, especially in the hard strumming parts where it was badly clipped, that I wish I could get rid of, but the track seems enjoyable to me, in spite of that. At least perhaps it will suggest some ideas.

Last edited by Doug Young; 12-10-2011 at 10:45 PM.
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