Hi, Dan.

Post the link - I'm always interested in hearing what can be done.

As for hearing things "on ones", I suspect it has to do with decisions to use particular phrases over others. I probably selected bits that sounded like they led the phrase strongly, and the cumulative effect is that it's always hitting the downbeat.

I agree it sounds better at a slower tempo: August Exit (Slow Mix)

I brought the tempo down about 85% of what it was before. Initially I just changed the playback tempo, but decided that would probably cause too many artifacts, so I glued the tracks back together and stretched them out. I fixed a couple small glitches where I'd overlapped some stuff, as well as the "click" at the end of the drum track. I also fiddled with all the instrument levels, and changed the buss compressor.

The guitar is getting very close to having a "warble", but I'm not sure if it's a time stretch artifact, or something added by the player. There's probably some cumulative damage from having repeatedly stretched the samples.

David, the slow mix is excellent - great job!

Bob

Hi David. Here's that link to my track-

http://www.songramp.com/mod/mps/listenrm.php?Download=56745

I weaved in quite a few different guitars and saxes- pianos too. It was fun. Done in reaper as well- like you.

I'll take a listen to your slower version later tonight. I have more to comment on about artifacts I notice I get too at times, but I have to run. Take care for now.

Dan

I listened to the track last night. I love the opening - it's got a late '70s feel to it, and I almost expected Lenny Zakatek to start on a vocal part.

Don't spend too much time analyzing the slower mix - most of the adjustments were quick and dirty. I need to start listening through headphones once I'm happy with the sound through my speakers. The drums are much too subdued, and they sound like they're in a different room.

The song is starting to sound like it's been a few times too many through a tape duplication machine. And in a real sense, it has. I could regenerate the parts in BiaB and get more presence from them. But the guitar is running just a touch too slow, and the strings are starting to go. There are a couple places where the piano glitches that I didn't catch on prior listening. That's because I neglected the all important rule: solo your tracks, and listen for junk.

Digital is so much easier to work with than tape. All this technology is really amazing.

Yep, it sits nice at that tempo. I hear you on the junk in the tracks too. Something like a click or pop or whatever always gets by me until I pick up on it after repeated listens. And then I wonder why I didn't catch it until the 15th playback. Strange. I also get artifacts depending on the instrument and tempo too. A pain for sure. I never really considered using reaper to TS a track. I may try that for stubborn ones. But with 2011, all bets are off in the areas. It may be greatly improved. Somewhere along the way I'll buy in. Anyway, all good Dave. Keep hammerin away man.

Dan

Hello David,
Adjusting track volumes using eq is a great way to get a better blend and space for instruments. I am also learning the art of doing this. I have noticed that after a general volume adjust to get a quick mix, I then depend on eq to get everything to sit well in the mix. I then do my panning to give a home to each track. While I still have a lot to learn, this made one of the biggest advances in getting better mixes.
Marty

I really liked this!,, can you tell me about the "time stretched" comment... What exactly did you do, and why?

When I use BIAB to generate a solo, I tend to do it the "wrong" way - by exporting a bunch of as .WAV files, and then slicing and dicing in my DAW. You can do the same thing in RealBand, but I'm just more comfortable messing with .WAV files. Plus, I can pull bits and pieces from unrelated parts of the song, or reuse parts.

But once I'd done that, there's no way to get things back into BIAB, so I'm not sure I'd recommend that.

Plus, I was using an older version of BIAB which didn't have the nice Elastique algorithm that BIAB now uses.

So the short of it was to changed the tempo, I stretched the .WAV tracks in my DAW, which did have the Elastique algorithm.

Obviously, using RealBand to do this sort of thing is probably a better route. But old habits die hard.

I've been spending my evening listening to User Showcase songs in a rented room on a laptop using earbuds. Most of the mixes don't sound good at all on the earbuds, but this one actually sounded pretty clear.

The ones that DON'T sound clear on the earbuds tend to sound "boomy" <- (is that even a WORD??) and distorted, so I assume they're leaving in a lot of low end that probably sounds good on their studio monitors, but doesn't translate well to some other systems.

Is there a point at the low end where you just eliminate all frequencies below that?

I know that it's a cardinal rule of mixing to do a high pass/low cut on the parts, but I don't always do that (although I really should).

Although I'd like to take credit for things I'm doing in the mix, I suspect the main thing you're hearing is the BuzzRizer free plugin I'm using. It's a multiband compressor, which means you can apply different compression settings to different frequencies. I'm using the "Classic 3" setting.

Bombardier is also quite nice, but not free. You can download a fully-functional evaluation copy if you'd like to try it out. It also adds a lot of clarity to the final mix.

Toontrack EZmix also has a nice "Master" preset that you might want to try. It's also non-free, but you can download a time-limited demo (15 minutes per session).

I'm sure there are lots of other nice tools that are available, but those are the ones I know about.

That said, I'm pretty careful when setting up a mix that not too much is going on at a time. I automate the faders a lot, bringing instruments in and out of the mix and try to make sure there's only one instrument that's got the primary focus. I also try to keep the instruments as low as possible, so there's not a lot of fighting in the mix.

Dcuny, to my ears this was really good. I like your guitar work on this one. Also great choice in backing tracks.

My only complaint is that it is to short!

Actually, it's all BiaB, but thanks anyway. One of the reasons for micro-editing is that although BiaB will make really good choices, I can splice together a line until it's just right.

I agree that it's too short, but (as I mentioned in the beginning) it was really just an experiment to see how much I could mix and match various piano styles together in in piece. (I thought they worked quite well)

Plus, it's fun having that faux Mark Knopfler guitar!

Slightly off topic, I really wish there were more flute RealTracks in BiaB, but I've also found that I can splice GPO flute (rendered as a .wav) together with bits from the BiaB flute soloist, and get a pretty seamless performance. A little bit of "humanization" goes a long ways to creating a convincing performance.

There are a lot of bluesy phrases for the flute, and some held notes go a bit flat. But I can still splice together a usable performance in a DAW, and then add some pitch correction.

Thanks!

nice instrumental. I lean towards the faster one a little for some reason. Good use of multiple pianos and the Knopfler-style guitar.

David,

I like your playing.

Later,

Thanks, but... It's all BiaB.

Now I'm just embarrassed this thread came back to life...

There are some really awesome guitar players on this forum. I'm not one of them. I can noodle around the pentatonic scale and put in some bends, but after a few seconds it's clear that there's no coherent direction to my solos. I'm more at home at the piano, and even then it's nothing to write home about, just passing tones, suspensions, and lots of major seventh chords.