Hi floyd,

It's always good to see/read you! Thanks for the comments. I appreciate them.

On to your questions...

Originally Posted By: floyd jane
First a question... the acoustic guitar sounds great. It is spread across the stereo field perfectly.
Did you do something to accomplish that???? That is essential in making your band sound so good with the small group of instruments you have chosen. I seldom hear people do that. Please share!!!

I'd love to take credit for being a master audio engineer but, in all honesty, I owe the sound to serendipity.

I think the fullness you hear is partly due to the audiophile edition in that there is slightly more depth/warmth to the guitar in its original wav (as compared to the wma) - it's not hugely noticeable but it's there. This gives more frequencies for the below effects to work with.

Mostly the stereo spreads comes from my settings in Reaper and Ozone. In Reaper, the acoustic guitar track is panned at 37% left. I also have two reverbs spread across the stereo field, I call them short (< 1 sec. decay) and long (> 1 sec. decay) for convenience, and they are panned at 60% right (short) and 50% left (long). The other instruments also have their own unique 'short' and 'long' reverb panning.

The preset I started with in Ozone used mid/side EQ (see below). This preset was found under "Balanced" (Ozone 6) and it's called "Enhance Stereo Image". The top image shows the 'Mid' settings and the bottom image shows the 'Side' settings... I didn't modify these.



The above Ozone preset also had a fair amount of stereo imaging from the IMAGER module which helped fill up the L/R field. As you can see below, the instruments' fundamental frequencies are pretty much in the range covered by Band 2 and this has significant stereo width added (51.9).



Originally Posted By: floyd jane
The addition of the nylon guitar is excellent. They are hiddem gems in the BIAB stable.

Yes indeed. Brent Mason has some great nylon guitar work. In the jazz arena, Oliver Gannon's nylon guitar playing is also brilliant.

Originally Posted By: floyd jane
The late addition of the cello is a delight. Great touch in the tag at Bb -> Bbm (a guess).

Bringing the cello in late is something I picked up from Steve Young and from you. A number of his and your arrangements work on the principle of 'save the best for last'. Using this principle, I held off using the cello for as long as possible smile

.... and yes... it was Bb to Bbm...

Quote:
I love where the bridge goes melodically (and lyrically).

As soon as I finish notating the music, I'll put it up on Soundcloud. Musically, the song is in F major and the bridge goes to Bb major. In Nashville notation, I've used a 2m 5 1 progression in Bb as the opening chords of the bridge. This progression seems to be very good at establishing a key change pretty quickly.

Lyrically, because I wanted to repeat the first section as my last section, I needed the bridge to give me somewhere to go and to create another perspective for the repeated section.

In my head, the first time through the "one two three, one two three..." section is literal... it's two people dancing on a dance-floor. The bridge becomes more philosophical and the dance-floor becomes a metaphor for life. Hopefully this perspective was sufficient to transform the repeated section into a 'journey through the years' for the dancing couple.

floyd, thanks again for the comments. After reading through them, I don't think the day can get much better... smile

All the best,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2025