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So, the last time I posted this song in my trademark, home-cooked fashion, Mr David Cuny (username: dcuny on this forum) so kindly reached out and offered to remix it for me. It's taken me ages to post it on here because I've been beyond overwhelmed with non-musical stuff to do, sadly ... but here we are - this is his mix of my song, which I absolutely love. Hope you love it as I do!!! P.S. I'll add, with his kind permission, the details of how he mixed it - below! Again, hope you enjoy! We Are People, Too (the David Cuny remix) P.P.S. David suggested I should add the link to the original recording here, too, so that you may be able to compare and give feedback on the differences, too, if you so wish and have time to? Thank you all so much for listening! We Are People, Too (original version) Style is _DERANGE.STY (Derange Sync Percussion Funk) RealTracks in style: ~1433:Bass, Electric, JazzFunkGroovin Ev16 110 RealTracks in style: ~1437:Piano, Electric, Rhythm JazzFunkGroovin Ev16 110 RealTracks in style: ~1435:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm JazzFunkGroovinChords Ev16 110 RealTracks in style: 2617:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Funk16thsWahWah Ev16 100 RealDrums [in style:FunkSync16thsPerc^3-a:Sidestk, b:Snr LYRICS: We are people, too, You know ... Black or white or brown Or so ... Of whatever shade Or hue We are people, too ... It's true. We are kindred souls You know ... Let us close on wars The door ... Let us hate agree To cease Let us try again For peace. It's hard to live when people hate And all they do is retaliate With mindless anger at all we do ... You know, my friend, we're people, too ... You can't desire a world the same! Why would you want that - it'd be lame! We're all the same, yet different, We all have unique talent Me, I write and sing my song If you agree, please clap along: United we must be in diversity United we must be if we wanna live. We are people, too, You know ... Black or white or brown Or so ... Of whatever shade Or hue We are people, too ... It's true. This world is craving unity, The people shaking hands for all to see, Refusing to fight no more Letting, instead, our spirits soar ... Love Mother Earth, foremost and first, Love Father Sun, who gives us warmth, Love all creation as thyself No more, no less ... and you shall delve Into the mystery of happiness And joy of life you shall possess, Love everyone, and what is more Love yourself, friend, forever so! [BRIDGE] Remember: but for God's own grace It isn't YOU, that broken face That you would want so much to hate ... Oh, trust me, it's not too late To put down swords and dance instead To songs of joy that emanate From all our hearts, whether we're white, Or black, or brown ... we'll be alright. So come on, friend, and sing with glee This song I write for you and me Let's stop the fights and love instead All who we are ... and life won't be so bad. REMIX DETAILS: It seems I've exceeded the maximum number of characters! I'll add the remix details in a separate post, below, in this same thread.
Last edited by musician17; 06/26/19 06:55 AM.
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James,
Wow! You are shining on this - absolutely great.
David is a great producer and engineer.
Bob
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He really is! He's done a fabulous job, I feel - including making my voice sound good!
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Good job on this James! Really dug the harmonies between the instruments and vocals. Well done!
Cheers,
Joe
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Thanks Joe - as I said, though, for me, most of the credit for this one goes to David for the job he's done with my original recording!
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REMIX DETAILS:
David first wrote to me:
"Among other things, I used the compressor to:
Even out your vocal - among other things, I added compression in a number of steps.
Even out the final mix - I compressed the heck out of it.
But that's not really the most important bit I used the compressor for.
As I mentioned earlier, the music to vocal volume contrast was too low (in my opinion), so I boosted the volume of the music.
But this caused a problem: the music starts drowning out the vocals.
The solution is ducking. "Ducking" is when the volume of the music is turned down when the vocals are sounding. This is used all the time in commercials, to make sure that the vocals are clearly heard over the music.
This is where the compressor comes in. Normally, a compressor listens to the volume of the music it's compressing. But for ducking, you can use the vocal to trigger the compressor, so the compressor turns down the volume of the music when there's a vocal. This is called "sidechaining", because the control is coming from a different signal - one from the "side" of the track, if you had a traditional mix desk. The "chaining" refers to the fact that the two signals are "chained" together, with one driving the other."
We had an email discussion afterwards (about normalising, ducking, micro-editing, etc.) which I think is a little too long to reproduce here - and then he finally wrote to me:
"The last bits I got done with the help of my son. I'd already been using the Greg Wells' VoiceCentric effect on the voice, adding some compression. He dialed that back a bit, and we agreed that it should use delay instead of reverb to give your voice additional splace
He dialed bit back a bit, and we replaced the Reverb effect with the Delay, which sounded better without getting muddy, Basically, it mostly added compression:
He added the Scheps Omni Channel. Looking at it, I see it's only in Mono mode, so that's causing it to lose the stereo effect from the prior effect. Ooops!
He started with an "Air Vocal" preset, which and tweaked it a bit.
It adding a touch of saturation, which takes some of the signal and clips it, which adds additional harmonics. This makes the sound a bit brighter and easier to hear. It basically simulates an artifact that you'd get if you transferred it to tape.
Then it goes through an EQ, cutting the lows and mids and boosting some highs. This takes some of the low-end mud out of your voice, as well as some of the harsh mid-range tone.
The DS2 is a de-esser, typically used to cut some of the harsh sibilance from the voice. It's called DS2 here because there are two de-essers.
It's then run through a compressor, which used to smooth it out:
This then goes into the "Mellow Verb" reverb preset in EZMix to add some space. It's a medium size room, with not too much reverb added:
And then it goes into the SpitFish de-esser to have another go at cutting the sibilance. He actually added this first, and the Scheps Omni Channel later.
All this reverb causes the plosives to "pop" a bit more, so I went through the vocals and cut the amplitude of a lot of the consonants. I edited a lot of /H/ sounds, which were harsh to my ears, since English has a relatively soft /H/. Along the same vein, I modified a number of final /D/ and /G/ sounds, cutting down on the aspiration.
I then had to go back and dial a number of the consonants back up, because I'd over-edited them. I think I got them to a nice space, where they don't "pop" out in the verb, but they're still clear.
The "you know" vocal has a ton of effects on it:
EQ to cut some mud and boost the highs
Compressor to even the sound out
A bit of the VoiceCentric to add some more compression
The "Bright Reverb" from EZMix to add reverb
A de-esser to cut the harshness
We also played a bit with the settings on the compressor used to "duck" the signal, and got something that worked a bit better.
On a lot of sustained sounds, you get quiet too quickly, so it's hard to hear:
So I sliced these and normalized the sustained sounds they kept a good volume throughout:
And, as you pointed out, I added some panning to make it more interesting."
He accompanied all this with images to illustrate precisely what he did.
Thanks so much, David!!! Incredible amount of work on this with a small miracle (in my view) of a result, especially when bearing in mind the original! What do you think? I'd love to hear your feedback - thanks for listening!!! :-)
Last edited by musician17; 06/26/19 07:05 AM.
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Now this is a great collaboration...
I think its awful nice of David to lend his efforts to your creativity...
He took a good song & made it into a greater song...
Congratulations to both of you!
Jim
†=☮&♥
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I learned a lot about ducking while doing this, and still have a lot to learn!  The vocal track drives a compressor, which reduces the volume of the backing tracks when the vocals are present. One of the most obvious problems with this technique is there's obvious "pumping" as the compressor pushes the music down in volume when the vocal comes in, and then returns the volume to normal when the vocal stops. It sounds OK over monitors, but in headphones the effect is much more pronounced. (In my defense, my headphones weren't working when I mixed this). After I finished this, I found out you can also use the vocal track to drive the EQ. For example, you could cut the specific frequencies in the music when the vocals kicked in. Combined with the compressor, you could get the same clarity without as drastically cutting the volume. If anyone else has suggestions on how to approach this, I'd love to hear them!
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Nicely done - I think that remix takes a slight upper hand for me, personally. I liked that the levels were a bit more balanced, and the reverb was a nice touch. Though truly they are both fantastic in their own right.
Great work, thanks for sharing!
Cheers,
Deryk
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My clear favorite is David's mix. The pumping from "ducking" was certainly present in the phones, but the nature of the piece (as much recitation with a musical backing as a "song") made it a good choice overall.
In the original, the balance between voice and backing was way oof kilter to my ears. The voice was too loud--I turned the volume down---then the backing could barely be heard. Despite all the technology and know-how David employed in his mix, something similar could be done in whatever setup you are using. If you back away from the mic a bit, your vocal will not have that combination of intimacy AND relative loud volume--those two things do not go well together, in my opinion.
Last edited by Tangmo; 06/26/19 01:43 PM.
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Jim: thank you and I absolutely agree and want to thank David for all the time and effort he put into this. So kind - I'm so grateful.
Thanks also Deryk and Tangmo. I think I also need to mix without headphones and/or get a better quality headphone pair when I do mix! Mine boom a lot when I listen, so it probably gives me a false picture of balance, etc. I'll do my best for next time :-)
Thanks absolutely everyone!
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good job guys!
nice write, a good message
enjoyed the listen,
Kenny
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Nice work on the remix. It's definitely a better sounding mix than the original.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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I good job on the remix.
I'm not fussed on automated ducking but this one seems to do the job - the pumping - well, it's there and it seems to fit in with the rhythm pretty well.
Nice job addressing the esses and plosives.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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James and David ...
Very, very nice! Great lyric and arrangement, James. And David, your expertise at "turning the knobs" is quite admirable. I'm a total idiot when it comes to mixing, as well as a lot of other things. My approach is: level the individual track volumes, add some compression as needed, pan, blend, turn it up, turn it down, add a little reverb, punch the bass and slightly spike the treble - okay, looks like we're done. And that's no exaggeration in most cases.
The ducking didn't bother me in the least. I enjoyed this all the way through! Thanks for the great song. Your efforts are appreciated. And David, what a great guy you are for offering and then doing!
Alan
Last edited by Al-David; 06/28/19 11:13 AM.
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James and David, great job on this by both of you! This mix sounds really good to me! Everything is nice and clear and no struggle trying to hear anything! Thanks, Torrey
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The detailed breakdown on David`s remix is very interesting ( some over my head, but gives me tips for research), and its a big improvement over the original.
Thank you for sharing your collaboration.
Robert
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Hi James,
just like Jim said: An already in its basic appearance very good song (with most important lyrics !!!) even improved by David.
Very good job all the way !!!
Cheers,
Stefan
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Great collab, great backstory, lots of good mix info and ultimately an excellent remix of a fine song.
Enjoyed it!
J&B
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