Per collection thread

Thanks Monkey_Man  waraba and deadman42 !

Yeah, it didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted but there’s a rough shape there

Thanks BayouTexan , ah I think of it more as a choice. It’s all within peoples reach but they need to overcome convenience.

Thanks deadman42  waraba and Mats_Nermark !

I feel this is one of my less successful jazz attempts. It has a little of albeit messy rhythm but lacks that strong lead riff. Too much improv, not enough writing.

Thanks BayouTexan !

Todays noodle, more gentle surf totally not inspired by any seminal 80's indie bands at all

Thanks Monkey_Man I tried to make todays lead more "intentional" to try and give it more form. I'm still working on trying to create depth and range on my tracks. Loud I think I've made good progress on, nuance not so much, so any hints of how to get that depth without sacrificing punch would be most welcome.

Thanks. Yeah makes sense.

There are some productions I hear where the relative dynamics of instruments seem extremely massive but still sounds rich, I’ve noticed that when you push an instrument back by lowering the fader it often sounds thinner not just quieter.

So for example if you have your drums and vocals up front then push your guitar and bass back the overall richness of the mix drops, they begin to sound like they were recorded through a telephone!

That’s why I like compression because it brings it back to an extent, what I don’t like is that it does it by killing dynamics.

There are a bunch of tricks I hear on high quality recordings that I don’t know what they’re doing to achieve. I think it’s also related to the ability they have to e.g. have a soft sounding bass that apparently lacks treble and mids, sounds low volume in the mix, yet is very present and clearly defined which is itself some sort of trick even before you get to how it does this all the whole competing against kicks and other bass heavy sounds in the mix.

A lot of it seems to run counter to my existing experience which is that richer and better sounding mix is based on the quality of the tracking and arrangement. These pro mixes just don’t seem to care, yet they still have that clarity, separation and sense of depth without sounding thin, and still have very loud up front elements simultaneously.

Really just an exercise in trying to develop some sort of depth range within a mix where there are relatively loud and quiet elements. To that end after Monkey_Man 's advice I added no compression at all anywhere on this track in an attempt to try and build dynamic range, obviously there's not much I can do about the obvious compression on the SD drum samples but at least on every synth, the bass and guitar there's none. The goal wasn't to remove loudness in any case but to handle it and try to deliver depth at the same time.

I tried a few things, not just reducing volume of the non-drum tracks to try and push them back but also using reverb on some guitar elements, eq on the bass to try and work as close to the limits of reducing bass frequencies and keeping it up in the mix enough to be present while keeping it fluffy and soft (SVT profile). Carving the crap out of lower mids on the guitar to kill mud and anything messing with the bass....

in the end I'm not sure any of these approaches worked. The trouble is I think it's too sterile and still doesn't sound like it's got any more depth than what I usually do.

Thanks deadman42 , kind words but I need to do some more research and figure out some other strategies. Maybe there are timing issues messing with sense of depth.