asking for feedback

[careymoore615]

hey, all. below is a link to a short cue i've been working on today. not for a particular taxi listing, just something i'm messing around with.

would love to know what you guys think of it, the good bad and ugly. mix, instrumentation, anything.

thanks in advance.

https://soundcloud.com/careymoore615/050918a

[careymoore615]

Hi Carey. The experts might give you much better feedback, however (without knowing the purpose of the piece) what came to my mind was that I would possibly pan the guitar and the strings symmetrically, rather than strings left, guitar right. But then, what do I know!? Other than that, it puts me in a mellow mood, which is good. Tom

thanks, tom. when you say pan "symetrically," what do you mean?

[careymoore615]

Now I know what you mean. Good advice. Thanks.

[andygabrys]

some good points above.

That (panning, relative panning, stereo vs. mono, making stereo out of mono, etc) is a huge topic and is pretty deep actually. If there weren't anything to it, everybody would have it figured out.

IMO - stereo vs mono is a choice.

The strings are likely "stereo" out of the plugin. But are they full range L to R? or are they relfectiving a certain "seating position" in the orchestra? If they are violins, they will already likely be "leaning left" as that is where the violins sit in the contemporary orchestra. The strings are playing melody though so would they do better in the center?

the Dobro - if its live is likely mono. Since you live in Nashville hopefully its live (ha ha). And since its a melody, dead center would be a fine place to put it.

the keyboard instruments / synth - since all it does is provide a carpet for the rest of the melody, maybe wide stereo would be a good way to have that? But how do you do that?

First off - most stereo instruments aren't actually "stereo". They are usually mono, panned one side, with a little detuning / chorus / delay on the other side. Since that is usually what happens, I use those ideas to make my own stereo, so I have control over the parameters and can make it really work for my mix vision.

One was is as written above - duplicate the track, pan the original hard left, and the copy hard right. Time shift the regions on the copy track back in time (towards the end of the piece) by at least 10 ms and choose where it sounds good by ear. You go at least 5ms and hopefully 10ms, because if its 5 ms of less then a comb filtering effect happens and you can give it a try to see what that sounds like. You can increase it to 50 ms or so before the L and R sides start sound discrete (one echoes the other) and as you increase the time shift it will make it seem like there is a bigger "hole in the middle" to put the Dobro melody. So someplace between 10ms and 50 ms is a good place to be.

You can also use a stereo delay plugin as an insert on the keys track. Set the L side at 0ms delay, and set the right side at 30 ms delay. Zero feedback / repeats on both sides. That will instantly do the same thing as the track copying detailed just above. You will notice if you delay the R side then the stereo image will give the impression of leaning left. Doing the reverse will make it lean slightly right.

I use this so much for doing electronic stuff that I have presets saved on my stereo delay plugin. If I have several layers of keys / synth playing the same thing I might use my Left preset on one track and the R preset on the next track. This keeps both tracks out of the stereo center, and it also slightly keeps them in a different position and a little more clear.

I can go on and on about this. Its amazing how many different ways there are to hear it.

Always....

About your piece - on my first listen I thought it was going to be more electronic in nature because of the synth. The dobro caught me by surprise and it was a nice contrast.

You lost me with the addition of the strings though. If you stayed with more synths, and dobro you would have a cool combination of electric and acoustic parts. Add some creative processing on the electric parts (like rhythmic sjidechaining a la EDM), add some cool melody sounds instead of the strings, and you would have an interesting and slightly quirky piece with a sort of melancholy up mood.

My 32,654 cents.

[careymoore615]

Cool suggestions, andy. Thanks.

[careymoore615]

went back to the drawing board this morning, based on you guys' extremely helpful feedback.

if you've got 1:38 of time, would love to hear your impressions of this version.

https://soundcloud.com/careymoore615/051018a

thanks in advance.

[andygabrys]

Closer IMO.

Few things I would check -

1) Low Bass - The piece is in D, and after the bass appears somewhere around 0:48, at two points you go to a G1 in the low bass. 1:05 and 1:29. That note is low enough at ~50 hz that unless you are running bigger drivers than 8" (or a sub) you won't catch much of it - you will only hear mostly the overtones, not the fundamental frequency. I have 8" woofers and I can hear the bass go away a little at that point. You hear it much more present on (studio) headphones, but not everybody will listen to this piece on headphones. The taxi screeners will, but a library owner may not if it were forwarded, and if it shows up on TV on small speakers you will lose the bass.

So for round low synth sounds (more sine wave like) adding some parallel overdrive on the bass track mixed low under the sound can create harmonics in the midrange that make your mind recreate the fundamental frequency. Its not enough to make it sound distorted like a rock guitar, but just perks it up. You can also use a plugin like Waves RBass or MaxxBass, UAD Enhancer HZ or any similar ideas. They are all doing variations of adding distortion to the sound.

2) Ending - its not a hard and fast rule but for library type sync music, ending on the Tonic is a really fine idea. That's got a lot to do with how this piece can practically be used under picture. This piece ends on the IV chord - on G. Add enough music to get it back to end on D. For a film, specially written for a certain picture, the unresolved ending could be perfect. But for a piece that might get signed to a library its more versatile if you end on the D chord (Tonic).

3) The arrpegiated part that fades in to 1:00. Not to wack out the sound, but the more interesting you make the sound the better, so its not just a preset. Could try subtle slow panning, varying the effects, automation of the filter on the actual synth etc.

[careymoore615]

those are great suggestions. i appreciate not just the insight, but also the time you took to make them.
thanks, man.

[andygabrys]

those are great suggestions. i appreciate not just the insight, but also the time you took to make them.
thanks, man.

no problem. just taking an ear break while working on something else.

[careymoore615]

working on something fun, i hope.