Looking for a more vintage feel to sound..

[333maxwell]

Any thoughts?This is a little war era type piece.. my little soprano Uke, all hefty 9 ounces of it.. I think the tone of the uke is ok, and I can bring the vocals down a bit maybe eq them a bit less boomy???? .. but without adding gimmicks like clicks and pops from scratchy vinyl, does anyone have any ideas as to how to make this one sound a bit more 'vintage'.. I don't mean the overall mix.. I know it needs some tweaking from where it is now.. but any thoughts on how to give it a kind of distant dreamy tonality to it?War is Hellhttp://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo. ... 74571Peace.

[ideascapes]

Chas,Is that you playing the uke on the toilet? Yeah, I'd probably try some EQ on the vocal--start with high pass filter, maybe a cut in the low mid. Vintage? Try tape saturation, but that might be counter to dreamy. For that, you might have to mic things further away or add more reverb.Think about having the uke surround the vocal--pan the voice dead center, put a delay and/or stereo widener on the uke so that it goes hard left and right, with only a little in the center.Vince

[k o star]

333maxwell,IMHO I feel that U can still eq out a little low mid of the uke too... just a little...-Kel

[teleblaster]

Props to my fellow ukulele player! Nice little piece. I think the song and performance capture the vibe your looking for, but your dead on in wanting to work a bit on the recording itself. IMO, the reverb on the uke kills the vintage vibe. Experiment with mic placement and space in lieu of digital reverb. Or, consider recording bone dry and using some impulse response plug. I have a copy of Sony's Acoustic Mirror and in the right situation it does amazing stuff.In general I think you need to scope the frequencies really carefully on each instrument (voice and uke). Vintage recordings didn't have access to the full 20-20khz that we do today.You might want to download this plug by Voxengo and give it a try: http://www.voxengo.com/product/voxformer/ It has a killer vintage mic preset that might be a good start The demo is free, but adds noise every 30sec. Voxengo also has a free plug called Boogex, that loads impulse response files. You can google search for vintage mic/preamp files for it.Best of luck and post up more ukulele tunes! Check out my latest post on this board to hear a couple of my uke tracks and let me know what you think.HTSH,Erich

[333maxwell]

Man o man.. thanks you 3.. what great and spot on advice.. I am mixing as I type and was excited to get in here before finishing it up (as I still want to play with it more).. but between a bit of EQ, limiting the frequency range just a bit, working the stereo a bit differently etc etc.. It really is getting it much closer to what I was hearing in my head.. Thanks so much.. this place, and you folks rock~!

[billg]

I wouldn't use any reverb . . . play in your bathroom (judging from the pic it looks like you have experience doing that!) Ferox is a free saturation plug that also has some old tape presets you could mess around with. A lot of those older recording were heavier around 2k and not a lot on the top and bottom as well. Good luck!

[lindpop]

What a nice little piece of music. I wouldn't use any reverb either. i don't know the history, a wild guess is around the 50 's for the first plate reverb. No stereo.

[333maxwell]

Thanks again for the invaluable advice everyone.. I am getting closer to what I heard in my head as a result of your taking the time and sharing your thoughts.. I REALLY appreciate it.