Stephen Schwartz - Meadowlark (The Baker's Wife)

[gernot]

Here's a recording I did for a friend.

All VSL/MIR exept the piano (Best Service Galaxy Vintage) and the Guitar (Ilia Efimov Acoustic Steel)

forgive my (lack of) mixing skills ;). suggestions always welcome. 

Cheers
Gernot 

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hi Gernot

I like the mix - specially the closeness of the singer. This is very modern. (listen to Celtic Women and others...)

It gives a nice additional depth to the orchestra and the piano.

BTW, The Galaxy Vintage is my favourite Piano as well.

Bravo! Very nice done and very pleasant music in the meantime!!!

About Suggestions/Improvements

I miss a bit the warmth in Magdalenas recorded voice.

Also, her voice has some frequencies - probably between 2kHz and 8 kHz which could be a bit surpressed with an EQ.

If you understand the German language: Ihre Stimme "scherbelt" /klingelt ein wenig. Could be that the "Klingeln" and the missing warmth are connected togehter.

Further: I would master the Playback before mixing it with Magdalenas voice. It seems to have a bit a musical "Schleier" or in other words:

It should be a bit less coloured in my mind. So far my personal impressions about  "suggestions/possible improvements".

But, I want to mention:  We talk about possible improvments on a very high level.

If you want some help for solving these matters, please contact me.

All the best

Beat

[gernot]

Thanks Beat!
I definitly had a hard time finding the right balance bezween voice and playback. especially since the playback has such a high dynamic range (more like a classical piece), but the whole mix should be more modern (compressed) with the voice staying at a more or less equal level.

Being afraid of  not presentig the voice enough I guess i overdid it a bit ;).. I'll definitly look into the warmth thing..

the problem i had always came up in the end, when the full orchester gives it its all.. if i take yout certain frequencies (around 4 KHz) her voice loses the battle against the playback.. but probably i should look into changing the playback rather then the voice.

Not quite sure what you mean with "the playback should be less coloured" though.

by the way - my musical roots are more in electronic music and sound design.. so while i do a lot of orchestral stuff, i don't really "know" what I'm doing ;) At least i never learnd/studied it. So my terminology when it comes to orchestration/composition isn't the best..

Thanks a lot for your feedback - it's very much appreciated!
(And yes - I speack German ;) ) 

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hello again

@Another User said:

Not quite sure what you mean with "the playback should be less coloured" though.

Pieces out of a convolution reverb often come with their sound-colours depending on the room IR. In other words: Often the orchestras sound correct in their depths but they don't sound as neutral as they could. Altiverb had(has) some very bad "coloured" IRs. Even if MIR comes with excellent roomprints the music needs some final treatments (called mastering).

I believe that the neutrality of the orchestra is important in case of having the function of an accompinment for Magdalena.

In case of still not knowing what i mean: If you have the possibility to send me just the Orchestra-Track (upload in a cloud or so...) I will do it for you.

Once more, we talk about improvements on a very high level.

Best

Beat