COCPORN

I noticed a lot of distortion on the vocals when starting to master the song, especially on any speakers which are not my monitors. This obviously pissed me off a little, monitoring conditions are not all that good. So I went on the #reaper channel to hang out and discuss all my miseries, and I got help from one of the regulars there, who volunteered to do a mastering job on the track. He thought the problems with the vocals was the microphone, with a 95 % certainty. So I obviously sprung for a new microphone, and decided I could afford the Sontronics STC-2, priced at a modest 1995,- NOK (approximately USD 330). Turns out the shop I was ordering from was sold out, and offered me a Sontronics Orpheus for the same price! The regular price for the Orpheus is a whopping 4795,- (USD 800), so I naturally said YES.

So I'm now the proud owner of this extremely sexy thing:

Everyone knows looks can be deceiving, what does it sound like? I'm not the world's best vocalist, but this is the Orpheus connected to the M-Audio FastTrack Ultra 8R (dry):

...and with some compressing and a modest (?) reverb, courtesy of Ubhik-A...:

...and totaly dry and soloed...

I'm pretty sure I can no longer blame it on the mic. Backing pad is Camel Audio Alchemy. I'm hoping to get started on retracking Hello Girls this weekend.

Oh, and yes! The song is "Empty Space", a love song for a dumb chick. Here are the current lyrics:

Empty Space

There's a place
Between the back of your head and your face
Empty space
Fascinating

Without grace
You seem to not even try these days
Empty gaze
Just a plaything

And you, you
Still you're what I'm drawn to
You, you
I just don't know what to do

A fast pace
Participating in this race
Second place
Contemplating

BTW, I'm not sure what the humming sound is, but I'm pretty sure the mic is picking up the fans on my DAW cabinet.

Another master. The distortion on the vocals have been drastically reduced, the main stab bass is run through a Line 6 amp modeller.

Can you see the difference?

Har-Bal rocks. I had some trouble with WinLame; it didn't want to encode some of the wav-files I created, but taking the song into Har-Bal and just clicking "IntuitQ" cleaned up a lot in the whole audio space. Put it through an Ozone preset, and here you have the 1 % mastered version:

I think this is going to turn out OK.

I'm about ready to start mastering Hello Girls 2010. Not that I've 100 % decided that the mix is finished; I'll give myself the chance to go back and change stuff if I'm not happy with it. But it's time to setup a general mastering strategy. The most recent audio examples have had the Propellerhead Record master compressor enabled, I think it gives the track a sweet shine, but I'm not sure if it's loud enough, and I'd also like to check it for problem areas. So I've decided to test two master approaches; one with the master compressor enabled and one with it disabled.

The next steps will be to run the track through Har-Bal and iZotope Ozone. The Har-Bal-guys have posted a sweet mastering tutorial here. I guess this means that I'll not be using the Abbey Road online mastering service for this release.

I did the work on the vocal timing again. It seemed easier this time. Not sure the result is as good as the previous one, but I guess we'll never know.

I did 3 hours of work in Record last night, specifically on cleaning up vocal timing. The result was a lot better than the previous version, and I was quite happy with it. I did, however, forget to save, and with night came Windows Update and its automatic installation of updates, so all the work is gone. This means that I really have no chance of finishing the project on time, and it feels like a silly idea to rush something this close to satisfactory completion, so I've decided to give myself one week extension. The new deadline is Sunday 21st of February.

Current TODOs are:

• Roll in at "climax"
• Level and pan-riding
• Clean up timing errors
• Mastering, specifically loudness maximizing and EQ (master compression and reverb are already "handled" in record)

Pulled up the bass a little, have the JP a little more attention, dialed down the vocals slightly. Added ducking to the remaning pads.

I've addressed some of the issues from the last mix:

Most notably:

• There is a delay on the main vocals that was there in the original. Not very forgiving on the timing errors
• The synths have been individually restrained with compressors and vocal level riding, giving some headroom to pump it up
• Added a snare-loop in the fill-break during the chorus
• A shimmering noise on one of the pads was removed

So I've spent some time with it, and as I've decided that "finished is always better than perfect", here's a 90% mixdown of Hello Girls 2010.

Comments are welcome, especially the kind that goes "Yeah, you need to fix A by doing B, m'key?"

Stuff that I've noticed myself is:

• Sloppy timing on the vocals, should be fairly simple to fix in Record
• Perhaps a tad heavy on the ducking
• Climax is anticlimatic
• Previous point perhaps because of too heavy master channel compression
  • After the first listen-through on the MacBook-speakers, I can say that there's definitely too heavy handed master compression, you can hear the bass stabline totally drowning when other elements are introduced. Fixing is added to the TODO-list.

Have a listen if you have the time and give me some pointers.