I think you could actually go both ways with this one.
Thanks so much for your intelligent and thoughtful comments, foxwolfen. I guess we're not only old, we're lazy, too. But we're still mostly hoping to find the original ADAT and, failing that, were hoping to make do with the stereo track you heard. And that may wind up being what we do at some point. With CW you have the tools at your disposal to redo the song (even by yourself) and you also have this community to fill in missing pieces if you need them.ĭefinitely. For our own pleasure, the small timing issues don't bother me. If it were for release, I'd say we have to fix it immediately. Overall, though, I'm not worried about that. The drummer gets a tiny bit off bean in a couple of spots that make the timing sound "stretchy". There are, indeed, some squirrelly timing areas in the song.
I am not sure the source of this, but if its a tape, it might be no longer even. to fix a lot of timing problems that I am not sure would be worth fixing on this mix. There isn't much interest in this band for bringing the song up to current production/sound standards.Ģ. We record pretty much for our own enjoyment, and we're a bunch of pretty retro (meaning *old*) guys. But we're not trying to sell this song, it's a labor of love for us. He can sing his ass off on this song-way better than the guide vocal you are hearing. Luckily, if we do re-record the whole thing ultimately, the vox will be easy to re-do as the singer is my writing painter and we do stuff together all the time. The keys, guitars, vox were to be added later. We really only wanted to get a solid bass/drum groove out of this session, which we did, I think. Of course, the vox in this track is simply a guide track and has some pitch issues. If I were your bands producer, I would probably have you record most of it again, and keep the vox. In this case, I think I'd rather keep the live feel of the stereo track, even though it has lots of issues, than try to do a track of nothing but overdubs, especially with the drums. We could, of course, try to do a recording via mailing tracks back and forth but this band has always worked by playing together live in the studio. Mainly because it's going to be impossible to get the band together at the same time in the same space. That being said, why is re-recording it out of the question? I'm wondering if multi-band compression (about which I know absolutely nothing) might be used to adjust certain areas of the mix that need to be quieter in spots, etc. Like how can I get the ride cymbals to be less loud in the places where they are too dominant? Stuff like that. But, as I said in another post, I'd like to try to clean up some of the issues with the stereo track as best as possible. The fact is, we may decide to just add the sax solo on the outro and call it good. I would just clean up the mud a bit and call it done. Sounds like you have the song pretty much done. Meanwhile, we'll continue to try to get our hands on the multi-track master. Plus, there's no way to fix mistakes and pitch issues that exist in the track.ĭo you think we can make the track sound OK through judicious use of compression and EQ to make the instruments blend more as if they had been mixed? Is it even worth trying such a thing for this song? Anybody who has any brilliant ideas, please let us hear them. But fixing the existing mix (or lack thereof) may prove to be very difficult, indeed. There's a big sax solo that starts at the end where the song changes keys and that should be easy to add to this track. We like the song and want to finish it (re-recording is pretty much out of the question) so we're thinking that we might be able to finish the song using this raw stereo track and adding the rest of the parts to it. This stereo reference mix was made immediately after the session so that we could have something to listen to to make some decisions about other parts and is not mixed or eq'd or anything else. The problem is, now that we're ready to go back and re-do the guitar, keys and vocals, we're having a problem coming up with the original multi-track ADAT. The guitar, keys and vocal on this track are all scratch tracks. Here's a strange situation: We recorded these basic tracks live in the studio intending to go back and replace everything except the drums and bass after we got a good bass/drums groove on tape.