Yeah... Morning.

Janet,

This is a very nice piece. I'd still like to hear the piano bring out the melody a little bit more. The other instruments seem to dominate it. Maybe delay the sweetening until after the piano has established the melodic theme.

Nevertheless, very pretty and well played.

Janet,

wow....you've got the levels where they need to be....You've been working hard.
It sounds even better then before. As Kenny said bass down the center aisle so it doesn't make heads wobble in earphones

It's a lovely tune indeed.

As stated great playin and very cool song!

Very nice song and that mix sounds great too. Wife loved it.

Hmm Janet, that's very strange on the drums. You shouldn't have to clone 4 tracks. Would you mind telling me the steps you did to create them and turn them into audio? That's if you'd like to try and solve that problem of course....I wouldn't mind helping if I know the answer. :) It's not that they weren't loud enough, (though I know you must be struggling with level if you had to clone them like you said) it may be the sounds themselves just not being big enough or realistic enough to support your other instrumentation. This of course is just an opinion, so please don't be offended by anything I ever say. :)

If you are boucing your drums from midi to audio manually, maybe you're not getting enough output? I have this problem myself. I'll explain it to you and you can see if any of it applies to you, ok? I use Roland V Drums on a pad kit that I play. When the midi is all done and my mistakes are fixed, I then bring in BFD2 drums. When I have everything the way I want it, because I'm such a control freak, I literally bounce the drums down to audio. I can't use slow bounce or fast bounce because there is an issue with BFD to where it cuts off cymbals and it will cut off the last note of the midi track as well. So I have to send BFD to various outputs on my soundcard which play into a Mackie mixing console. As I check out my levels on the audio tracks that are being created when I just press play, I seem to be getting a hotter signal than what is truly being recorded. So if I go with what my Sonar meters are telling me, the drum tracks print to audio at about -15 to -20dB. So I have to ignore the Sonar meters only in this situation and pump everything up until the actual wave file looks right, there is no clipping and the wave file is no hotter than -4 to -6dB. If I relied on the meters in this case, (my meters work fine for everything else but this for some odd reason) my drum tracks would be very low.

Another thing you may want to keep in mind is to pull the rest of your instrumentation down. I like to send my recording signals into my soundcard at -6 to -4dB at all times. As I create tracks, this of course is going to make my master fader have to come down because of the track count making more over-all gain due to all the extra audio. So I try to turn all my track faders down to where they send to the master bus at about -2dB or so. I try to leave the master bus at 0 unless I have to slightly adjust it a few dB here and there, but for the most part, all my track faders are well into the negatives when I mix a song. So if you are at 0dB or higher on any of them, maybe try to decrease them all by about -5dB for starters and see how you master fader looks output wise. Keep the master as close to 0 as you can, and tailor your tracks to not go over -2dB on your master bus. I go for the -3 to -2dB output so I can have a little headroom to master. Some guys need more headroom than that, but I actually pre-master within my mixes so I usually don't have to master or tweak too much after my final export.

If anything I may have said here totally lost you, please feel free to ask me. I don't mind explaining a bit more in full. But try some of this stuff and see if it makes a difference at all. Let me know how you make out with it, ok? Good luck and again, great song! :)

OK, I was finally able to get back to this song. If you could care less what I did, you obviously don't have to read this or even listen to the song! But if you do, here's what I remember doing:

The drums were so low because I had them going to a bus, and the input & output volumes on the bus were low. Don't ask me why. I'm just glad I figured it out. What you hear now is just one track of drums. I also panned them a little bit. Probably not right, but a good guess.
Bass is in the middle now.
Piano is panned off to one side. Center stage was getting crowded.
I changed the sample of the violin to one from GPO. I think it sounds better than the ones from DimPro. Thanks to Cliff for mentioning that.

I mixed and uploaded it 5 times tonight, so I won't be surprised if it's not the last. But I'll totally understand if you've listened to it enough already!

Janet,

It is getting more and more polished like a diamond. Sounds lovely. My comments are about puny things like maybe strings could be more opposite piano (more right side). It really sounds smooth and lovely.

Man oh, man (woman, oh woman) this is really lovely!

check with others but i would push that synth pad up a teensie-weensie on the right side.

Love it.

OK, Darin, violin and flute switched places and the drums and bass are exactly in the middle. Thanks to you and Rick for listening again! I do appreciate it! (Rick, I think the synth pad is up a teensie-weensie bit too. Any more and it starts to sound muddy or something.)

Thanks, Reece. You might have to rephrase that in English for me, though. Or like you would talk to an 8 year old.

I follow you now. Thanks!

Hi Janet,
I haven't abused you today soooooo........violin sounds much better panned right BUT...(ouch)

flute is right on top of piano....what would it sound like if you panned the flute maybe 55% or 65% one side or the other? I'm saying this cuz it's getting lost, at least on my monitors it is.

everything else is spendid.

This has turned out quite well Janet! Sounds sweet! I know what it's like to get caught up in 'mixing Hell' as well. I think this sounds darn good. Just remember, you could spenad all year tweaking a mix and I guarantee that if you walk a way for a few days thencome back, you will always find something that doesn't sit quite right. The nature of the beast. Don't beat a dead horse here!! On to the next tune then...

Mamabear,

I must have missed this the last time I was here. Very pretty song and, while I didn't hear your other mixes, the current one sounds pretty good to me. I do have one small suggestion, so don't kill me: violin and flutes seem to play notes that are pretty high up there. In a few places, I felt that they went too high and it sounded a bit unnatural. Otherwise, this is the best mix I've heard of yours, so you are really getting the hang of it.

I read Danny's comment on the drums sounding small, maybe the drum bus could use some PerfectSpace?

Regards,
Dan