Wow! Just fantastic work, Dan! You absolutely nailed it with this one, such a rich composition. I'm speechless. And that never happens. The mix sounds absolutely wonderful, this is top notch work!

Hi Dan,
Sorry for posting again,
I've found the title of the album I mentionned :"Slingshot Professionals" and the tune is titled :"Jericho" the intro sounds a lot like yours.
I've listened your title more than once and there was some .." magical" in your first mix that I cannot describe,but trying to turn it in somewhat a technical way, the new mix lacks of low-end and too much instruments tell us what we have got to hear ( somewhere in the midrange I suppose,well I would say from the 5 hundred to the 2,5 kh maybe??) in the previous mix with its imperfection,we were free to build our own vision and maybe that's what caught me.
Anyway good job and carry on.
All the best.
Olivier.

Hello Good Sir, thank you for the opportunity to listen to this fine composition.
 
The first thing that struck me was the "airyness" of the piece.  There is a lot of space in there.  It sounded professionally mixed and mastered.  My mixes tend to be heavy and dense.  I still haven't figured out how to create the space like you have.
 
The next thing that struck me was the acoustic guitar.  I couldn't tell if it was a sample or played on a real six string.
 
Then the electric guitars and the keys blended in to the mix, as well as the drums.  Very good work.
 
Of course, I continued to listen to some of your other songs too, and they are all very well done.  I wish I could pull something like that off.
 
Keep up the good work.
 
Jesse Screed
 
 

Soundwise

dcumpianI tried telling a story with this one.

Yeah, spot on! Great track, sounds good, feels good, involves a listener into a imaginative journey.
I wonder if you used virtual instruments, and if you did, what particular VSTis are used in this track?

Thanks Alisa! Lots of VSTi's in this. Mostly Kontakt stuff, along with Omnisphere and EastWest QLSO. The drobo comes from EastWest Ra, I think. Drums are BFD3 Virtually Erskine brush kit. I substituted better sounding cymbals though. Harmonica is a huge layered stack of different harmonicas from JV-2080, Garritan and Kontakt. Couldn't find just one that fit the bill, so I created my own, then blended it with some chorus and reverb to mash it all together.
 
The bass is OrangeTree's upright. Love the sound from that one.
 
Acoustic guitar is Orangetree's Evolution Steel Strings.
 
There's a bunch of other stuff that I can't recall at the moment. No midi/audio loops were used except the shaker. Part of what makes a VST sound "real" is how much effort you put into the performance and articulation choices. It helps if you actually know how to play the instrument.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

emeraldsoul
Well, to be honest this is one of if not the best effort I've yet heard on the good old Cakewalk forum. I'm a sucker for the Spaghetti genre, but you made it a little Celtic which is just friggin brilliant, Dan. 
 
There wasn't a moment that I found lacking in any way. Such a great mix, and a complicated one, too! Thanks for sharing this!
 
-Tom

Wow, thanks Tom! I enjoyed creating this one. Would you believe it started as a Sonar 2 project with piano and didgeridoo? Every time I opened it I thought "what the heck am I going to do with this?".
 
Regards,
Dan
 

williamcopper
For my taste, at the effective texture change around 0:43, the hold over of the whistling stuff is wrong .. imo you should clear the atmosphere a bit.   At around 2:30 it got briefly boring (always imho ... )   and then around 3:00 you might get the regular guitar notes out of the way of the high melody .. the duplicates in a lower octave seemed to make the melody less effective.    As a piece of music, the ending from 3:30 on is probably fine, but it's hard to imagine it as effective in a film ... seems to be asking to be cut, or faded away. 

Thanks for taking a listen. I don't actually write for film. This is a fantasy piece in the style of kind of thing. Appreciate your thoughts.
 
Regards,
Dan

jamesg1213
Dan, that was superb. Wow. Been thinking lately I might embark on some more instrumentals, but hearing this makes me think I'll leave that to you. What a brilliant piece of writing, arranging and production. Highly professional and very enjoyable.

James, don't stop because of me, I've always liked your instrumentals.
 
Thanks for your kind comments and I'm glad you enjoyed the piece.
 
Regards,
Dan

kevinwal
Wow! Just fantastic work, Dan! You absolutely nailed it with this one, such a rich composition. I'm speechless. And that never happens. The mix sounds absolutely wonderful, this is top notch work!

Thank you Kevin! I truly appreciate it!
 
Regards,
Dan

 
 

Vilovilo
Hi Dan,

I've listened your title more than once and there was some .." magical" in your first mix that I cannot describe,but trying to turn it in somewhat a technical way, the new mix lacks of low-end and too much instruments tell us what we have got to hear ( somewhere in the midrange I suppose,well I would say from the 5 hundred to the 2,5 kh maybe??) in the previous mix with its imperfection,we were free to build our own vision and maybe that's what caught me.
Anyway good job and carry on.
All the best.
Olivier.

The only changes between the two mixes are:
 

• Lowered the acoustic guitar level during certain passages to allow other elements to come through better.
• Added a very minor EQ bump between 500khz and 1500khz to the bass track. No overall level change. I triple-checked that.
• Panned the drobo more to the left to better balance the acoustic.

 
That's it. No other changes were made.
 
I think Daryl was correct that the acoustic was overwhelming in spots. Not so much that you couldn't enjoy it, but I think everything is better balanced now. It is interesting how little it takes to change the feel of a track.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

 
 

Jesse Screed
Hello Good Sir, thank you for the opportunity to listen to this fine composition.
 
The first thing that struck me was the "airyness" of the piece.  There is a lot of space in there.  It sounded professionally mixed and mastered.  My mixes tend to be heavy and dense.  I still haven't figured out how to create the space like you have.
 
The next thing that struck me was the acoustic guitar.  I couldn't tell if it was a sample or played on a real six string.
 
Then the electric guitars and the keys blended in to the mix, as well as the drums.  Very good work.
 
Of course, I continued to listen to some of your other songs too, and they are all very well done.  I wish I could pull something like that off.
 
Keep up the good work.
 
Jesse Screed
 
 

Thank you! All I can say is practice, practice, practice. The more mixes you do, the more you will learn about the process. It took me years to finally understand some basic stuff. Then more years to get better at actually implementing what I learned.
 
"Heavy and dense" mixes can be from many things like:

• Too many instruments reinforcing certain frequencies
• Too much low end "mud"
• Too much compression

I would recommend that you learn proper EQ techniques first (cut, not boost, HPF instruments where the low end isn't adding anything to the track, ensuring that tracks don't step on each other by carving out space using EQ, and so on). After you are comfortable with that, then learn about compression and how it affects different tracks.
 
There is a really good book that helped me called "Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio" by Mike Senior. You'll learn a lot reading that.
 
Regards,
Dan