Reply To: 'Valerie' Collaboration Ajay, Tony and John.

[Tony LoignonParticipant]

Ajay,

Here's an initial first cut:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yuwxkwn2joa1sst/Kaetlyn%20Kashmir%20-%20Valerie%20%28Cover%29%20-%20Final%20Mix%20v1.mp3?dl=0

Notes:
- I did not use the H3000, or other FX from the original.
- Added my own FX, some of which are the same as Warren's, but I used my settings.
- Added whisper on vocals.
- Re-aligned some of the tracks and had a few polarity flips in the mix.
- For the kick, I added a side-chain gated tone generator at 60hz that is sitting just below to give it a little more punch.
- Regarding your ozone wash, I assumed you wanted an ocean wave sound fx. I added RBass and LoAir on the track to get low end (and rumble) and a side-chain of delays and reverb to it along with EQ to get a slight realism improvement. It gives a freq sweep similar to that of a real wave now.
- Played with your initial panning on the guitars to bring the rhythm guitar closer to the center (40% pan) and moved the other guitar at 30% with a delay effect on opposite side at 30% sitting below the mix.
- Added a side-chain flanger effect on the congas. Gives them a nice little ring and makes them pop!

Regarding mix dynamics:
- I have an 1176 on 20 to catch only the occasional spikes
- SSL bus comp and a Puigchild in series to tame some of the spikes and glue the mix
- An L3LL-multiband limiter to keep it from peaking on export.
- The track is exported at -12 LUFS for your hearing pleasure.
- Overall mix dynamic range is 9db.

If you can split the conga stem, it would be great. I'd like to lower the level of the tambourine by a couple of db and remove the kick in it. I tried removing it with X-Noise, but was unsuccessful. If you can't I'll have to chop up the track to manually remove it.

Once this is to your liking, I'll post the final mix at -18 LUFS for John in .wav 48k/24.

Comments?

Tony