New (old) Honey Hunters - Forgetting (snare drum shenanigans)

[Armistice]

At one stage I did think of remixing the first Honey Hunters album, given how my mixing has matured in recent years, but... perhaps too soon.

I needed a track to practice getting a better snare sound on, and it's best if it's one I haven't heard for a while, so I picked Forgetting from What Would We Have Done With Eternity Anyway? and have been noodling around with it over the last day or so.

Problem was, whilst I was dealing with the snare, all sorts of other things annoyed me and so I thought I'd better fix them too whilst the hood was up.

To wit:

• Minor drum reprogramming - specifically putting a more even volume driven rhythm on the kick, redoing a couple of snare fills and turning down a cymbal or two

• Changes to the snare sample (obviously) but minor changes to other drums in the VSTi - kick in particular - same samples but different implementation parameters - and lots of changes at the mix level to EQ, compression etc.

• New reverb bus for drums - was using small amounts of a very big room before... now using an impulse for a "snare room"

• Re-EQing the bass

• Re-editing (via volume envelopes) the lead and backing vocals to reduce sibilance and fricatives, reducing reverb a touch

• Removing the autotune setting on ReaTune on the BVs - I had no idea I've ever used it but I did, apparently, and it sucks

• Different mastering limiter

The one thing I didn't change was the guitars - I sort of can't. I was using my Strymon Big Sky pedal on the big reverby guitars and it's all printed, so nothing I could do with any of that, so I just left it alone.

Anyway, it sounds different - question is whether it sounds better - the snare in particular - or have I just wasted a day? It is raining relentlessly, so I have to do something.

I'll put the original up and then the remix so you can compare if you like. Long-ish song... sorry, it just happened to be what I fished out. Didn't realised it at the time.


Original version - October 2018

Forgetting.mp3

New version

Forgetting 2024 remix.mp3

Incidentally, one of the main "tricks" I used with the snare was courtesy of Kenny G and his vid on splitting transients using Reaper's inbuilt Transient Controller - so you essentially get the snare split over two tracks and can control the attack and sustain parts of it separately. Very interesting...

[CeeBee]

I prefer the old version. The snare is pretty up front, which gives the track a lot more dynamics. A nice overall sounding mix to my ears. The new one sounds a bit overproduced and slightly flat in comparison. YEMV (Your Ears May Vary).

[Armistice]

I prefer the old version. The snare is pretty up front, which gives the track a lot more dynamics. A nice overall sounding mix to my ears. The new one sounds a bit overproduced and slightly flat in comparison. YEMV (Your Ears May Vary).

Thanks for listening.

When I started the process I was thinking "I really don't like this song much any more..." but by the time I'd finished tidying it up I did. Weird...

Part of it had to do with accidentally bumping the tempo off 1.0 somehow and hearing the tuned backing vocals still tuning onto the proper key whilst the rest of the song had detuned just a little... took me quite a while to work out the answer to how I missed the fact that it sounded so crap before I committed it to an album. Oh look... the tempo has shifted...

I'm not sure myself yet. I don't particularly like the snare in the original, or indeed most anywhere on the entire album because I hadn't yet worked out how to integrate various parameters of the VST with any great skill - no-one tells you how to do this!

Anyway, listening just now I decided to turn it up in the mix ever so slightly, and I hardened up the kick a little too, having made it, in today's estimation, a little soft. For the sake of the exercise I just uploaded the new version over the old file, rather than have multiple new versions.

Cheers

[WhiskeyJack]

Big fan of the new mix in a bunch of different ways. That kit and how you have it mixed and set sounds like it is really breathing and not clamped down and in your face as the other. Quite like that alot dude!!!

As for the snare itself it is a whole lot less attack and fair bit more snare drum with some tail onto it. It's working and a fair bit more believable than the original version.

Your vocals are even a bit more so prominent in this new mix too and not in an overbearing way. it doesn't dominate it just there doing it's thing i like about your vocal mixes. And all the parts and pieces are still there clear and present, nothing is fighting each other.

Really good rehash Armi!

[Armistice]

Big fan of the new mix in a bunch of different ways. That kit and how you have it mixed and set sounds like it is really breathing and not clamped down and in your face as the other. Quite like that alot dude!!!

As for the snare itself it is a whole lot less attack and fair bit more snare drum with some tail onto it. It's working and a fair bit more believable than the original version.

Your vocals are even a bit more so prominent in this new mix too and not in an overbearing way. it doesn't dominate it just there doing it's thing i like about your vocal mixes. And all the parts and pieces are still there clear and present, nothing is fighting each other.

Really good rehash Armi!

Oh good. I like it more for all the reasons you mentioned. Nice to know I'm not wasting my time. I'm up to song 5 in the project - Choose Your Weapons - the point at which I decided I'd just never get a snare sound I'd like from Addictive Drums and bought Steven Slate 4 - so I have all the drums bar the snare courtesy of Addictive and the snare from SSD4. Effing nightmare to remix. 13 synth / keyboard MIDI tracks, two drum VSTIs. A huge part of me wants to convert the entire drum track to SSD4 but that would fundamentally change the sound of the song, so I won't. Several years on, I now understand the actual effects of all the Addictive parameters I was more or less fiddling randomly with, so that's a positive, anyway.

I'm spending a lot of time levelling vocals out in the remixes... so they sit much better in the song. I have some weird volume envelope shit I don't even understand going on in all of them so far - it's like the line bends after the dots I've clicked in - no idea how I do that but it's very inaccurate, so typically I'm just deleting that and starting again and using Reaper razor edits on pre and post envelopes - pre to control the esses and fricatives, post to work with the overall volume. Wish I'd worked that out sooner.

That and losing the large room ReaVerb I had on everything and using different instances of Ambience VSTi for different instruments and they just generally sound more "together" (man!).

Onwards.

Cheers.

[WhiskeyJack]

Big fan of the new mix in a bunch of different ways. That kit and how you have it mixed and set sounds like it is really breathing and not clamped down and in your face as the other. Quite like that alot dude!!!

As for the snare itself it is a whole lot less attack and fair bit more snare drum with some tail onto it. It's working and a fair bit more believable than the original version.

Your vocals are even a bit more so prominent in this new mix too and not in an overbearing way. it doesn't dominate it just there doing it's thing i like about your vocal mixes. And all the parts and pieces are still there clear and present, nothing is fighting each other.

Really good rehash Armi!

Oh good. I like it more for all the reasons you mentioned. Nice to know I'm not wasting my time. I'm up to song 5 in the project - Choose Your Weapons - the point at which I decided I'd just never get a snare sound I'd like from Addictive Drums and bought Steven Slate 4 - so I have all the drums bar the snare courtesy of Addictive and the snare from SSD4. Effing nightmare to remix. 13 synth / keyboard MIDI tracks, two drum VSTIs. A huge part of me wants to convert the entire drum track to SSD4 but that would fundamentally change the sound of the song, so I won't. Several years on, I now understand the actual effects of all the Addictive parameters I was more or less fiddling randomly with, so that's a positive, anyway.

I'm spending a lot of time levelling vocals out in the remixes... so they sit much better in the song. I have some weird volume envelope shit I don't even understand going on in all of them so far - it's like the line bends after the dots I've clicked in - no idea how I do that but it's very inaccurate, so typically I'm just deleting that and starting again and using Reaper razor edits on pre and post envelopes - pre to control the esses and fricatives, post to work with the overall volume. Wish I'd worked that out sooner.

That and losing the large room ReaVerb I had on everything and using different instances of Ambience VSTi for different instruments and they just generally sound more "together" (man!).

Onwards.

Cheers.

Reaper razor edits?! Are you upgraded to thr latest and greatest. I don't know what this is?!

[Armistice]

Oh good. I like it more for all the reasons you mentioned. Nice to know I'm not wasting my time. I'm up to song 5 in the project - Choose Your Weapons - the point at which I decided I'd just never get a snare sound I'd like from Addictive Drums and bought Steven Slate 4 - so I have all the drums bar the snare courtesy of Addictive and the snare from SSD4. Effing nightmare to remix. 13 synth / keyboard MIDI tracks, two drum VSTIs. A huge part of me wants to convert the entire drum track to SSD4 but that would fundamentally change the sound of the song, so I won't. Several years on, I now understand the actual effects of all the Addictive parameters I was more or less fiddling randomly with, so that's a positive, anyway.

I'm spending a lot of time levelling vocals out in the remixes... so they sit much better in the song. I have some weird volume envelope shit I don't even understand going on in all of them so far - it's like the line bends after the dots I've clicked in - no idea how I do that but it's very inaccurate, so typically I'm just deleting that and starting again and using Reaper razor edits on pre and post envelopes - pre to control the esses and fricatives, post to work with the overall volume. Wish I'd worked that out sooner.

That and losing the large room ReaVerb I had on everything and using different instances of Ambience VSTi for different instruments and they just generally sound more "together" (man!).

Onwards.

Cheers.

Reaper razor edits?! Are you upgraded to thr latest and greatest. I don't know what this is?!

It's a version 6 thing, not version 7.

Insert a new envelope on a track. Hold down ALT and drag your mouse across it to select a section. Drag down the volume of the entire section. Great for de-essing and volume control on vocals. Simple as.

[WhiskeyJack]

Reaper razor edits?! Are you upgraded to thr latest and greatest. I don't know what this is?!

It's a version 6 thing, not version 7.

Insert a new envelope on a track. Hold down ALT and drag your mouse across it to select a section. Drag down the volume of the entire section. Great for de-essing and volume control on vocals. Simple as.

That looks fkn slick!!!!

Thanks for that little tid bit Armi!

[musicturtle]

I like the second version much more Armi, if for nothing else than the drums. They are so much better in so many ways to my ears.

And yes, the BG vox are much better without the autotune.

Good work.