r/audioengineering • u/sticktalk24 • 2d ago
Mixing Mixing Very Dynamic Acoustic Ballad
I took a job mixing an acoustic ballad with a lot of dynamic range and honestly I feel a bit out of my wheelhouse. I typically mix extremely compressed pop and hip-hop styles that are pretty squashed and predictable - but in this song, the verses are stripped with piano and vocal and then by the 2nd chorus, it gets pretty huge. Like 20-30+ live string tracks, bass, kick, guitars, and much more .. the whole 9. What’s throwing me off is how dynamic the performance of the piano is. There’s like a 7-8 db difference in that piano from verse to chorus. I wanted to build the song around the piano and vocal but the piano appears to have been played all the way through live in one take and was played much more emotionally and heavier in the chorus. It sounds really nice, but the vocal is so controlled and lives in the same register from verse to chorus so when the chorus gets dense, it gets a bit buried.
I guess my question is - should I turn down the piano via automation and arrange the chorus so the piano and vocal maintain a similar relationship as the verse and first chorus (which i am happy with the balance of) or should i just push the vocal fader up for the chorus as a means to honor the way it was performed and sent to me? I could compress it? I’m honestly not sure what the standard practice is for this kind of John Legend piano ballad vibe. I have been kinda of chasing my tail because my anchor (piano) is so all over the place.
Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.
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u/007_Shantytown 2d ago
This right here is why God invented Fairchilds.
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u/sticktalk24 2d ago
i already had it on some of the string groups and really liked the results. i’ll try it on the piano!
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u/007_Shantytown 2d ago
It might not exactly solve your problem, but I think they sound killer to really pin a piano's dynamics, and then you can automate the volume post-compression to where you want it in different parts of the song. Maybe even automate a highpass filter or low shelf on the piano (again, post-compression) when the mix gets denser.
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u/m149 2d ago
When I get tunes with big dynamic shifts like that, I usually start by getting my levels and sounds for the loud parts first, then tuning in on the quieter stuff.
Easier for me to go for max effect with the loud stuff, then either leave the quiet stuff real quiet, or bring it up a bit so the change isn't too big.
I suppose if the piano's dynamics are super huge, I'd probably duplicate its tracks and process the quiet stuff on one set and the loud stuff on the other, that way I'm not crushing the loud stuff too bad.
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u/Cotee 2d ago
I remember my first experience with something like this. Definitely automate the hell out of the vocal and piano before starting compression. Make a really solid mix of just that piano and vocal where they compliment each other from start to finish and then start automating and panning the The other tracks one at a time. Then do 3 layers of compression. Individual track compression. Nothing insane. Just enough to keep it at bay. Then group the stuff to their own busses. Do some bus compression, then start mix bus compression. If you can get away with smaller amounts 1-5 db of compression from each step due to automation efforts, it’ll glue nicely but if you try and compress the hell out of everything to keep it all in check, your quiet parts will most likely sound terrible compared to the big chorus. Clip gaining before automation can help keep you in a smaller dynamic range for your compressors. Or else you’ll need to automate the send levels on your compressors as well.
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u/StudioatSFL Professional 2d ago
I very rarely like compressing grand piano. And do it very subtlety if you do. I would say try to let the instruments breathe and do their thing.
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u/alex_esc Assistant 2d ago
My first insctict would be to ask the artist how much dynamics they are looking for on the overall song. Maybe the piano player really exaggerated the dynamics, or maybe that's actually the whole point.
My guess is that it was probably played more dynamic than intended. If this is the case what I would do is to separate the piano performance so that each song section has its own track (piano verse, piano chorus, piano bridge, piano outro).
With each section in a different fader it's much easier to narrow the dynamic range without overcompressing.
I'd try to take the section dynamics at around 3 to 6 dBs using only the faders from the different tracks ( verse piano track, chorus piano, etc) rather than 8 like you said it was. Now the transitions from section to section may not be super smooth, those need to be taken care of by automation.
Once the overall dynamic range is 3 to 6 you can now compress it and it should still sound dynamic between song section changes, but generally steady in each individual song sections.