now my interest is piqued - that's one of the albums i grew up with, and i haven't heard some of those tracks since i was a teenager 30 years ago. fascinates me when i go back to a record i lived with as a kid and the mixes have NOTHING to do with how i remember them. i pretty much destroyed my memory of how Bowie and Eno's "Heroes" sounds by listening to that recently. my memory is DB's voice loud and clear, right on top of the mix. how wrong i was, they're pretty "ambient". so obviously my sonic memory is the sum of maybe 80 hearings in a row (i would do that), and then never returning to the thing.timh wrote:has no one mentioned Harvest yet?! the first time i heard that album i was just confused the whole time. i mean...when you can hear Neil step up to the mic mid-way through the second word of "Are You Ready For the Country?" what was that? and everything's all weirdly hard-panned and what not. i mean...a lot of that stuff adds character and ive grown to LOVE it, but it was a little weird at first.
that epiphany has changed the way i mix vocals. if the song is a good one, we'll listen again and again until we've constructed the whole tune in our heads, we're able to sing along at that point, after repeated listening. i think a well-written and performed tune will drive people to listen again until they've "filled in the blanks"
(Also important to note is that "Heroes" has the lyrics printed on the album).
how does one mix a song to draw people in like that? or is it solely the responsibility of the song/performance? i think the existence of printed lyrics on the product had a hand in how low you could get away with mixing the vocal.
