Is there enough bass ? A new episode of my series "Inspire Galaxy"

Hello everyone !

I hope you're doing well.
Here is my last piece of music : "Inspire Galaxy Part. V: Singing"

I integrated voice, and it had been a long time since I had put my voice in one of my tracks; these are monastic style voices (Tibetan or Gregorian...); it's quite discreet, but listen carefully and you'll hear me! I used the TC Helicon Voicelive Touch2, which is a pretty amazing vocal multi-effect.

I bought a Sequential Take5 last fall, it's a very good quality analog synthesizer that produces wonderful bass. I'm thinking of you, Arjan, who advised me to work on my bass, I tried to make them deeper and more present. You tell me what you think.

For once, I didn't use a compressor at all on this track during the mastering.
I really wanted the dynamics to breathe!

I had quite a bit of difficulty when recording, because the high frequencies of the Hydrasynth sometimes made it complicated. Finally, the mixing allowed me to correct a lot of things. I still have a lot to learn, but that's what's interesting.

As always, the track was fully recorded, mixed and normalized on the Tascam DP32sd.

I wish you a very good listening.

Christophe

Youtube

Soundcloud :
https://soundcloud.com/user-578840561/inspire-galaxy-part-v-singing

Well!
I'm utterly unqualified to make a critique of the specifics - mixing, yada - I'll leave that to the ones here who actually know what they're doing. I spend the first 10 minutes of every studio session figuring out which way the pointy end of the guitar goes.
BUT: I thought this was a beautiful piece, full of lovely sounds and textures and movement. Very atmospheric. The voice really added to it.
FWIW: I have a TCH VoiceLive myself. It's an awesome piece o' gear.
Anyway - thanks for sharing!!! Looking forward to commentary/critique by the ones who actually know something about producing music...

Another well done artistic and audio production; and a welcome addition to the series, Christophe.

I listened on my reference system using only audiophile quality headphones (Audeze Sine planer magnetic & Sennheiser HD 660). I also played the piece several times with breaks in between to rest my ears before commenting on the audio aspect of the production.

Overall, I think the mix/master is well balanced, with a nice wide sound stage and excellent imaging.

The question of "bass, and how much" in works like yours, IMO, is an artistic expression/decision more than anything else. At no time did I find the bass out of sync or balance. In the swells I heard it as full, deep, and clear; somewhat dominant, but not unpleasantly so.

IMO, your decision not to compress the master was a good choice. I'm not sure I would have normalized the master, though. IMO, for a number of reasons having to do mostly with playback amplifier performance in an audio system and translation across systems and formats, mastering louder isn't always better for audio productions having a wide dynamic range. Often a quieter mix will translate better. The listener can always use the amplifier's volume control to raise the audio. But that's a different conversation for a different time and place.

So as I started out saying, another work well done.

Many thanks to you Shredd and Mark,

Shredd, I'm glad you think the vocals added something to the track, because it was hard to pull off, and I wanted it to be really clean... I really don't have a great voice, and the technology really helped! I'm glad you liked the sounds and the movements... thank you very much for these compliments, which encourage me in my musical creativity.

Mark, I am touched by the care you bring to my music and that you really take the time to listen to it on such high quality equipment; it's true that the bass is a question of musical orientation, and in this piece I really wanted it... I'm happy that you found the bass balanced and sufficiently present.
I am reassured by your opinion on the compression. We are invaded by over-compressed music, so it is important that the music can sometimes breathe a little.
Regarding normalization, your opinion is very interesting. I will study this subject for the next piece. The world is always putting pressure on having to produce "powerful" (thus compressed) music to be professional, and your opinion corrects that pressure. This confirms the direction I am taking.
Thank you very much for all the good advice and compliments.

I wish you both great success in your projects !

I love this very inspiring peace of art. What to say about the sound ! Well it mostly depends on what gear of equipment we listen to with. I have a monitor Tanglewood 60 Watts, a Marantz amp. 45 Watts RMS with 4 speakers (2 JVC + 2 Kenwood) and a (cheap) computer speaker system Logitech surround with sub woofer. I listened to your peace of art only on my (cheap speakers) and the sound is GREAT. ( It's too early in the morning for me to turn on the other amps.) But I will turn all that on this afternoon to use has an inspiration for my painting. Thanks for your sharing and I also learned a bit more about mixing / mastering / normalizing ... by reading all the comments, so thank you all for your comments.

Thank you very much Remi for your compliments ! I'm also a painter (even if I've not painted for 3 years) so it's great for me to read that you're going to listen to my music to be inspired ! It's for this kind of thing that I create music.