Transylvania (The Pacific Swell Acapella)

I got permission from The Pacific Swell to perform this Acapella version of their song, Transylvania! I hope you enjoy it!

https://soundcloud.com/james-d-herd/transylvania

The only thing vocally jarring about this was the like, "Ch ch ch" percussion sound that started right away and kept on going. It needed to be a bit more on tempo/fine tuned for me, but otherwise vocally I thought this was fine.

But...

Mixing wise this needed a lot of work: Every track was at the same level, and panned to the center, which in acapella makes it very hectic and very, very hard to listen to. I couldn't pay attention to the lyrics at all because everything was just bam in yo face there, so I'd suggest panning different "instrument" tracks differently? Lower them all to different volumes as well: Like the percussion section can be significantly lower than like, the harmony/melody section for example. Panning a few to the left and right, and only having one "instrument" in the center would work, as well. And yea like I said volume levels: Even if you are doing acapella, just because it's all your voice doesn't mean it should all be the same level.

Compression, reverb, EQ on every vocal track would have made it blend nicer as well....so yeah XD sorry if this sounds harsh, like I said I liked the vocals, but the mixing needed some work. Good job!

Well, I actually don't think any track was panned to the center. I think I remember panning each one to the left/right respectively by like, 25% each.

But thanks for the critique!

For acapella, it works best if you pan out each "instrument" a bit differently to kind of mimic how an actual instrumental would sound. Put your percussive elements in the center along with main vocals, and fan out the other "instruments" from there. You create a wider stereo image and things aren't competing for the same spot.

What Nayami said – she says it a lot better then I XD

25% for a pan isn’t…a lot. Think of it like this: out of 100%, it’s only moving 25% of the way left or right if you do that, so like…moving it slightly more to the left or right, say so that you can just slightly hear it in the right ear and hear it moreso in the left, or only hear it in the left side: that’s what you would want to go for. It also helps to pan like, one 25%, one track 50%, one not at all one 75%….so they all aren’t competing with each other even though you panned them.

Sorry if this is long: I wasn’t sure if you got what I meant so just wanted to explain more lol.