Near Wild Heaven
Out of Time | 1991
Listen Original Listen Final Mix

Wild Heaven Mix

Mixing this one was so odd - to balance so many vocals is tricky. There are too many options and no matter what I do, a week isn’t enough time to integrate every part. So I got things good enough on this one and put out the final cut for this one. I can still hear all the seprate takes a little too much, but I can still listen to my own vocals here without getting physically sick, so I’ll call it a win.

During that last repeated chorus, Michael was having a blast with that top “Ba ba ba ba” part. YOu can hear him practically laughing at the tail end of some of those. He sticks way out once you realize its him goofing off on this.

Final Tracks (19)

Vocals (15 tracks)

  • Main Composite Lead + double
  • Backing Vocal + double
  • 2 Softer harmonies
  • High ““Oooooo” tracks + double
  • “Living Inside” track + double
  • 2 Tracks for low bridge part, reused for echoed “Near Wild Heaven” on some choruses
  • 3 Tracks for “Ba Ba Ba Ba” Harmonies

Instruments (12 tracks)

  • Piano (midi)
  • Drum Intro (midi)
  • Drums (Robot Drummer Track, Partially Programmed)
  • Bass
  • 8 Jangle guitar tracks, composited together to create part

Faithful Cover?

Yeah, I had no intentions of straying too far for this one and stuck my focus on recreating the guitar and vocal parts faithfully.

Learnings

  • That robot drummer is great to have for my situation. I can pick a “player” that maps to a style on a specific midi kit. You then lay out the arrangement track with Chorus, Verse, Brige, etc… For each section, you can pick how complex, simple, busy and laid back the beat is. You can even go in and manually program specific runs to fine-tune. Overall, its a great tool when you have no real studio to support a full kit.
  • The more vocals the better, just keep them balanced low in the mix. I could have recorded 15 more parts and almost buried them for some neat blending.
  • The single take performance might be better to do on the weekend. I’ll let myself get those in later if I finishduring the week like this.
  • This is such a fun project. I look forward to recording and listening to REM each night. It is good to know that I still want to do this. It reminds me of when I was fifteen and would sequence midi versions of Depeche Mode songs as backup tracks.
  • One of my new favorite times of the week is whenever I get to pick a new song. The anticipation is thrilling.

Next Up

“I’ll Take the Rain”