Roxette - So Far Away - v1.0

From the days I restarted piano this was one of my go to songs. It was a bit more complicated to put everything together as the song is very melodic and making all the instruments blend together isn't that easy.

Vocals

I did a couple of sessions with my vocals teacher to practice my holding of long notes and controlling the softness of the voice. This version is still a bit harsher and twangier than it should be; I'm keeping that in mind for the next version.

Rhythm guitars

After recording the acoustic I realized that one guitar sounds way too simplistic, also confirmed by the live performance videos that I found. So I added a 12 string (Variax) track as well with simpler strumming patterns. In both sessions I focused on keeping the rhythm steady.

Piano

I've been playing this song on the piano for many years but it was still a challenge the keep the rhythm even during the recording.

Accordion

Previously used at least once (Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - v1.5), I still find the Sonokinetic Accordion to be a nicely sounding sample library. I tried staying as close as I could to the riffs I could identify in the song.

Bass

My aim was to hit the roots and minimize the riffs.

Mixing & mastering

I used my usual mixing setup with Neutron (instruments) and Nektar (vocals) sidechain plugins. During mixing I started playing more with the volume envelope to change the volume of a track in certain regions. I used it mainly to emphasize the accordion riffs.

Everything was recorded either as MIDI or dry sound (guitars and bass) with effects adjusted during mixing.

For mastering I used Ozone as usual with minimal tweaks to the autocalibrated setup.

Video editing

This is the first recording after I switched over to Blackmagic Davinci Resolve because the Studio version makes full use of my system's GPU for both editing (incomparably more responsive than PowerDirector) and rendering (about 2-3x faster than PowerDirector). This is by far the most productive video editor that I've used so far.