Your Mom loves your mixes, but are they really up to scratch? Post your tracks here and get the community's feedback to help with the spit and polish. Impress us! We don't bite.
paulman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2017 8:42 pm
Been trying to listen to this, but based on comments I'm guessing you took it down while you rework it.
Hi Paulman - I think it's still up - Mix #3 at the top of this page.
Yeah, I think I didn't notice the other night that there were three pages to the thread. Sorry!
I'm not sure how to say what I'm thinking about this track. I really like the song, and the recording is really nice overall. The performance just seems to be lacking energy somehow. It's technically good, just... I don't know. All the ingredients are there to get your head bobbing, your heart pumping, but it just doesn't quite do those things. I guess sterile is the word I'm looking for. I don't know the sequence in which the instruments were recorded, but if you can track the rhythm section together and capture that live energy to build on, it would make a world of difference.
Thanks Paulman for the feedback. Your suggestion to record things together is a good one, but we have to record them separately at our own homes, then mix it all together at the end. Reason being, the bass player is in Edmonton, Canada and the drummer is in Utah, USA.
People want something for nothing, they want it right now. Either they can't tell quality or don't care but feel it is important that everyone agrees with them.
ido1957 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2017 11:20 am
Thanks JD01 and Miro - appreciate the listen and feedback. The goal was to get the acoustic guitar in one of our songs for the first time, maybe with a touch of "The Who" Daltry acoustic and Townsend windmills.
No worries - if you get a chance though, mic up those acoustics instead.
I'll keep bugging Mike to try it. Direct is too easy though lol....
People want something for nothing, they want it right now. Either they can't tell quality or don't care but feel it is important that everyone agrees with them.
I did some small but hopefully effective changes to this mix...
- changed compression on the vocals a little to smooth them out
- reduced the drum volume to trim off some boom and open it up for the other instruments
- small increase in overall highs on main eq
- a bit more overall volume
I'll put both mixes here for comparison.
Old Mix
January 15B - Mix 3
New Mix
January 21 - Mix 4
Links have been tested and they are indeed 320MP3's
People want something for nothing, they want it right now. Either they can't tell quality or don't care but feel it is important that everyone agrees with them.
I think your newest mix has good separation. The low end is teetering on being too much, but it's fine as it is. I think the whole mix needs more "air". It's just a little dull on the top end. I think if you just cleaned up some lows and mids on the vocals the top end will shine more by itself.
Thanks Greg, I'll see what I can do with that vocal track. The compression change took away some of (what I thought) was a bit of a strident sound, but the consequence was a little more mids. I guess that's what compression does though. I was wondering if it was a little strong there and I guess it is.
Ya the bottom end is a tricky thing, it can make the mix go from boomy to ultra thin with one click of the mouse.
People want something for nothing, they want it right now. Either they can't tell quality or don't care but feel it is important that everyone agrees with them.
ido1957 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2017 12:49 pm
Thanks Greg, I'll see what I can do with that vocal track. The compression change took away some of (what I thought) was a bit of a strident sound, but the consequence was a little more mids. I guess that's what compression does though. I was wondering if it was a little strong there and I guess it is.
Ya the bottom end is a tricky thing, it can make the mix go from boomy to ultra thin with one click of the mouse.
I think you could do a sweep on the master bus and see where the low end really gets offensive. Whatever instrument coincides with it, fix it. The rest of the low end will stay mostly the same, you'll just catch the offending instrument and frequency. It might be some 100hz muck in the kick or some weird rumble in the bass. Low end problems eat up a ton of space in a mix and what can usually be a simple fix will make the entire rest of the mix explode with life. Then with the vocals, find where it gets boxy and radio-like. That kind of crap mucks up the midrange. I bet with just those fixes the top end will breathe better.
Greg - I got the vocal mids taken care of it made the difference you mentioned. I'll scan for the bass next - I hear what you're talking about.
Ocnor - You're on the money - I had a 2 db eq boost at around 2K,reduced it to 1, so somewhere in between sounds good.
People want something for nothing, they want it right now. Either they can't tell quality or don't care but feel it is important that everyone agrees with them.
