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The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - Printable Version

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The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - juanjose1967 - 27-12-2014

Here's my attempt to mix this song. As always, comments and advice will be welcomed.

See ya!


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - takka360 - 27-12-2014

Real good mix music wise. I think the vox are a touch too loud and a bit too much middle in them.
Thin some of the mids and I think you have a cracker mate.


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - juanjose1967 - 28-12-2014

Thank you Alan for the suggestions. I've checked on the lead vocal's EQ and now it's less midrangy. And also its volume is a little bit lower.

Is it alright now? Wink


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - konop_tnt - 28-12-2014

Very warm sound and close to listener. Maybe you could make it even closer with shorter reverbs. Such long reverb and pre delay is a little bit distracting for my. Anyway interesting approach.


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - hendriksenremco - 28-12-2014

I like what you have done in the lower end. Beautiful!
I like that the vox is al little bit loud. The harmonics in the vox are also beautiful.
To my taste, the snare is little bit 'thin'. I prefer more highs on the snare.

Nice song, this is going te be my next track to mix.



RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - bmullen - 28-12-2014

I listened to the second version. Really nice. I agree about boosting the upper mids a bit more on the snare.


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - juanjose1967 - 29-12-2014

Thank you guys for the comments. I've changed the EQ on the snare and lowered a little bit the lead vocals.


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - hendriksenremco - 29-12-2014

Good job. I like what you have done to the snare. Good mix.
I'm also trying to mix this song now. I'm struggling with seperating the guitars from each other


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - juanjose1967 - 30-12-2014

thank you hendriksenremco. Separating the guitars is not too difficult. A little bit of EQ and maybe using some guitar amp plugin on some of them, can make a difference Smile


RE: The Long Wait: 'Back Home To Blue' - The_Metallurgist - 03-01-2015

sorry for the late on this, JJ...life's been hectic! happy new year! 'am looking forward to your mixes this year! Wink

thanks for the materials which enabled a far more detailed and realistic impression of your mixing than would otherwise be obtained from the mp3 herein.

low end first: the kick is out of balance with the bass gtr and other instruments, and it's out quite a bit too - i can hear the issues clearly in this mp3. the bass gtr could do with a lot more control to maintain it's presence and continuity throughout the song...this is a compression thing really, so revising how you compress bass will necessitate some homework, as you'd say Smile the bass gtr was all low-end...... where are it's harmonics?

ideally, try aiming to mix the kick AND the bass gtr before you do anything else. the reason is simple - these two instruments contain the highest proportion of energy than anything else (ignoring organs in cathedrals!). so, they need to be balanced, and working properly and set to the right level (you need to define what "right" is.....peak?....rms?....VU? etc etc?). all other elements of your mix will be judged against these two components. so the rest of the drum kit will be balanced against the kick, for example. the risk in NOT doing this, and just diving into the material without a basic methodology in place, is that judging and making the best use of headroom will be a nightmare, and subsequently so too the general balance of your mix. this mix shows such issues.

while talking about the bass, you missed an important opportunity to fix the issue at 0:28. the bass vanishes prematurely. a good mixing engineer will seek and find a replacement part elsewhere in the song....you didn't so it causes a MAJOR distraction. look out for this sort of thing in every mix (duff notes, lack of clarity etc)...it goes with the territory.

bass is difficult to get right, but easy once you've trained your ears what to listen for (so they say! lol). the major problem most people have is separating the harmonics from the fundamentals...or even the other way round. a bass shy speaker like a cube will still tell you what the fundamental is doing even though it's not classed as being "bass" friendly. we need to be able to separate in our brain, the difference between the fundamental and it's harmonics. be alive to the fact that psychoacoustic issues come into play here...where the brain can hear the presence of the bass harmonics and believe the extent of the fundamental without clearly hearing it (such would be the case in real bass shy speakers). if the bass guitar isn't equalised properly, same for the kick, you will have EXCESS ENERGY and loss of headroom, making the mix boomy, especially over consumer speakers.

if you don't believe a speaker can do the last 3 octaves very well, simply low-pass with at least a 36dB/octave filter and sweep it to around 100Hz and you will soon know! the problem you, us, everyone is up against in this zone, is the fact that there's only 40 cycles between the 40-80Hz octave, or even merely 80 cycles between the 80 and 160Hz octave. compare this with 10,000 and 20,000Hz final octave where you have an abundant 10,000 cycles to play with. your ears need to be VERY well trained to be able to equalise and compress correctly and appropriately in the bass octaves. i also recommend referencing against CD, 16bit quality music and doing the sweep - get to know how the pros sound during the sweep test over your chosen monitoring regime, eh? BEWARE, you need to hear a lot of reference material, simply because of the genre issues and the differences between the low-end elements and their priorities as well as the approach each engineer will take. practise this 5000 times until you are sick of it, then practise it for another 5000 times then companies will pay you to promote their plugins!

the rim shot @0:32 is wild and pokes out (mp3 will likely exacerbate this). i really didn't like the reverb slap-back on the snare, it was a distraction because it didn't fit the ambiance/space basically. subjective? is something that distracts merely subjective? basis for interesting debate, perhaps.

the vocal had major resonance issues around 300Hz (there was a need for a couple of notches around here...perhaps this is what Alan was hearing..but he was talking about mids....only the problem is in the low-mids?). actually, the mix had resonance issues generally; the acoustic and electric guitars needed major taming. i find a lot of people mix their acoustic guitars on the harsh and brittle side in an effort perhaps to help them cut better? all this does is cause fatigue. the real solution is to employ a decent EQ strategy which also complements the spectral requirements according to the kind of illusion we seek in the depth field. the acoustic guitar was a bit of a hazard here, i must say, especially at higher monitoring levels. trust the cube!

Actually, i'd suggest there's some scope for reviewing your general compression strategy across the board.

vocal up, or vocal down is a subjective thing...but if you drop your monitoring level right down until everything drops out except the vocal....it will be good for radio. beyond that, who cares? i had some difficulty with the depth field, and felt you hadn't perhaps placed certain elements back far enough - e.g. acoustic guitar. these things will affect where the vocalist sits (the level AND EQ), so your vision is crucial. i pulled the original multi down and discovered it has some male backing vocals? i didn't hear them in your mix. any recommendation to change such a critical element like a vocal shouldn't be taken lightly because the placement of the instruments will be, or should be, based around the vision. simply changing one instrument (like a vocal), can mess the mix up, ESPECIALLY(!!) if the reverb/EQ strategy isn't taken care of at the same time; you might even need to re-consider the compression too.... this is dangerous turf, in my opinion, because of the risk of messing the overall balance and dynamic of the mix - you could end up with more issues than the one that's been recommended to you to fix?

during the instrumental sections, like @2:00, the lead guitar is rather pronounced, and the acoustic gets trampled on. would the mix benefit from having both of them working together?

regarding song dymanics, this mix sounded static. perhaps more attention to automation would have helped with the transitional elements and make the song more engaging. in 6 months time, come back to this project and do it again from scratch and check the difference between now and then.

i know one of your main goals of this mix was to keep the low-mids from getting out of control. i think you've done a lot in that respect...however, some things suggest you've perhaps gone a little too far the other way? it's easily done, especially if we are conscious of the goal. if you listen to the 160Hz area (use an EQ filter to home-in on this range rather than merely guessing it with your ears, at least until your ears are trained), the instruments are quite sparse. again, it goes back to what i was saying about the number of cycles we have to work with and it's why most people struggle in this zone. if you rush a mix, or spend a similar amount of time on mixes as you've done in the past, you will very likely miss valuable opportunities. take the time to drill into this zone with all your future mixes perhaps.

ok...that's my quota of typing already used up for 2015! lol
catch you laters...hope you can take something out that's of use from all this waffle.