I'm Alright || MIX / MST by BKM

[BKM]

Hi everyone,

My name is Björn, I go by BKM on SoundCloud and Youtube. I've been a homeproducer for about 1.5 years, working exclusively on my own recordings and struggling to make them sound the way I want them to. I've recently decided to step away from my own stuff and sign up here to challenge myself with mixing and mastering professionally recorded tracks as I've come to the realization that although I always regarded myself as a musician first, I don't seem to be all that talented at songwriting and recording. So this is the first song I ever mixed that I did not record myself.

I want to leave some notes on what I did with the mix - mainly because forcing myself to write things down helps me remember the lessons I learned. So feel free to skip over the rest of this post and just let me know what you think of the mix


I went into this mix without listening to the sample or other mixes beforehand.

I'm biased towards rock and metal and it probably shows quite a bit in the way I treated these magnificently recorded guitars - I left them fairly unprocessed except for some filtering, lowmid cut and notches in the higher registers.

I really didn't like the kick - too much 100 Hz energy where it collided with the bass and a weird resonance around 3k that ate into the vox. I eq'ed it heavily which instantly let the bass shine through. I loved the snare however and really tried to bring out the best of it using EQ, parallel compression, and a healthy amount of reverb.

I removed a lot of low mids from bass and most other instruments as well to make space for percussions and piano; the latter I reduced basically to function as a pad because I figured that I can afford to lose some groove energy here as there are already so many rythmic elements.

I removed a lot of resonant peaks in percussions, vox and overheads. This cleaned up the top end and made the mix fairly transparent and wide but left it a bit "dull" in comparison to the reference sample. That's a trade off I was willing to make, although I'm unsure if I maybe killed some of the vibe of the mix by basically taking the room out of the equation. I also used fairly high doses of saturation all over the mix because I though it suited the gritty vibe, which probably also adds to that "dull" impression. All in all, it's the first time I mixed vocals and I'm really unsure if I did a good job.

I didn't add anything to the mix except for some bog-standard telephone voice FX on the vox. I'm also not a fan of super wet mixing, so I used reverbs and delays mainly for glue.

I used Andrew Scheps "rear bus trick" for the first time on a mix and it really worked wonders to add body and fullness to the mix!

For mastering, I ended up at around -8 LUFS using gentle clipping, no multiband, and about 2 dB limiting at the loudest parts. It's quieter in comparison to the sample (again, probably a result of less high end energy) but I figuered it should probably hold up against most commercial stuff. I probably could've gotten to -7 LUFS using a multiband and heavier limiting, but I really liked the way it sounded as-is. Actually, I was just so in love with the snare sound that really didn't want it to lose any more punch!

That's it, all in all I really liked the song, and I guess my mix turned out okay as well. Better than my past stuff for sure which is entirely due to being able to work with some good recordings. I'd really like to hear your opinions! I'm willing and motivated to improve at the craft in hopes to one day maybe make it a side job (as is everyone's dream here I guess haha).

PS: Anyone know how to get a hold of Mikro Studios to ask for permission to upload it to SoundCloud? There's a twitter account but it's been inactive since 2013...

[jeffd42]

It's a good mix.

Vocal, maybe a touch more top end, but that was all I noticed.

Good job on the mastering to get it loud, without sounding squashed at all.

[BKM]

Thanks for your response Jeff. I think you're right about the vocals, I might have overdone the deessing.

[Konek]

Hello! Really good mix with bright EQ. I liked your work with every track
But for my taste you applied too wide panning for guitars, and the band sounds little empty.
Cheers

[BKM]

Thanks for your reply Konek! I come from a metal background and tend to gravitate towards hard-panned guitars ... it's the thing I struggle the most with at the moment - untangling what I like versus what the mix needs.
Do you have a suggestion what I could have done to make the mix more lively?

[Konek]

Not shure that my advices really will help you, it's just subjective and grows from my tastes,
But it seems to me that the mix should be associated with the real situaition, such as gig or club performance or something else. That's why it's much easier to mix your own music. Try to use references.
Anyway you did it, and it's wonderful

[BKM]

Will do! I think I'll also put some more time into getting to know my reverbs and delays a bit better. The right ambience can do much to translate the vibe. And thanks a lot for the encouragement, it means a lot

[thedon]

hi Bjorn,
Nice solid mix ,sounds great on my monitors.
Thinking while listening ,a touch more tail on the snare or maybe a subtle parallel compressed drum track mixed in would sound Awesome but this is just a personal taste thing to my ears !

Well Done

[BKM]

Thanks thedon! I'm currently mixing "The Dice" by LEAD Inc. and I'm thoroughly indulging in the joys of parallel compression there - you're absolutely right, this mix would have profited greately from some more energy in that department!