08-02-2014, 08:11 PM
hey guy.
I mixed this one myself not that long ago, faced brutal criticisms, and before having critically listened to my mix again, I thought "christ, what are these guys talking about? it sounds great!"
Then I listened to it and realized it had more sizzle than a hot pan covered with bacon (and not in the good way.)
I had to start from scratch, and listen to every single track in isolation several times, and still couldn't figure out where all the brittle nastiness was coming from. Then I had a rather long in coming lightbulb moment and checked out a spectral analysis of the entire mix and compared it to the spectral analysis of the instruments in isolation...
There are a LOT of tracks... I painfully remember... and almost all of them have printed effects and filters, all of which are introducing a huge deal of high mid and treble distortion. When that sort of thing is going on, you'll have to take breaks constantly or your sensitivity to the high frequencies is going to disappear before you even realize its gone, and that's what plagued me and led to REALLY bad decisions later on.
My advice... High pass almost everything except the bass and the kick, but go with a really light highpass around 80-100 for the loops so some of that low-end energy can come through... right now, even in version two, your low end is lacking and unfocused, and it's not driving the song. Take a coffee break and then hit the other instruments with as much highpass as you can get away with. Take a coffee break...
And if I'm remembering correctly, almost everything needs either a low pass around 10khz or a 3db shelving cut at 4khz. The loops, vocals, acoustics and pads are particularly egregious in this respect. That'll contain some of the brittleness... the good news is that your mix decisions didn't introduce that garbage... it's mostly from the way all of the tracks are processed and chorused. Once you get everything cleaned up, it comes together much more easily.
No sweat though... this one is a booger and I wasn't ready for it... but I think I advanced 5 years in 1 week trying to figure out what was going on.
I mixed this one myself not that long ago, faced brutal criticisms, and before having critically listened to my mix again, I thought "christ, what are these guys talking about? it sounds great!"
Then I listened to it and realized it had more sizzle than a hot pan covered with bacon (and not in the good way.)
I had to start from scratch, and listen to every single track in isolation several times, and still couldn't figure out where all the brittle nastiness was coming from. Then I had a rather long in coming lightbulb moment and checked out a spectral analysis of the entire mix and compared it to the spectral analysis of the instruments in isolation...
There are a LOT of tracks... I painfully remember... and almost all of them have printed effects and filters, all of which are introducing a huge deal of high mid and treble distortion. When that sort of thing is going on, you'll have to take breaks constantly or your sensitivity to the high frequencies is going to disappear before you even realize its gone, and that's what plagued me and led to REALLY bad decisions later on.
My advice... High pass almost everything except the bass and the kick, but go with a really light highpass around 80-100 for the loops so some of that low-end energy can come through... right now, even in version two, your low end is lacking and unfocused, and it's not driving the song. Take a coffee break and then hit the other instruments with as much highpass as you can get away with. Take a coffee break...
And if I'm remembering correctly, almost everything needs either a low pass around 10khz or a 3db shelving cut at 4khz. The loops, vocals, acoustics and pads are particularly egregious in this respect. That'll contain some of the brittleness... the good news is that your mix decisions didn't introduce that garbage... it's mostly from the way all of the tracks are processed and chorused. Once you get everything cleaned up, it comes together much more easily.
No sweat though... this one is a booger and I wasn't ready for it... but I think I advanced 5 years in 1 week trying to figure out what was going on.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!