Dark Ride - Burning Bridges (Jacques Mix)

[Jacques]

Hey Jacques,

it's too "thin" for my taste. compare your mix with the reference tracks I have used to record and mix burning bridges and you will hear what i mean.

http://youtu.be/Vn3WKmyprEo?t=12s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPW9AbRMwFU

here is another mixed & mastered song from Darkride for reference:
https://soundcloud.com/darkridemetal/dogs-of-war

don't get me wrong: of course you are free to mix this song in ANY direction you want. the problem is that most people use eq and compression on every track because the think they HAVE to. instead of building some sort of climax, paying attention to small details and making every chorus more powerful then the one before they are mixing individual tracks with "their" guitar/snare/bass sound in mind and completely forget about the fact that mixing is way more then EQ and compression. E.g. somebody told you that a 3db boost at 3khz and a 3db cut a 1khz is a good idea for distorted guitars. While this can be a good move sometimes you should not apply this "rule" to every guitar just because somebody said so. Use your ears. I can promise you that I didn't record the guitars like they are if I wanted a sound like Machine Head. No - I wanted the guitars to exactly sound like this. Same goes for the bass and drums. Find a way to make it all work without changing the "sound" of the band. That's the job of a mixer.

My advice: Load, sort and route all tracks of Burning Bridges into a new project and pull up all the faders so that your master PEAKS at -2/-3 db. Don't forget about gain staging - make sure all the levels of the individual tracks are right in the first place. Now take your time and listen to the mix. What sounds akward? What sounds great? Does the song have a climax? Does every verse sound the same? (if yes = bad). Is there anything special that you want to highlight in the mix like a nice drum roll or really cool background vocals? While listening to the mix you should pull down faders of tracks that are too loud. Make hi/lo cuts and pan the tracks and listen again. Don't use ANY sort of EQ or compression at all, just use the faders. If you constantly have to adjust the volume of a track throughout the song you probably have to fix it with a compressor or - the better choice - with volume automation. You will end up with a good rough mix and NOW you can decide if you want to seperate clashing instruments via EQ or fader moves. But keep in mind that you don't want to change the sound of the band - just give it more definition.

Summary: you can get a rough mix of this song with little to no eq und compression and it will sound really good. just concentrate on hi/lowcuts and do some fader rides. Vocals need some de-essing? Cool, do it. Add SMALL amounts of delay and reverb to the solo guitars and the lead vocals and you're done with the basic stuff. NOW you can start mixing the song, give it impact, give it power, let the solo guitars scream! Everything you did before was just a warm up for the real job.

Don't get me wrong, your mix is good. but from my view - the artist who wrote and recorded it - it's a) not the sound I´m looking for. And b) it is still not "mixed". It is levelled and eq'ed and panned - but not mixed.

Thanks Blitzz!!!
That're the best advices and suggestions I've ever got in the forum...many think that I agree with you and many were you give me input to do better my job...thanks!
In reality I did just compress a little bit the 2 GTR (the solo one are not compressed) and also I did some gentle EQ but then on those 2 GTR I add some heavy 2.5 K to give more of that sound (and that's my ego...gonna kill it one day...lol) that wasn't what you were looking for, and also all the fader level that you are talking is always my first step for mixing so nothing new but thank anyway because probably sometime I forgot to do it well
I'll definitively go back and do the mix again with your thought in mind, thanks again and all best.

Jacques Moretti