08-01-2019, 04:28 PM
Qué pasa, Shul! It's been a while since I did struggle with this one, but out of those stereo printed parts ("ITS A TRAP!"), I don't remember loudness as an issue. I usually go for a -20dB LUFS when mixing and 95% of the times that means kinda conservative fader levels after some severe gain staging on most tracks (lowering their volume clip level in Reaper). I think this was no different. Actually, though I don't think I made a particularly solid job, it ended up being easily louder than most of my mixes but then I'm pretty chicken with levels. I do remember I tweaked levels using clip envelopes* (cool because you can see what you do to the waveform, contrary to automating faders) before applying compression or any other serious processing, mostly to tame the RMS/Peak ratio (going for a -20dB RMS/-5dB peak, though I'm way more relaxed about that these days).
You have a LOUD kickdrum, could it be it has too much transient in its attack, therefore denying you of some headroom to make the mix louder?
In the choruses, as guitar tracks seem to take a step back, that kick gets even bigger and the mix loses gel. Those kinda dark grungy chords were very useful to me compensating that the guitar arrangement was changing a super wide double tracked arpeggio guitar for a thinner sounding arpeggio. As it is, verses seem to have more energy than the choruses. The BV's could help to go bigger and more intense, methinks.
The verses main arpeggio guitar is a like a test on character I'm afraid almost none of us did pass (surely, I didn't). If I was to try this again, I definitely would drop the double tracked part, it's just too messy and fudges the stereo image really badly. Also, some of the stereo treatment in the raws has bad phase issues.
*There's like 4 or 5 ways to handle levels in Reaper. Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9X3CVkdLQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQa5DkVjPU
You have a LOUD kickdrum, could it be it has too much transient in its attack, therefore denying you of some headroom to make the mix louder?
In the choruses, as guitar tracks seem to take a step back, that kick gets even bigger and the mix loses gel. Those kinda dark grungy chords were very useful to me compensating that the guitar arrangement was changing a super wide double tracked arpeggio guitar for a thinner sounding arpeggio. As it is, verses seem to have more energy than the choruses. The BV's could help to go bigger and more intense, methinks.
The verses main arpeggio guitar is a like a test on character I'm afraid almost none of us did pass (surely, I didn't). If I was to try this again, I definitely would drop the double tracked part, it's just too messy and fudges the stereo image really badly. Also, some of the stereo treatment in the raws has bad phase issues.
*There's like 4 or 5 ways to handle levels in Reaper. Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9X3CVkdLQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQa5DkVjPU