David Tyo's - Never Ebb But Flow - Competition Mix

[Mixinthecloud]

Sounds interesting, like a somewhat different attemp. I like how you put your focus in the verse on the acoustic guitar, it's often hardly noticeable in other mixes. I also like the crunchiness on the lead guitars, sounds like a nice fuzz effect. You also got the vocals clear and loud, but it all could be a bit wider with all the bg vocals to not clutter in the chorus. The drums could use a bit more punch imo, as they make up a good amount of energy in the song.

Thanks for the kudos on this attempt. And you are probably right about the power of the drums in the choruses. Getting them to blend effectively with the voices and guitars was not easy. It easily becomes a circular firing squad scenario. I also wanted there to be a demarcation between verse and chorus, where the drums and bass do punch against the vocals, keyboards and acoustic. This is all part of what makes this such a tough get. Making the decision on what takes precedent and where is tough. I opted for vocals, primarily for the simple reason that David's vocals reached life-threatening levels and I accorded them the respect I thought appropriate. I toyed with using side-chain compression to duck the guitars against the vocals but concluded that was a bit of an over-think. Who knows, maybe I was on the right track with that??? I also tried to make use of the special FXs tracks. That was fun but added another layer of thickness to be defined and balanced against tons of other thicknesses...ugh!

Another thing about this piece is that it sounds significantly different depending upon the playback volume (not a good thing). When I made hi volume mix decisions they were specifically in the stereo image between the voices and the guitars. Both of these groups had incredibly thick voicings so I did try to group the vocals more to the center of the image and the guitars in a surrounding bed with tone holes punching through at various times and in various locations using mid-side eqs.
This happened in the final mix after stemming out my sub-groups. Final tone shaping, localizations and detail automation were completed to give this a final sheen.

Good or bad, I need time off from this one. Thanks again for your good analysis.