05-05-2015, 10:31 PM
Hey Sano. This isn't a genre that gets a lot of exposure where I live so consider that when reading my thoughts... I'll try to combine my technical thoughts with my opinions in a helpful way here, but our approaches to this tune were pretty dissimilar so that might limit my contribution to the discussion.
I'd echo the comments by Skelly and Dave on the high frequency abundance, particularly the drum transients. The sharp transients are also pulling the drums a bit forward in the mix... admittedly that could be your intention, but it makes it difficult as a listener to lock into the melody. However, I believe in your vision on this one and some ideas come to mind on how you might approach working the aggressive sounding drums (which I love) into the mix without fatigue, especially on headphones/earbuds.
During the chorus(?) sections where the melody doesn't vary much, it makes a lot of sense from a musical perspective to give the drums a little more space in the mix-- the chorus is the emotional payoff and this is arguably a beat driven genre, so letting the drums come through with more HF energy in those short sections and taming the treble elsewhere seems an appropriate and effective solution. Another thought that comes to mind on instinct is that lightning fast compressors on the kick and snare channels, something like a fairchild or 1176, could be finessed to catch the transients and smooth them out a bit, making the physical sound a little less harsh on the ear and psycho-acoustically massaging the drums back into the mix a bit. In this instance I'd personally combine both the compression and treble roll-off in smaller amounts than would be necessary by themselves... and then I'd have two sonic elements to manipulate over the course of the song for contrast.
All that sort of goes hand in hand with Dave's comments about the general flatness of the mix, but that's largely due to the static dynamics during tracking. Seems to me like most producers who work with virtual instruments entirely in the box prefer to leave the dynamics flat while tracking and automate the long-term dynamics in the mixing phase... makes sense to me since it allows you to really predictably shape the sounds with compressors, but I guess it all depends on how the music is meant to be enjoyed. Listening casually at home or in a club, I'd want more sonic variation over the course of the song, but the overall dynamics would probably succeed quite well as they are if the music were playing a supporting role in other media, like in a video game or film score.
Last thing I'll mention is that panning the leads synths as you have is really cool and refreshing after hearing my version over and over... I'd personally narrow the stereo width a little bit on each track because the overall image feels a bit smeared out for me, but that could very well be my opinion.
I'd echo the comments by Skelly and Dave on the high frequency abundance, particularly the drum transients. The sharp transients are also pulling the drums a bit forward in the mix... admittedly that could be your intention, but it makes it difficult as a listener to lock into the melody. However, I believe in your vision on this one and some ideas come to mind on how you might approach working the aggressive sounding drums (which I love) into the mix without fatigue, especially on headphones/earbuds.
During the chorus(?) sections where the melody doesn't vary much, it makes a lot of sense from a musical perspective to give the drums a little more space in the mix-- the chorus is the emotional payoff and this is arguably a beat driven genre, so letting the drums come through with more HF energy in those short sections and taming the treble elsewhere seems an appropriate and effective solution. Another thought that comes to mind on instinct is that lightning fast compressors on the kick and snare channels, something like a fairchild or 1176, could be finessed to catch the transients and smooth them out a bit, making the physical sound a little less harsh on the ear and psycho-acoustically massaging the drums back into the mix a bit. In this instance I'd personally combine both the compression and treble roll-off in smaller amounts than would be necessary by themselves... and then I'd have two sonic elements to manipulate over the course of the song for contrast.
All that sort of goes hand in hand with Dave's comments about the general flatness of the mix, but that's largely due to the static dynamics during tracking. Seems to me like most producers who work with virtual instruments entirely in the box prefer to leave the dynamics flat while tracking and automate the long-term dynamics in the mixing phase... makes sense to me since it allows you to really predictably shape the sounds with compressors, but I guess it all depends on how the music is meant to be enjoyed. Listening casually at home or in a club, I'd want more sonic variation over the course of the song, but the overall dynamics would probably succeed quite well as they are if the music were playing a supporting role in other media, like in a video game or film score.
Last thing I'll mention is that panning the leads synths as you have is really cool and refreshing after hearing my version over and over... I'd personally narrow the stereo width a little bit on each track because the overall image feels a bit smeared out for me, but that could very well be my opinion.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!