Diesel13 - Colour Me Red (ZX Mix)

[Mike Senior]

Glad some of my comments were helpful!

I'm gonna be honest I didn't know what to do with those background vocals at all. There just so many of them lol.

I know the feeling. Funnily enough, I often lose the will to live just before mixing in the close tom mics on heavily multimiked drum kits for a similar reason...

Again after much listening and pondering it turned into a situation of where I felt it more appropriate to treat them kind of like "group" of people chanting not much unlike what was heard on C.W. McCall's Convoy. Obviously, in this song these are different, but the idea I approached them with is similar enough.

Yeah, I kind of got this vibe from it.

The only issue I'm having is that snare. See, me personally I like the snare a lot. I get where you're coming from. If I listen to it I can hear a disconnect from the snare and the rest of the kit. I guess this stems more from my roots than anything, but I've always liked really tight hard hitting snares (the Roland TR-606 has a wonderful snare, SO SNAPPY). I was almost tempted to make this one make your ears twinge from each hit. But I backed off on that because I wanted it to be a little more natural sounding. I don't really know if I'd wanted to be much different. Man, snares are really one of those things that make a huge difference in the way a mix is perceived aren't they? Now, in my mix I added more reverb than what just the room had. Even after quite a bit of playing around with compression and such on the room I never really liked it much more than ambiance it gave the kit. So, I added in some extra reverb and used that to create a slightly bigger sounding area. Just a little extra decay and such. The blend of these two reverbs is what ultimately creates the sound of the drums. However, I'm not sure I'm fan of really increasing the snare's presence in the reverbs much. It does make it linger on a bit more and kind of connect it more to the kit, but I'm not sure I'm a big fan of it. I dunno maybe I just like the sound of indecisiveness lol.

As with most things, it's ultimately a subjective thing, and I'm totally alright with you (or indeed anyone else I critique) turning round and saying that they prefer something their way, not mine. To be honest, after critiquing 20 mixes of the same multitrack, I find myself increasingly second-guessing my own opinionsa anyway, so I could hardly deny anyone else that right!

Slightly off topic, but I'd like to say for the record those guitars were so annoying to get sounding right. I think I spent like 2 hours just trying to get them to compliment each other. Seriously, why did EGtr 1, AcGtr 1, and AcGtr 2 have to be all playing at the same time? Though it wasn't until I was about ready to curse up a storm that I remembered I still had the DI for EGtr 1 and AcGtr 1. That greatly helped in letting the ear find them. Take away folks remember your DI. It can save you a lot of headache.

Cool tip!