Color Me Red - jtbStudio

[jtbStudio]

Well, you're certainly not afraid to wield the editing scalpel!

Yeah, I'd rather have a shorter song where every section is 10/10, rather than a longer one that had a few 9's

I think I'd still have left Mid-section 2 in there, as that provides crucial musical variety

It was a tough decision, but I felt it made the song better (although I was definitely wishing there had been a solo somewhere in there). I think the proof of the pudding would be to ask someone who hadn't heard the original arrangement, or let them hear my cut first

I like that you kept the ElecGtr04 part from Outro 1 in there, though, as it'd have been a shame to lose that!

TBH, I didn't really like that part - I thought it sounded a bit odd and out of place - but yes, it added variety, so I left it in, albeit buried a bit.

The overall tonality does seem rather clouded and middly on the whole, partly because the sub-100Hz region feels underplayed to me, and partly because the lead vocal's pretty much the only part that's contributing much above 5kHz -- there's a bit of energy from the acoustic guitar strums and snare transient, but there's not much besides.

This is something I'm going to be focusing on over the coming months. I've spent so much time trying to figure out how to manage the bottom end, and I think that I'm starting to get a handle on it, but anything over about 5kHz is still a mystery to me

However, in this case I think you'd need to rework the lead vocal sound, because if you simply boosted the highs on your mix buss as things stand, the vocal would become very harsh -- even without buss EQ, in fact, the vocal's already on the bright side, and discourages me from turning the listening volume up, which probably isn't good for a song like this.

That's a good point. I'm in a small apartment right now, so I can't test my mixes super-loud any more

I do like the vocal delay effect, which gives a feeling of room boundaries without overtly distancing the singer, although I'd perhaps low-pass filter the return, as the consonant 'ricochets' get a touch distracting in the verses.

That's FabFilter's Timeless - I usually tweak one of their presets, but they're probably a bit wet, by default. People keep complaining about the delays bouncing around all over the place in my mixes, and I'm starting to be able to hear that, yes, it's perhaps a bit much.

Hope some of that's useful.

Absolutely. I'm chuffed that your criticisms have been about fairly subtle things; I must be starting to get the hang of this mixing lark... Thanks!