I just love this song!
Sorry.....I guess I should provide more helpful comments....!
I'm still a newbie at mixing - I have been doing it for about a year now, but on and off. I used to be a roadie, and I play instruments, so I consider myself relatively musical. Mixing and producing was a bit of an obsession of mine when I was a kid, but it never panned out, but it still fascinates me. So anyway, here's my mix (and I hope it is allowable to post more than 1, because I have tweaked it a bit to remove the glaringly obvious error, so I have added the 2nd (well, third, but that's between me and my wife!!).
As a newbie, things I struggled with were :
1. The drums. I bought Waves 'InPhase' back in the days when I was inexperienced enough to think I could buy an instant mix-fix in a plugin...! and as you can hear, I still haven't mastered it. The snare sounds a bit wrong, unless you 'squint with your ears' (and I claim copyright on that expression!) and then you can sort of imagine it's a rattly-chain snare....but not really.
2. So many vocal tracks! aaarrggh! - what to do with them! Just Pan and Wave, boys, pan and wave.....it nearly worked.
3. EQ The mix-that-shall-not-be-named (see previous wife comment) I thought was quite nice until my wife (the final arbiter of taste and style) told me it was 'horrible - it sounds like someone has sat on it', and that would have been so much easier to take if she had said it in a Monty Python voice, but she gave it to me dead-pan.....ouch!. So I got back to work on what was V2, but on reflection I think it has too much high frequency. The V1 mix sounded great in the car, but I haven't listened to the others yet, but I'm hoping they work.
4. Compression - to use or not to use. That is the question
5. Bigness......I can get LOUD......I can sort of sometimes get CLEAR.....but how the heck do I get BIG? Actually, there's an opening for a plugin.....
Things as a newbie I thought I got alright, but yet I may be completely wrong, so please feel free to correct me...
1. The bass. I just love a chunky bass and I try to make a chunky bass sound whenever I can......even if it doesn't necessarily fit the song......which is wrong of me....
2. The vocals. Despite my vodka-inspired 17 plugins on the lead vocals, it doesn't sound too bad I thought.....and no, it wasn't quite 17, but it was a lot of vodka. Why not - lets face it, if you make it big in music, half the people who hear your work will be drunk in pubs. You have a RESPONSIBILITY to get shit-faced and check your mix. Just remember not to be too heavy handed when making adjustments! I might turn that into a 17 part video series (see what I did there...?).....Mixing Drunk.......top tips......$34.95 per month to watch me mix off my face!
3. The overall levels. You can hear every instrument at some point (although you have to squint with your ears again to hear the keyboards). That's something that I try to always do.
So, I hope those comments give you some idea of my approach to the mix. I figured that if I am going to be part of this community, I may as well try to make my posts and comments helpful. Sorry for the length of this post.....
Sorry.....I guess I should provide more helpful comments....!
I'm still a newbie at mixing - I have been doing it for about a year now, but on and off. I used to be a roadie, and I play instruments, so I consider myself relatively musical. Mixing and producing was a bit of an obsession of mine when I was a kid, but it never panned out, but it still fascinates me. So anyway, here's my mix (and I hope it is allowable to post more than 1, because I have tweaked it a bit to remove the glaringly obvious error, so I have added the 2nd (well, third, but that's between me and my wife!!).
As a newbie, things I struggled with were :
1. The drums. I bought Waves 'InPhase' back in the days when I was inexperienced enough to think I could buy an instant mix-fix in a plugin...! and as you can hear, I still haven't mastered it. The snare sounds a bit wrong, unless you 'squint with your ears' (and I claim copyright on that expression!) and then you can sort of imagine it's a rattly-chain snare....but not really.
2. So many vocal tracks! aaarrggh! - what to do with them! Just Pan and Wave, boys, pan and wave.....it nearly worked.
3. EQ The mix-that-shall-not-be-named (see previous wife comment) I thought was quite nice until my wife (the final arbiter of taste and style) told me it was 'horrible - it sounds like someone has sat on it', and that would have been so much easier to take if she had said it in a Monty Python voice, but she gave it to me dead-pan.....ouch!. So I got back to work on what was V2, but on reflection I think it has too much high frequency. The V1 mix sounded great in the car, but I haven't listened to the others yet, but I'm hoping they work.
4. Compression - to use or not to use. That is the question
5. Bigness......I can get LOUD......I can sort of sometimes get CLEAR.....but how the heck do I get BIG? Actually, there's an opening for a plugin.....
Things as a newbie I thought I got alright, but yet I may be completely wrong, so please feel free to correct me...
1. The bass. I just love a chunky bass and I try to make a chunky bass sound whenever I can......even if it doesn't necessarily fit the song......which is wrong of me....
2. The vocals. Despite my vodka-inspired 17 plugins on the lead vocals, it doesn't sound too bad I thought.....and no, it wasn't quite 17, but it was a lot of vodka. Why not - lets face it, if you make it big in music, half the people who hear your work will be drunk in pubs. You have a RESPONSIBILITY to get shit-faced and check your mix. Just remember not to be too heavy handed when making adjustments! I might turn that into a 17 part video series (see what I did there...?).....Mixing Drunk.......top tips......$34.95 per month to watch me mix off my face!
3. The overall levels. You can hear every instrument at some point (although you have to squint with your ears again to hear the keyboards). That's something that I try to always do.
So, I hope those comments give you some idea of my approach to the mix. I figured that if I am going to be part of this community, I may as well try to make my posts and comments helpful. Sorry for the length of this post.....