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Trafficker Monked
#1
Would have liked less guitar mikes and instead some spots on the cymbals; the ambiance in the overheads gave an impression of the kit being stretched forwards in an odd way. These drums needed to be forwards.

Went with a sudo streaming loudness and dynamic range spec rather than a forum loudness war -3dB away from pink noise and a strong dose of listening fatigue jobbie. Some might say loudness and it's associated distortion artifacts and outcomes is a taste thing; I'd say it's more likely to do with hearing impairment.

I did an odd thing with the vocals. Bringing the repeats forward created a DT effect, to which I bolted on top some subtle fonky-Monk weirdness for good measure. The oddness in the timing sounded different and interesting. Can't say I'm in love with it though, but it is definitely different. The doubling also doubled the room ambiance which in turn tended to push the vocal away somewhat. But after all the work, I was reluctant to chuck it.

Then there was this guitar finale screaming at me to do something interesting to it. Couldn't resist the nagging voice in my head; resistance is futile.


.m4a    traffic monked p20.m4a --  (Download: 10.23 MB)


"Nearly half of all teenagers and young adults (12-35 years old) in middle- and high-income countries are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal  audio  devices": https://tinyurl.com/6xeeahc5 Read my bio.
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#2
hi! the mix sounds ok, but your thread seems to be under DoS attack. it started after your post and lasted for about on hour, during which i started to get the cloudflare bad gateway error. and second time right before this post, during which i was able to measure your thread was being constantly accessed every 10 seconds before getting the bad gateway error from server again. you might want to repost your mix to get a new url or check your workstation for malware or something. ^_^
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#3
(07-06-2018, 11:16 AM)kapu Wrote: hi! the mix sounds ^_^

Thanks for the shot.

Most likely something far less sinister, like an audience that can't get enough of this awesome song mixed by the awesome Monk. Angel Big Grin

It looks typically like an innocent server TTL recursion glitch that's not closing off somewhere out there in Netland; host machine/software not talking nicely is a common ailment. It's not the first time I've seen an event like this in the forum. Chill, bro Wink
"Nearly half of all teenagers and young adults (12-35 years old) in middle- and high-income countries are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal  audio  devices": https://tinyurl.com/6xeeahc5 Read my bio.
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#4
Balances are okay but the mix sounds very small and dry.
Bass fx you are using are very odd to be in the whole song. In my opinion most of the mix feels disconnected.
I would try some reverb in it to glue things together.
Hope this helps.
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#5
Hey Monk, i love how you used the delays.
You really pushed the song into the right (dark, psyho, a guy with a problematic childhood mood)direction.Smile
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#6
(16-10-2018, 04:33 AM)Shul Wrote: Balances are okay but the mix sounds very small and dry.

Over headphones, I'd agree. Are you on headphones? But over 8 inchers in a nice room, and pushing some air, it sounds powerful, big and very connected. Big Grin

Rooms add ambiance, headphones don't. Headphones generally are pretty chronic at presenting ambiance because they're compromised by having only one driver. This is one of the reasons why many mixes here are overcooked in reverb and have lost clarity and focus and power along with it.

The problem with adding yet more reverb when there's already a load captured by the microphones (he's not using a properly treated room), is that it adds even more spectral congestion, fog and haze, to what's already there. I can hear this problem in your mix, for example.

I actually used delay and avoided reverb, just to move the guitars back a foot or two. Any more and it would have turned to porridge. But good over headphones, no doubt, depending on design.

Quote:Bass fx you are using are very odd to be in the whole song.

If you were expecting "tradition" from Monk, then I'm going to disappoint, especially when there's no Brief and we have the feedom to explore our creativity. Sorry about that. I had a need to pepper things up for a guy who's father never loved him. It's my vision, of course. I'm wondering from your comments, if you had an idea of how the mix should sound in your mind, and judged my mix against it?

Quote:In my opinion most of the mix feels disconnected.
I would try some reverb in it to glue things together.

Discussed above, but thanks for taking the time to listen and share your perspective. Always appreciated


"Nearly half of all teenagers and young adults (12-35 years old) in middle- and high-income countries are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal  audio  devices": https://tinyurl.com/6xeeahc5 Read my bio.
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#7
(16-10-2018, 06:08 PM)Nikola Mikovic Wrote: Hey Monk, i love how you used the delays.
You really pushed the song into the right (dark, psyho, a guy with a problematic childhood mood)direction.Smile

Thanks for listening and taking the time to share your thoughts.

Yeah, it's one of those mixes where you can hear the mix, lol. I had to get risky and make a concept for a guy who's father never loved him.
"Nearly half of all teenagers and young adults (12-35 years old) in middle- and high-income countries are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal  audio  devices": https://tinyurl.com/6xeeahc5 Read my bio.
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#8
I suppose the impression you have is valid. If you are using huge 8" studio monitors to listen to this I know why it sounds bigger than life in your end. I listened in quality headphones, phone speaker, car stereo. Got a different sound in all of them but that dryness is still there and by that I don't mean there is no reverb at all.. I mean it sounds raw.. it's not a bad thing of course, audio is very subjective but when you compare your mix to just the hundreds of songs out there in most rock categories the difference is very big.

Having said that I take back my comment in the sense that it was a genuine and creative approach. I still remember and hear the difference in mixes from back in the days to mixes now. Back then mixes were more distinct and unique.. obviously this mix is unique. So good job in that sense.

As for the approach on my mix. I just wanted. Some punch in it. I used the drums to show that agresiveness because his father never loved me but the dude is still a trooper and he made it.. so in my head it was more like "f you dad I made it without you" so I tried to make a an agressive groove with it in the hopes that it would get some one head banging at some point lol but I probably failed in that regard but I won't know till someone listens with consumer ears.. for the most part here in the forum judge mixes with engineers ears and we often forget what a perspective from a consumer would be like.

Anyways I'll tend to the reverb problem you mentioned in my mix and post a less wet guitars in them. The rawness will definitely help the groove of the drums.
Good day Monk.
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#9
(19-10-2018, 02:53 AM)Shul Wrote: Got a different sound in all of them but that dryness is still there and by that I don't mean there is no reverb at all.. I mean it sounds raw.. it's not a bad thing of course, audio is very subjective but when you compare your mix to just the hundreds of songs out there in most rock categories the difference is very big.

I know exactly what you mean. The trouble is, I doubt any of those 100 songs had microphones capturing significant levels of early reflections relative to the direct sound, as occurs in small rooms (I won't dare mention the issues of comb filtering). We cannot remove these strong room signatures which the brain associates with a particular space, nor can we disguise them without risking genre ambiguity and listener expectations. The solution would be to use a DI in such cases where the environment is acoustically challenging, and create the illusion of space in the DAW with emu's. Then we can do the bigness thing with relish Big Grin

I think our hands are tied in this instance, or we do something that is not quite of this Earth, which is an Artistic direction I wasn't going to engage Wink

Quote:As for the approach on my mix. I just wanted. Some punch in it. I used the drums to show that agresiveness..

That's one way of communicating emotion for sure, and a good move. I suspect you are a drummer?

Quote:Anyways I'll tend to the reverb problem you mentioned in my mix and post a less wet guitars in them. The rawness will definitely help the groove of the drums.

If this was the vision you had, is there really a need to alter it? The multi certainly offers a chance to explore how the mix changes perception of space with different ambiance approaches and parameter adjustments, including compression if you wanted.

Thanks for the discussion, and especially thanks again for listening and taking the time. Much appreciated.
"Nearly half of all teenagers and young adults (12-35 years old) in middle- and high-income countries are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal  audio  devices": https://tinyurl.com/6xeeahc5 Read my bio.
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