Drag by Draper

[loweche6]

So, I've been mixing this in small chunks over the past month or so. I like it, but I can't seem to get the flutter out of the cymbals. . . Thoughts?

Draper

[hemiSound]

Hi, Draper,

Regarding your question on the cymbals...whenever you hear something odd always suspect phase distortion. In my DAW (Reaper) I found that the kick, the snare, and the drum room mikes must be *phase reversed* to be in the same phase as the overheads. Reverse the phases on those tracks and you may find the entire kit sound has improved.

Don't take any of this as personal, we are all here to learn! Sometime the tracks themselves *demand* to be mixed in a certain way. We actually *hear* this mix in our heads and the skill is to be able to technically achieve this mix. The more you practice and learn the skills required, the quality of you mix will improve. Remember YouTube is an incredible resource. Do a YouTube search on, "mixing phase correction" and you will find many videos to help you with this information.

Likewise, doing a search on "mixing vocal eq" will provide much useful information. Your main vocals in this mix boosted the frequencies that should have been cut to make the vocal warmer as opposed to 'tinny' and 'nasal'.

In other news, both the main vocal and the acoustic guitar are distorted over the entire mix. Perhaps you were pushing to faders up too high to get your balance? Maintaining *headroom* while you mix is *critical*.

Be well,
hemiSound

[loweche6]

Hey Hemi, thanks for the listen. With the drums, I phase switched every permutation of the drums, as well as trying to use a phase adjuster in reaper, but I just couldn't get a happy phase coherency.

To me, the vocals have plenty of low mid information (way too much, imo). Resonant frequencies all over the place. With the overdriven vox, I was going for some creative ways to clear up some of the mud (using Slate's VCC plugin, I ran the gain up really high). I have subsequently remixed this with a multiband compressor on the vox. This song is a bear to try and mix, and i have only encountered a few that achieved anything in the realm of sounding professional (the vox track was just recorded terribly).

Thanks for your comments!

Draper