Hi Peter,
Thanks for listening and for the kind words. I agree about the snare drum - in a couple of previous mixes my snare got completely lost so I've probably gone a bit too far the other way
Glad your mix is sounding better, do post the new version up because apart from anything else it's useful to you to see what things were improved second time round. They can then be areas you focus on getting right with the next song. It's not uncommon for less experienced mixers (I'm including myself in that) to pile on either too much compression or too much top-end - we think we're making it "louder" or "brighter" (which must equal better, right?!) and our ears quickly adapt so it doesn't sound weird until we get a second opinion or go back to a mix after our ears have had a rest.
Re the kick drum on mine, everything was going through Waves NLS (I really recommend that or Slate VCC - they are as close as you will get to a "make everything sound better" button in a DAW), then the plug-in chain was:
- Waves H-Comp (though you could use any stock compressor) - high ratio (7:1), slow-ish attack, medium release, and crucially the wet/dry knob set to 60%. Lots of plug-in comps don't have a wet/dry knob, but you can easily emulate that by copying the drum track (or whatever - vocals, bass etc) and have one version really compressed for fatness and one version uncompressed for natural dynamics and attack.
- Waves H-EQ - hi-pass filter with a gentle slope set to 30Hz to get rid of any subsonic rubbish that just eats headroom and is inaudible anyway. Boost of a few dB at 80Hz, substantial cut at 275Hz to make it less muddy, gentle boost at 3.5kHz to emphasise the click beater, though it didn't need much help cutting through.
- Pultec EQ with a further small shelf boost at 60Hz. The Pultec has a great bottom end to it, but really you could pretty much emulate both this step and the previous EQ with stock or free plug-ins.
Worth saying that I've found it quite helpful to use compression and EQ in stages, like you're sculpting (which in a way I guess you are) - so rather than trying to do multiple wild things with one EQ, or hitting one compressor really hard, a better approach sometimes can be to say use one EQ to notch out one or two nasty bits, then maybe a gentle compressor (low ratio, low threshold) to smooth out dynamics overall, then another EQ to add some top air, and another compressor just to catch some peaks and slam them pretty hard.... and so on.
Also worth noting that it matters which order you EQ and compress - most people recommend (I'd agree) that it's best to cut out nasties, then compress, then boost if required (but go easy with the boost). If you boost, then compress, you'll just be triggering the compressor with the boosted frequencies - the compressor will work harder so you'll apply more boost to try and get the effect you wanted etc until it just sounds horrible.
I did the whole building up the sound in layers with the lead vocal - I don't claim it to be perfect by any means but it's interesting to at least see what approach others have taken - it went through:
- NLS channel with a fair amount of drive to give it a little bit of grit
- H-EQ with a narrow notch cut at 240Hz, a 2dB boost at 155Hz and a hi-pass filter at 88Hz.
- CLA-2A comp doing nothing more than 2dB of gain reduction on the loudest peaks
- H-EQ again with another hi-pass filter, this time at 110Hz, slight wide low-mid boost (1dB), 1dB wide cut at 1kHz, 2dB wide boost at 6.5kHz
- Waves Vitamin adding a small amount of the highest frequency enhancement. Vitamin can be a killer if overused so I reduced the level down until I could hardly hear it, then dropped it down a touch more.
- De-esser to tame the sibilance accentuated by Vitamin and previous EQ hi-mid boost
- CLA-76 with medium attack and fast release, 4:1 ratio, about 6dB GR at most
- H-EQ - 1dB boost at 180Hz, 3dB cut at 660Hz, 1.5dB boost at 15kHz.
It's not usually that complicated! But like I said, I prefer multiple stages that do subtle things that just enhance the sound a bit and cumulative effect is what you want. Apart from anything else it's harder to screw things up
Anyway, hope that essay helps a bit, cheers, Matt
