Never Stop - Bold Beagle

[Bold Beagle]

Hey AndyGallas, thanks for your review. I agree, the vocals are a little loud in places. I also have some personal taste qualms with the mid-range distortion on the vocals that I wasn't able to remedy and perhaps overlooked the slight level imbalance.

The drums and general punchiness have suffered from a quickie mastering job and need a bit of automation, of which I don't do enough on these practice mixes. Time constraints from client mixes and my real job -_- tend to encourage laziness in that respect. Very perceptive of you to pick up on that, though. I'm impressed.

As for the guitars, they could certainly feel a little wider, although I've given them quite a bit of spread here. What you're hearing is a consequence of layering the guitars so thickly. If I remixed this, I'd probably automate a stereo enhancer on the master buss to kick in during the choruses.

Thanks again for your time and perceptive comments.

BB

[loweche6]

I think your bass could be a bit thicker (maybe add some gain? are you monoizing your low end?) during the chorus (however, I am a recovering bass junkie, so take that with a grain of salt), and that might be some of the energy that's missing. I agree with everyone so far. Really nice mix, but some kind of energy is missing from the hook. I like the vox being prominent during the verse too.

Excellent job man.

Draper

[Bold Beagle]

Thanks Draper. Compared to some of my references, it's indeed a little light on the bass. I basically pushed the mix into a limiter rather than properly master it, and that hurt the bass a bit. As it turns out, though, this is a pretty savvy crowd. So subsequent posts you'll find have fewer loudness enhancements.

As for monoizing bass, that's not something I do with a plugin on the mix bus or anything. There's just a lot of care to avoid widely panning low end sources. Individual tracks I'll monoize the bass, though, especially if the sides have more bass than the mid.

Thanks again. I owe you and several others reviews so I'll see to that shortly.

BB

[mick2015]

Greetings Bold Beagle! I like your overall balance with this mix, it works well. My only suggestions would be that the lead vocal sounds a bit detached from the rest of the music and sits a little too upfront. It could do with a little more spice to bring some more excitement to the lead vocal also, just to help it blend better. The guitars seem a bit low in chorus also and need some grit. In summary, the beagle should be bolder! I'm sure your mojo will be back in no time. Cheers.

[HbGuitar]

Hey Bold Beagle - welcome.

Overall I think you've managed to create a nice balance for the levels, you have developed a nice clear sound stage (maybe through clearing out unnecessary bottom where not required) and kept some nice dynamics too..... but your panning seems to lack confidence.

I'm not getting much sense of a panning strategy at the start of the song or during verses....everything sounds down the middle....bgvs, rhodes & guitars plus the usual bass, vox and snare....so it sounds almost mono....and to my ears, you seem to be relying on cymbals and drum loop for width during choruses

Unfortunately for us mixers, the chorus vox is delivered in a very uninteresting way so its a challenge to lift the excitement level on them. By keeping everything in the middle .....you are having to compromise the level balance to keep stuff clashing with the vocals.....If you develop more stereo width through panning....you can push the instrument levels to get that extra excitement without fear of compromising the clarity of the vocals.

cheers,

Simon

[manuke]

Hey BB. Gonna agree with most of the comments, nice mix and you know your stuff, but yeah, voc pops out a bit much and the chorus isn't really happening, but the chorus is a challenge for all of us for sure. I left the drum loops out of my mix but you've handled them well here, very subtle.

[Bold Beagle]

Thanks to everyone for your critiques. This is a really supportive and welcoming (and surprisingly enthusiastic!) group of people.

So I've gotten lots of comments to the effect that I've basically mixed the sonics and not really played much with the emotional dynamics of the mix. You're all spot on, and I rather agree.

This all stems from this mixing rut I've been in for a year or two, now, which I've joined the forum to hopefully overcome. Bottom line is, this forum is a very unusual mixing format for me. Most of the mixing I've done aside from my own music has been for hire, working directly with the musician. Generally musicians don't care much about their mix engineer's taste, so they tend to let you know what they want to drive the emotion in the song. It's easier to work towards another's expectations, and maybe it's a little too easy to forget about your own musical sensibilities. But then... that's why I'm here

Thanks for your time and toughts, and don't let me forget to get back to all of you.

BB