Please be critical ;)

[Coco]

Hi guys, new folk in town ! First mix posted on forum I hope you like it
Don't be gentle, don't be afraid to say something it ill only be a GREAT help !

It is really a cool song, like this gendre. So I will do a quick description of what I did :
-There was plenty of spill because recorded live so I gated what I could and left raw where it sounded bad. The lead vocal was pretty tough with the spill (I decided not to gate), some hard plosives (would like some tips to fix those) and volume difference.

DRUMS:
Nothing crazy, boosted the lows on the kick a bit around 140Hz for 3 dB. I picked the AK47 room mic, witch I did parallel processing and compressed it a lot (but blend it in very low)
Did a return track for the snare with some saturation for a snappier sound.
BASS:
Used the DI take, much cleaner than amp take ...
So I did I low pass at around 1K and did again a return track were I use guitar rig to get some extra mids in there and high passed around 1k or little lower.
GUITAR:
I found that the guitar got a great tone, great playing helps a lot haha. I did high pass at 250Hz. Scooped a bit of low mid and boosted around 4/5K.
KEYS:
I left the keys stereo, it was nice and full. Tried to do some left and right EQ were for exemple I curve out 3 dB at 1K left, I boost 3 dB at 1K right etc ...
VOCALS:
They were tricky, I actually spent some time cleaning hat I could ...
On the back vocals I panned one middle, one hard left, and one hard right. Tried to complement them with some gentle EQ moves a little bit like with the keys.
I did do a return track to the main vocal where I kept everything under 1K, saturate it and compressed it pretty hard again. Is volume good to you ? Little verb and delay on main.

Used 3 Verbs, one short, one mid, one long. Everything going trough those except the bass.

I Find that the keys gets lost a bit time to time ... :/

I did nothing on the master. Mixed it with Ableton 9 with 60% stock plug-ins.

And yeah that's basically it ! Would love criticism

[azwayne]

Hi,

In answer to your question above...

WRT plossives and sibilance, in the analogue world, you get to ride your line trim and listen closely. Not recommended because of generational losses but once you "get it", you might even bounce it to a free track so you can get yours or your assistant's hands off that control so it doesn't get bumped at the wrong time during final mixdown. (Also makes the recall less tedious to replicate.)

Much easier in the DAW world because of the graphical representation of the waveform and the flexibility of automation controls. Start by enabling your clip gain automation. That's where you best deal with that. Remember, we're ahead of any other processors. They'll perform better if the garbage is removed before it gets to them. Solo the vocal track and start it playing back. Listen closely to where the offending parts are and pause when you find one. Localize it so that you're sure it's on the screen. Zoom in so you can see the effect in the graphical display, set your plaback marker 3 or 4 seconds ahead of it and listen. You'll be able to see what the plossive does to the wave envelope. As soon as you recognize what it looks like, it'll be easy to spot elsewhere. Same with sibilance.

Now as for how to deal with it, the answer is that you use your automation envelope almost like an expander, in a sense. What I do is drop a node point just ahead of the envelope by a few milliseconds. Drop another one right at the peak of the *pop*. Then drop one about three times that distance further right but you have to use your ears to find the right spot. Then all you have to do is lower that middle node down until the worst of it goes away (might be as much as 12-15dB and perhaps more) and you end up with a nice smooth attack, as though the vocalist had backed off or turned her head just slightly as she hit that hard syllable.

Sibilance is handled a bit differently but the idea is the same. You may have to shelve a section down with a gradual transition in and out, depending on what the singer did. In both the case of sibilance and plossives, you may also have to use more than three nodes. You might have to do a gradual decline to just ahead of the worst bit then go down sharply but back up more quickly than you would otherwise and then a gentle transition out of the last 3-6dB of drop. As always, use your ears and don't say "done" until you can back up a phrase or two and feel it flow gracefully both soloed and within the mix.

(And a side note: Good vocal technique doesn't require a pop filter or even much of a compressor but few vocalists are ever taught such techniques because they are simply never exposed to them. Go look at Michael Buble live and watch how he handles his microphone. He's doing the job of both by angling it and moving it in and out as he sings.)

[thedon]

Hey Coco ,I like you mix a lot sounds pretty well balanced and nice vocal effects and vibe .
Just some thoughts while having a little listen,can hear a lot of reverb on the kick ,I think the the kick would have more punch and definition with with less or no reverb and maybe more room mike or parallel compressed drum kit added to the mix can hear a boxy resonance on the kick which maybe enhanced by the reverb around 140-150hz which could be filtered with a parametric or dynamic eq.A touch more attack and top end on the snare to cut through would sound cool a sampled snare might do the trick.Wondering how many db compression you used on the vocals as sound a touch restricted , it is best to treat any resonances ,peaks Etc before compression by Eqing low end plosives which is one thing i have had to deal with on a live recordings using Dynamic mics.
Good job
Cheers

[Coco]

Thank you guys for your answers, it's really cool !

Is clip gain automation the same than the fader's track automation ? I've been doingsome of that on this mix. Nice heads up azwayne

Thedon, I have indeed reverb on the kick all the song. In fact, a applied the verb for all the drum kit wich leave me with no control, next mix i'll do differently. Again, you are right, I did a 3 dB boost on the kick at 140hZ, found that the kick needed a bassier sound, is it that bad ? ^^

Snare could be better I agree ! I'll ad a touch of parallel processing.

I used two compressors on the main vocal, because I found it very dynamic, she can sing aha So I looked up, it goes up to -10 of GR on both comp. (you can actually here the compressor clear around 0:43 when she says "slow down") What do you mean by "restricted" ?

Well I always EQ before compression, but i'm not sure to fully understand what you want to mean !

Thank you again, I listened few of your mix this past two months and you rock ! Cheers

[azwayne]

Not really.. Fader automation (aka volume automation) is after the FX bin. It's an output control. Clip gain is before it and is an input control. If you are in ProTools, you'll see a little fader at the bottom left of each clip that can be used to control its overall level + / - 6dB. Usefull for passages where a vocalist leaned in on the mic and it's too loud for that verse for your compressor to respond consistantly. In this example, split your clip around that loud section and then drop it down to a decent level and then volume automate it where the song suggests it should be. IMO, better to go this route than trying to apply automation to the compressor's threshold control (or input gain if it has one) even though that effectively accomplishes the same job. If you look at your automation options you should be able to find a way to automate that specific control. Most DAWs today pretty much allow you to automate almost any control you have access to that impacts the way a clip is processed during playback.

I use Sonar X3. At the top of the channel strip is a trim control, just like you'd see on an analogue console. That's where I'm hitting this. Same control, different location. Some call it one thing, some call it another.

I can't speak for Ableton since I've never used it. Check your local help database or the vendor's online documentation to be sure. If you don't have this control, or a way to access it, you're hardly sunk. Create a post-fader aux-send on this strip or route it's output to an aux bus. (Sonar doesn't let me route the output of one channel to another channel or a bus output back to a channel so I'd have to do the former. ProTools would want the latter setup although it could do both.) Do your automation with that fader then stick your FX on the aux bus (which you ought to be able to create and/or alter to be stereo or mono as appropriate to the source.)

Usually, there are at least two ways to accomplish any task and neither of them are necessarily wrong although one is often easier than the other. Which you use depends on what you're doing.

What thedon meant, if I read right, was that he feels that you might be cutting too much of the attack off the vocals or otherwise removing too much dynamic range and the result is that he feels that the vocals sound artificially restrained and lack punch. Bypass your compressors a few times and listen to the difference in the raw vocal vs compressed, focusing on her attack on a given word and the dynamics of the various syllables of each, and you'll probably hear what he's talking about. Headphones, closed eyes, and lots of lovely hush in the room around you are good for this exercise.

As far as EQ, the rule of thumb is--and remember that rules are often made to be broken--that you EQ before the compressor to remove things you don't want the compressor to respond to. EG putting a low cut filter on a snare drum to remove the bass drum thump. You EQ after compression to shape the tonal balance of the instrument. If you do that before compression, the compressor will tend to undo your EQ changes. In many cases, I have an EQ each side of my compressor chain just for that reason. Sometimes you'll find that what you wanted to remove before compression has crept back in as a result of makeup gain and you have to notch it again afterwards. A good example of problems created through compression is drum overheads and room mics. After compression, quite often the cymbals are too ringy or have too much shimmer and you have to dip 4kHz and/or (usually) 8kHz to get them to behave again or you can't add enough of that mic into your mix to get the sound you want without spoiling the drums.