Widow

[toraabe]

Hopefully you will enjoy it
Correcting some minor errors from yesterday.

[azwayne]

Sounds like a good, solid mix to me, overall.

Two comments only...

Be wary though of applying effects across busses. What you have is a nice touch but it borders on making things feel a little unstable.

Also, you want to think about how the song should build up and carry energy. Typically a song should have something along the lines of an opening, development, building momentum, a climax, and a resolution. In a way, music is literature for the ears and many of the same principles apply. It should grab hold of you and not let you go until it's said what it has to say. If it maintains an even keel throughout, eventually you start looking around for something else to do.

[toraabe]

Here i have used both several inserted effects on each track (both dynamic and effects) but also common bus reverbs . Just in order to create the sound i wanted. As doing concert sound for more than 17 years, studio-sound is much less compromise than concert sound, but still retains a lot of the same thinking. From my point of view to make a good mix is just how to make the different trax melt together in the best way. Maybe they don't sound so good independently, but after summing you know how to reach what you want.. You just don't want instrument / tracks to fight against each other. Like drums / overhead snare over /under and so on where phase / time alignment is a key factor to make things melt together.

Regarding this song it was just a quick mix just doing what i have learned and it is far from perfect, but i wanted it to sound tight with enough richness in both ends.

Sounds like a good, solid mix to me, overall.

Two comments only...

Be wary though of applying effects across busses. What you have is a nice touch but it borders on making things feel a little unstable.

Also, you want to think about how the song should build up and carry energy. Typically a song should have something along the lines of an opening, development, building momentum, a climax, and a resolution. In a way, music is literature for the ears and many of the same principles apply. It should grab hold of you and not let you go until it's said what it has to say. If it maintains an even keel throughout, eventually you start looking around for something else to do.

[azwayne]

Hey, it's always an experiment. That works for me.

I'd also love to get some live sound experience sometime. Maybe I'll get lucky...

[toraabe]

Remember that when it comes to live sound first you need to know the console you are working with. And you need to be able to work fast, because things happens.

Hey, it's always an experiment. That works for me.

I'd also love to get some live sound experience sometime. Maybe I'll get lucky...

[azwayne]

and that's exactly why I'd love to get some experience. "Don't think about it, just make it happen..."

[toraabe]

You just need to get some hands on, but when it comes to live sound, you also need to tune in a PA system, crossovers, EQ settings, delay. What normally works is to delay the PA the amount of meters the drumset and amplifiers are behind the speakers.

When it comes to my mix here, i have used what many hates because of the 80" Gated reverb. But it works, try it.. Either inserted or through busses with the source sidechained as trigger..

and that's exactly why I'd love to get some experience. "Don't think about it, just make it happen..."

[The_Metallurgist]

Also, you want to think about how the song should build up and carry energy. Typically a song should have something along the lines of an opening, development, building momentum, a climax, and a resolution. In a way, music is literature for the ears and many of the same principles apply. It should grab hold of you and not let you go until it's said what it has to say. If it maintains an even keel throughout, eventually you start looking around for something else to do.

awesome advice, not merely for this mix but as a general policy for mind-set before hitting the faders i'd say. one of the problems in a way, is how things have been arranged; some songs don't actually give us engineers much scope to build on, unless we start pushing and pulling stuff around, muting and so on and so forth and upsetting the musicians [for the benefit of the audience's engagement and better music sales]! lol

did you feel you wanted to hear it play the second time as soon as it had finished? i think that's a good test. another is whether the head bobs.....feet tap....chair rocks.... though it's not necessary it's in that order or done simultaneously!

[The_Metallurgist]

focusing on the spectral balance generally herewith: i note there's nothing happening in the low-mids <400Hz'ish, other than the bass droner and some percussive elements. that bass can get repetitive, eh? though much of that issue stems from the arrangement, i'd explore some options in how this could be managed (eg to help differentiate between verse and chorus). at the other end of the spectrum in the treble, it's busy. for example, there's a lot of snare-type material present right up in the HM and HF area (the last octave), contributing to this zone's congestion bringing a sense of brittleness along with it? what you're fighting with because of this IMO FWIW, is the relative lack of clarity and presence in the vocal, not helped by the amount of material in the mid channel which is tending to fog things up; the percussion especially has a tendency to mask here. given the bias towards the percussive elements in your vision by making them frontal in the illusion of depth, all that spectral material, coupled with it's amplitude, and the lower amplitude of the vocal set back behind them, suggests you might have made life difficult in your vision? it's not something that can simply be resolved by pushing up the vocal fader, unfortunately, because everything has a consequence. tricky.

the [stereo] modulation of the bass-line encroaches upon the side channel quite extensively. ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, except the weight of spectrum coming with it makes listening in headphones heavy going....fatiguing even. bring in the abundance of treble in the HF [coming from the percussion in the main] and this tends to make it difficult for a listener to want to hang in for the 4 minutes. the argument as to whether bass is directional below 100Hz, it makes sense distributing the power and energy equally across two speakers (i.e. bass mono). not many people in the real world sit in the sweet spot, and rather a lot of consumer boxes are going to be bass-shy and will find delivering it a challenge - they will try however, and in doing so it can often cause the mid range to lose focus, for example - right where the vocal is here. i'd suggest perhaps, that it might be better to lose the weight of the bass's stereo material in the sides so only the upper harmonics (say, above 200-250Hz?) are given the stereo? i've not mixed this, so i've not had the advantage of fiddling around with it, but that's where i'd look first. we can sometimes get quite drawn into bass and manipulate frequencies much lower down than we need in order to find some action, however, it's surprising how much higher up we can work it and make a better effect while at the same time giving ourselves some headroom and bringing something with the voltage. i thought this mix would have benefited maybe, from more material in the low-mids (<500Hz) besides the bass and low-percussion parts?

we humans have a sensitive spot in our audible range around the 4kHz. if you don't pay attention to it, it can be an uncomfortable frequency to endure, irrespective of duration. it's got something to do with our ear canals, apparently. this is one of the reasons the NS10's were popular....they over-emphasised it, forcing/encouraging the engineer to pay attention to it. digital signals can be a nightmare....and not forgetting that mp3 or lossy material can expose material we might not wish to be exposed by filtering out material either side. there's a synth which comes in now and again which is a likely candidate?

i'd have low-passed the percussion rather than boost it into 20kHz. and the voice intro might have benefited from more level....it would have helped to give the song impact/impression/vibe/interest on the way in? but that's a subjective thaaang..

glad you didn't push this hard into the limiter though.....you allowed the dynamic to remain, which i really appreciated.

cheers,,

[toraabe]

What I did was first to make the elements sound a bit betterh than they did, because both vocal and drums lacked brightness what I normally like. Dark mixed drums soften sounds foggy without clarity. Remember that the raw material here is not the best, but ok.

The bass modulation consists both of chorus and flanger. I did it mostly because I wanted just to see how it worked out, and to make a discussion about it.
regarding low mid 3-600 this is an area that I normally am very careful about and when this is too high, the expression often gets this box sound in which I hate. The Vocal could be a dB louder. The final mix just ran through a multiband compressor with the thresold settings so it barely hits. Ratio 2:1.

Normally I am doing Live sound since 17 years, so this was just a quick mix.
Gated reverb on all vocal, and Drums + some elements. + other elements

Prefered live console. Yamaha Ls9 og Yamaha digital consoles in general.

focusing on the spectral balance generally herewith: i note there's nothing happening in the low-mids <400Hz'ish, other than the bass droner and some percussive elements. that bass can get repetitive, eh? though much of that issue stems from the arrangement, i'd explore some options in how this could be managed (eg to help differentiate between verse and chorus). at the other end of the spectrum in the treble, it's busy. for example, there's a lot of snare-type material present right up in the HM and HF area (the last octave), contributing to this zone's congestion bringing a sense of brittleness along with it? what you're fighting with because of this IMO FWIW, is the relative lack of clarity and presence in the vocal, not helped by the amount of material in the mid channel which is tending to fog things up; the percussion especially has a tendency to mask here. given the bias towards the percussive elements in your vision by making them frontal in the illusion of depth, all that spectral material, coupled with it's amplitude, and the lower amplitude of the vocal set back behind them, suggests you might have made life difficult in your vision? it's not something that can simply be resolved by pushing up the vocal fader, unfortunately, because everything has a consequence. tricky.

the [stereo] modulation of the bass-line encroaches upon the side channel quite extensively. ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, except the weight of spectrum coming with it makes listening in headphones heavy going....fatiguing even. bring in the abundance of treble in the HF [coming from the percussion in the main] and this tends to make it difficult for a listener to want to hang in for the 4 minutes. the argument as to whether bass is directional below 100Hz, it makes sense distributing the power and energy equally across two speakers (i.e. bass mono). not many people in the real world sit in the sweet spot, and rather a lot of consumer boxes are going to be bass-shy and will find delivering it a challenge - they will try however, and in doing so it can often cause the mid range to lose focus, for example - right where the vocal is here. i'd suggest perhaps, that it might be better to lose the weight of the bass's stereo material in the sides so only the upper harmonics (say, above 200-250Hz?) are given the stereo? i've not mixed this, so i've not had the advantage of fiddling around with it, but that's where i'd look first. we can sometimes get quite drawn into bass and manipulate frequencies much lower down than we need in order to find some action, however, it's surprising how much higher up we can work it and make a better effect while at the same time giving ourselves some headroom and bringing something with the voltage. i thought this mix would have benefited maybe, from more material in the low-mids (<500Hz) besides the bass and low-percussion parts?

we humans have a sensitive spot in our audible range around the 4kHz. if you don't pay attention to it, it can be an uncomfortable frequency to endure, irrespective of duration. it's got something to do with our ear canals, apparently. this is one of the reasons the NS10's were popular....they over-emphasised it, forcing/encouraging the engineer to pay attention to it. digital signals can be a nightmare....and not forgetting that mp3 or lossy material can expose material we might not wish to be exposed by filtering out material either side. there's a synth which comes in now and again which is a likely candidate?

i'd have low-passed the percussion rather than boost it into 20kHz. and the voice intro might have benefited from more level....it would have helped to give the song impact/impression/vibe/interest on the way in? but that's a subjective thaaang..

glad you didn't push this hard into the limiter though.....you allowed the dynamic to remain, which i really appreciated.

cheers,,