MerryGold: Motherload

[ALRmix]

Comments please

[WaltsAudio]

Comments please

Hi ALRmix,

Interesting soundstage - somewhat of a stadium sound.

The chorus seems very compressed - you might get a better spectral balance through those areas if you back off on compression and also breath more emotion into it. Don't be afraid to sacrifice loudness to get dynamic range. Dynamics can be used to bring emotion...

The vocal has some flange going on. I don't know whether that was intentional or an artifact of another effect. Maybe it's my taste, but I'm not sure that fits in the context of this sound. Just from a realistic sound standpoint, this slow revolving flange would not likely occur in a large stadium even if the band tried to do it - the room would cancel most of it.

The upright is also interesting - you included a lot of the plucking sound - I like it. As much as I like it, I have a hard time picturing much of that sound carrying through in a stadium. Maybe the upright needs to be included more in the stadium effect to make that believable.

The human brain, even without any audio training or knowledge, is pretty good at figuring out what sounds would and would not be present in a big stadium, so if you want to create that sound, it is very worthwhile to make it believable.

I think we hit the extreme opposites of soundstaging - yours being in a big stadium from a perspective of being on the other side of the room and mine being in a much closer, intimate proximity of a smaller stage. Feel free to check mine out as a comparative contrast.

Walt

[ALRmix]

Hi Walt - thanks for taking the time to listen and comment!

I'll preface everything by saying that I am very new to mixing - but having a great time learning!
The choruses weren't any more compressed than the rest - what happened was I recorded a harmony vocal part and it was very boomy and boxy - so when it came in it just muddied everything up - live and learn
From listening to reference tracks I found that my mixes were too bright and dynamic so I am trying to tone them down. On this one I went way too far - though I really like the tone of the vocal.
Rather than a "space" I was trying to create a mood for the song - I love the line "in this wilderness we have become undone" - so I was trying to create a far away, dreamy mood.
As far as the bass goes I was using that as a metaphysical "centre of being" that was still there even though they had become lost and undone - plus I just like the sound with the plucking in
Anyway, thanks for your comments and back to the mixing board