Okay, so this mix was a real challenge. The biggest elements I had trouble figuring out how to get to fit together were the guitars and the vocals... which is pretty much the whole tune. 
The guitars had too much drive on them when they were recorded (and not quite enough mid tones) and thus are rather hard to fit into the mix because even if you reduce it to a single guitar, it's still a bit non-distinct because of the drive. Together, there they tend to fall into the background partly because the playing wasn't quite metronome precise as it should have been for something like this and its hard to get them to be aggressive because you just can't get them present enough without causing other problems. One trick I used was to copy one of the guitar tracks and put a bandpass filter on it from ~750Hz to 2kHz (to remove the bass and mud on the low end and try to remove a good deal of the fuzz on the high end), pan that center, and then add in a fair amount of that. Helped bring the guitars forward without sacrificing the overall tone.
I note Mike mentioned Judas Priest and their like in his article. One thing I've become aware of lately is the fact that on many of these older "heavy" bands, if you listen closely, the guitars aren't really quite as overdriven as they sound and that backing off the preamp gain a so it's just on the edge can give a much more satisfying result. AC/DC for example did pretty much that. Most of their tone seems to be a softly clipped tone when notes are played singly but good and heavy when chords are played however, I believe the more common sound from that era is actually more of an overdriven power amp. (Which means this isn't appartment friendly recording.) If you're a guitar player, listen closely to these two bands and you'll hear what I'm talking about. More to the point, I've become aware that the tone that works best on stage probably isn't going to work well in the studio and you need to back off the treble and the drive a bit if you're a hard rock or metal band.
The drone of the bass guitar was another challenge. It's one of those "get it wrong and everyone gets a headache and turns the music off" sort of parts. I finally decided to do some parallel processing to try to treat the upper and lower range separately and then blend them back together so I could get a good, solid sub-100Hz tone but also have a fair bit of the 600-1000Hz to actually hear the note. Didn't quite work out the way I had hoped but it's acceptable.
The vocals were another nightmare. Lots of time in Melodyne here and lots of experimentation with different compressors and different compressor settings. I've been concerned lately that I've been over compressing my vocals but here, that was the only way to get the lead to settle down so I compensated by using a somewhat longer attack time to try to retain a bit of the edge.
The backing vocals were another matter entirely. The whole harmony structure just doesn't want to fit the song and was horridly out of tune to start with. First thing I did was to try to limit the drift and warble out of those vocals so that only the lead did that and thus get them to blend better. I notice in Mike's mix it sounds like he may have removed the lower part entirely and I thought about that. Anyway, I finally got it to a point where I'm at least not unhappy with it.
So here's my version of this. Like I said, not 100% satisfied I got it all right (and some of that is just me not getting along with the specific sub-genre) but I think its to a point where the client would be pleased with it, or at least be at the polishing phase of the transaction, just looking for fixes, not rip-the-headphones-off sort of response.
The guitars had too much drive on them when they were recorded (and not quite enough mid tones) and thus are rather hard to fit into the mix because even if you reduce it to a single guitar, it's still a bit non-distinct because of the drive. Together, there they tend to fall into the background partly because the playing wasn't quite metronome precise as it should have been for something like this and its hard to get them to be aggressive because you just can't get them present enough without causing other problems. One trick I used was to copy one of the guitar tracks and put a bandpass filter on it from ~750Hz to 2kHz (to remove the bass and mud on the low end and try to remove a good deal of the fuzz on the high end), pan that center, and then add in a fair amount of that. Helped bring the guitars forward without sacrificing the overall tone.
I note Mike mentioned Judas Priest and their like in his article. One thing I've become aware of lately is the fact that on many of these older "heavy" bands, if you listen closely, the guitars aren't really quite as overdriven as they sound and that backing off the preamp gain a so it's just on the edge can give a much more satisfying result. AC/DC for example did pretty much that. Most of their tone seems to be a softly clipped tone when notes are played singly but good and heavy when chords are played however, I believe the more common sound from that era is actually more of an overdriven power amp. (Which means this isn't appartment friendly recording.) If you're a guitar player, listen closely to these two bands and you'll hear what I'm talking about. More to the point, I've become aware that the tone that works best on stage probably isn't going to work well in the studio and you need to back off the treble and the drive a bit if you're a hard rock or metal band.
The drone of the bass guitar was another challenge. It's one of those "get it wrong and everyone gets a headache and turns the music off" sort of parts. I finally decided to do some parallel processing to try to treat the upper and lower range separately and then blend them back together so I could get a good, solid sub-100Hz tone but also have a fair bit of the 600-1000Hz to actually hear the note. Didn't quite work out the way I had hoped but it's acceptable.
The vocals were another nightmare. Lots of time in Melodyne here and lots of experimentation with different compressors and different compressor settings. I've been concerned lately that I've been over compressing my vocals but here, that was the only way to get the lead to settle down so I compensated by using a somewhat longer attack time to try to retain a bit of the edge.
The backing vocals were another matter entirely. The whole harmony structure just doesn't want to fit the song and was horridly out of tune to start with. First thing I did was to try to limit the drift and warble out of those vocals so that only the lead did that and thus get them to blend better. I notice in Mike's mix it sounds like he may have removed the lower part entirely and I thought about that. Anyway, I finally got it to a point where I'm at least not unhappy with it.
So here's my version of this. Like I said, not 100% satisfied I got it all right (and some of that is just me not getting along with the specific sub-genre) but I think its to a point where the client would be pleased with it, or at least be at the polishing phase of the transaction, just looking for fixes, not rip-the-headphones-off sort of response.
Old West Audio
