Ambitions Mix

[Dilly Waffles]

Hey guys,

So this is my first post here and first mix. I've downloaded a few files from here before and focused only on certain instruments or parts of a song, but this is my first full song mix.

With regards to drums, I added a Midi kick at 50hz to go along with the regular kick. I still feel like it's lacking punch in the mix though. Apart from that there's not a whole pile else added. A bit of reverb on the snare, eq across the board and gating the mics with bad spill; nothing crazy.

Bass just has a bit of compression, that's all I really added to it.

Guitars have some eq, reverb and panning. I don't like panning hard left and right because it sometimes feels like the sound of the instrument is coming from behind and just doesn't sit right in the mix, as I felt was the case here.

Vocals have heavy compression and a bit of reverb throughout. I split the prechorus in two; using heavy verb and a chorus effect on the first part and distortion and high and low pass filters on the second.
Then for the chorus I added a few layers that are hard panned and slightly pitchy so it got beefed up a touch. Also a small bit of distortion on two panned layers to emphasise the harshness of the vocals.

I had fun with the breakdown and thought I could make it quite big. The opening riffs on the guitars I have at a lower volume so there's impact when it all comes in. The really harsh vocals then have a serious amount of compression on them. I added fuzz, delay and a lot of reverb to try and make them sound huge, but I'm mixing on earphones and I'm not sure how the amount of distortion between the heavy guitars and vocals will sound on other systems.

All these points are just my thoughts behind my actions. None of them are set in stone or any expert opinion. I'm only a beginner scribbling away and would love to hear anyone's opinions. I enjoy being wrong if it means I can learn and grow.

Thanks for taking the time to read all this if you've made it this far!

[RyanThompson]

It's a good place to start. You've got some room to improve, but you've found a great place to encourage you to keep getting better! Keep practicing, keep listening, keep learning.

Did you say earphones? As in in-ear/earbuds? I wouldn't recommend that. It's worth checking out how your mixes sound on them, but full on headphones would be better(unless that's what you meant), and it's worth making at least a passing attempt at a nearfield monitoring system. I'm using Mackie CR4's, they're not high end, but they are reasonably priced and solid quality for the price, and I really like them.

Listen to a lot of stuff. Listen on the best sounding system(s) you can find. Buy the best speakers and headphones you can afford (I have Grado headphones and really like them). Read Mike's book if you haven't...I just downloaded the Kindle version and really glad I did, learned a lot already.

Listen to the best albums you know of.
Take a look at:
-Other engineers lists of best produced albums
-Really popular albums
-Albums mixed by engineers you admire/are particularly famous/mentioned in Mike's book
- If you don't have a list of those, start building one. Start with your personal favorite albums, look up who mixed it, and check out their other work.
-really look particularly for stuff you haven't listened to or heard much of - broaden your knowledge.

Specifically to your mix, it's a little dull. I'd say first off it needs more high end, and could use more clarity throughout.

Take a look at Shul's mix a thread or so back from yours. From Shul's perspective, you've picked one of the hardest multitracks on the site. Nothing wrong with that, just something to take into consideration...you might find one of the other mixes works well for where you're at. I just did some work on Sven Bornham "Stop Messing With Me" (from this library) and found that it slotted into a good place for me a lot faster than some of the other mixes I've worked on from here, so maybe take a listen to that and see if you'd like to try that one. The great thing here is that there are a ton of different songs from a wide range of genres available to practice with, and since it's practice you can pick anything you like.

Keep at it! You will find as your ears get better trained you can distinguish more and more details, and hear problems faster, and know how to fix them quicker! Thanks for sharing, and I look forward to seeing more from you!