Way Of Life (New song from Lead Inc... :D)

[Dangerous]

Just listened to Mix#2 with headphones this time. Nothing has changed with my opinion. This is still a great sounding mix. I really love the drums, I feel they are sitting in the mix perfectly.
You should be proud of this one! Shul.

[thedon]

Mix 2 Sounds Great can hear a little less kick beater.

Well Done

[Shul]

Hey thanks Dave and Don

I'm glad its still a good sounding mix.
Thanks for the kind words!

[wurstdrummer]

Nice one, keep it up!

[Shul]

Nice one, keep it up!

Thanks ! Its always great to mix good music.
Thanks for supplying the tracks.

[mick2015]

Hey Shul, solid mix buddy. Great balance and punch. The only thing is the level and EQ decisions on the distorted guitars seem a bit flat and muddy to me. If you pulled out a bit of low-mids and maybe added a bit of 5khz it might make them pop out a little more. Cheers, Mick.

[dcp10200]

Hey Shul, I'm basing my comments on the second version of your mix.

From listening to your mix the balance is good for the most part, the clean delay guitar seems to be very dry and actually louder than the lead vocals, the vocals in the prechorus also get dominated by the guitars. Try using a mono to stereo doubler plugin to spread out the clean guitar and turning it down abit to help it fit more with the vocals.

The toms in your mix seem pretty wet, it's most notable when they play in the build ups and kind of has an artificial ambiance sound to them. Try adjusting the balance of the reverb so that the early reflections are more prominent and the tail just is quieter. Also turn down the verb buss a little.

The bass tone here sounds quite good, a little clean for my taste but still good.

Vocals are also nice, I like the little delay on "way of life" at the end.

Hope this helps,
Dcp

[Shul]

Hey Shul, solid mix buddy. Great balance and punch. The only thing is the level and EQ decisions on the distorted guitars seem a bit flat and muddy to me. If you pulled out a bit of low-mids and maybe added a bit of 5khz it might make them pop out a little more. Cheers, Mick.

Hey Mick thanks for the feedback.

On the distortion guitars I was looking for a more analog warm sound on them. I tried boosting some 5khz on them but It began to conflict with the vocals.. which was very hard to make them seat the way I wanted in the mix.
I Used 3 systems to hear them. My monitors.. an average headphones and my old 97 truck stereo to see how the guitars translate on each system. I left them the way they are because they translate well in all three. I suppose we can leave this eq decision under the taste category

[Shul]

Hey Shul, I'm basing my comments on the second version of your mix.

From listening to your mix the balance is good for the most part, the clean delay guitar seems to be very dry and actually louder than the lead vocals, the vocals in the prechorus also get dominated by the guitars. Try using a mono to stereo doubler plugin to spread out the clean guitar and turning it down abit to help it fit more with the vocals.

The toms in your mix seem pretty wet, it's most notable when they play in the build ups and kind of has an artificial ambiance sound to them. Try adjusting the balance of the reverb so that the early reflections are more prominent and the tail just is quieter. Also turn down the verb buss a little.

The bass tone here sounds quite good, a little clean for my taste but still good.

Vocals are also nice, I like the little delay on "way of life" at the end.

Hope this helps,
Dcp

Thanks for the observations Dcp

I'm actually using that stereo fx you mentioned. If you were to hear the mix in mono you will hear that the clean guitars actually are below the lead vocal. Stereo fx just makes them appear bigger and louder.

The decision of leaving the delay guitars that loud is because without them you basically have no song, they are the song driver and from my perspective is what makes this song likable and interesting. I actually had a rough mix with the guitars at lower level and they didn't have that desired impact in my opinion.

Question: When you say delay guitars are louder than lead vocal.. do you mean the lead vocals are being masked and not understandable? or can you still understand what she is saying and is just the volume issue for you? as I'm listening to the mix again even though the vocals are somewhat in there I can still hear her singing.
I could be wrong so I'd be great if anyone can give me feedback on her actual singing.

About the clean guitar sounding too dry. There is an "arena" reverb in the track to smooth the peaks on there as I found the already processed track too harsh. I even lowered a great deal around the 3k-5k area to keep those peaks on check. I'm actually glad to hear you think they are dry because that's what I was looking for . The delay on them alone creates that ambiance for the song that I think fits perfectly in the grid. I didn't feel it needed anything else other than what I mentioned.

Regarding toms. I believe you are right... I overdid the reverb Lol I think I normally abuse the reverb here. Not saying you are wrong here but I would like to explain why. The toms on the recording sounded too plastic like. they had a boost on the 2k-6k area that was causing nasty peaks everywhere. (this is the reason for the plasticky sound imo) So I put an eq on them to cut all of those harsh freq. to try to get the most natural tone possible. Seen that it actually worked when I played with the whole song.. I then used the reverb to smooth the peaks out even more.

Not saying you are completely wrong.. I'm just explaining why I did what I did but I agree on the reverb it could come down. I just don't like dry drums.. never did.

Thanks for the great observations.

[dcp10200]

Hey Shul, I'm basing my comments on the second version of your mix.

From listening to your mix the balance is good for the most part, the clean delay guitar seems to be very dry and actually louder than the lead vocals, the vocals in the prechorus also get dominated by the guitars. Try using a mono to stereo doubler plugin to spread out the clean guitar and turning it down abit to help it fit more with the vocals.

The toms in your mix seem pretty wet, it's most notable when they play in the build ups and kind of has an artificial ambiance sound to them. Try adjusting the balance of the reverb so that the early reflections are more prominent and the tail just is quieter. Also turn down the verb buss a little.

The bass tone here sounds quite good, a little clean for my taste but still good.

Vocals are also nice, I like the little delay on "way of life" at the end.

Hope this helps,
Dcp

Thanks for the observations Dcp

I'm actually using that stereo fx you mentioned. If you were to hear the mix in mono you will hear that the clean guitars actually are below the lead vocal. Stereo fx just makes them appear bigger and louder.

The decision of leaving the delay guitars that loud is because without them you basically have no song, they are the song driver and from my perspective is what makes this song likable and interesting. I actually had a rough mix with the guitars at lower level and they didn't have that desired impact in my opinion.

Question: When you say delay guitars are louder than lead vocal.. do you mean the lead vocals are being masked and not understandable? or can you still understand what she is saying and is just the volume issue for you? as I'm listening to the mix again even though the vocals are somewhat in there I can still hear her singing.
I could be wrong so I'd be great if anyone can give me feedback on her actual singing.

About the clean guitar sounding too dry. There is an "arena" reverb in the track to smooth the peaks on there as I found the already processed track too harsh. I even lowered a great deal around the 3k-5k area to keep those peaks on check. I'm actually glad to hear you think they are dry because that's what I was looking for . The delay on them alone creates that ambiance for the song that I think fits perfectly in the grid. I didn't feel it needed anything else other than what I mentioned.

Regarding toms. I believe you are right... I overdid the reverb Lol I think I normally abuse the reverb here. Not saying you are wrong here but I would like to explain why. The toms on the recording sounded too plastic like. they had a boost on the 2k-6k area that was causing nasty peaks everywhere. (this is the reason for the plasticky sound imo) So I put an eq on them to cut all of those harsh freq. to try to get the most natural tone possible. Seen that it actually worked when I played with the whole song.. I then used the reverb to smooth the peaks out even more.

Not saying you are completely wrong.. I'm just explaining why I did what I did but I agree on the reverb it could come down. I just don't like dry drums.. never did.

Thanks for the great observations.

By the delay guitar being louder, I mean that they are fighting the lead vocals for dominance in the mix (both can be heard but the vocals really want to be the main force here, the bass also carries that part down the octave), from what I hear at least that delay guitar seems more suited to being further down so when the pre chorus and then the chorus hits, the more distorted guitars have more of an impact.

The verb on the toms makes more sense now, still the verb really makes the toms sound way over the top (think 80's Phil Collins). I also like a more natural ambiance on drums which may colour my opinion but changing the type of verb or just holding back on the verb a little maybe worth a try.

The guitar mono to stereo trick you did really doesn't seem evident, for reference I'm talking about the verse guitars, it sounds like the track was duplicated and panned hard left and hard right resulting in a "big mono" sound (it just sounds louder). What needs to be done for that to work is a chorus type effect blended in on a buss or on the track itself. Personally I used the Waves Doubler for this but I think there are some freeware versions of that plugin.