The Dice Mix... New to mixing so please be critical

[ThreeNil81]

Here we go. Feel free to give me ALL of your input. Be very critical, please. I am very much trying to learn here. I have been mixing right at 5 months. I have done 2 other full band mixes and a handful of piano/bass/vocal covers. I found this site that let me download multi track songs for practice and so.. I practice. Glad to be here, hope you guys dig the mix.

[thedon]

Nice Mix I like it, just missing some balance with the centre and side channels as the panned guitars are jumping out of the mix a touch,maybe just need less 200hz area.
The low frequencies could come up a touch but could be ok if the panned guitars are not as upfront.
Love the vocal effects.
Just some thoughts while having a listen.
WellDone

Cheers

[ThreeNil81]

Nice Mix I like it, just missing some balance with the centre and side channels as the panned guitars are jumping out of the mix a touch,maybe just need less 200hz area.
The low frequencies could come up a touch but could be ok if the panned guitars are not as upfront.
Love the vocal effects.
Just some thoughts while having a listen.
WellDone

Cheers

Thanks for the critique! Very helpful.

[ThreeNil81]

Anyone else have any constructive feedback on this one?

[ThreeNil81]

I made some of the changes mentioned by thedon. Greatly appreciated. I hope someone else will respond.

Thanks

[Dustin3P]

I think the mix is pretty good as far as balance but the vocals could be up more. The mid-range is a little thick around 400-500Hz. A cut by about 2-3dB there would fix that. Overall i like it!!

[ThreeNil81]

Is it thick in a bad way? I mean guitars are best at the midrange and it didn't seem to effect the bass coming through. Just wanting to understand how lowering that helps. Everything seemed to fit as far as tone. I couldn't tell anything was muddled up but that's probably because I'm still pretty new to it.

As far as vocals, I thought about bringing them up but felt that it was too much in spots and not enough in others. So I used automation and set it in the middle.

[Dustin3P]

Its mid range heavy, kind of boxy. Reference your track to a commercial mix, make sure they are at the same level and listen to the mids of that track compared to yours. They will be full but clear. Yours are full, but not clear. It also sounds like you did more boosting than cutting when trying to clean out room for each instrument. Once you do a reference to a commercial mix you will hear that muddiness in the mids.

[loweche6]

I second Dustin on this. Your levels in general are pretty good, but they are definitely mid heavy. However, there is a fine fine line between anemic/full and clear/too thick.

I like your artistic delay uses, but maybe play around with timing a little bit on some of them. They don't quite hit with the music ("roll the dice little girl" is an example of it). It may technically be in time, but it doesn't seem to hit the groove of the song.

I do think your snare will have more impact when clearing out some of the low mids (the biggest offender is the bass with the gits being a close second).

Maybe your gits could be higher during the choruses. It seems like they drop coming into the 3rd chorus before the bridge. You may have them coming up in your automation, but it almost sounds like your Buss Compressor is being hit harder during the second chorus, so the overall volume dropped (except your drums and vocals don't seem to come down that much, so maybe it is automation).

Definitely make sure you are A/Bing those commercial mixes and various volumes, btw, so that you can hear how your cans and mixes are affected just by changing your overall volume.

Nice work, keep it up!

Draper

*addendum: Your bass is too loud overall by the end of the mix. I like the effort to get more energy in the end, but the bass becomes very prominent.

[loweche6]

P.S. the way to get comments on your mix is to comment of the mixes of others, btw! Even if you feel you're not up to a level to comment, comment on what you are hearing. If you liked a mix, tell the OP and why, or if you didn't like a mix, even if you can't put your finger on the specifics on why you don't like something, it will help you and, possibly, the OP in the long run. It may just open up a discourse between the two of you, so you can get their reasonings of the compromises they made (I've heard that mixing is just a long string of compromises).

Not a sermon but. . .well, how things go around here!

;-)