05-09-2016, 11:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2016, 12:21 AM by JadeWilliamson.)
My notes:
Kick - You should replace that kick immediately. It's super duper distracting. The track they gave is absolute garbage. I hope you agree. It also seems like a lot of your kick sound is from the overheads, and I personally advise against doing that. Every time the kick hits it dips your cymbals out in a bad way. It also makes you lean on the bass for the entire mix's low end content, which seems to be damaging the master. I do like the attempt at giving the kick a high end presence. I have to applaud you for that.
Snare - I would like to hear a bit more snare actually. There's a lot of cymbal bleed in the snare mic so I know it's hard to gate that out (if you tried). But if you can manage, I think a compressor with a 10-20ms attack and a 2:1-4:1 ratio will make the snare pop through without needing too much makeup gain. This is a very poppy snare with not much body. I wish they had provided a bottom head track so we could get a little more sustain out of it. I found myself going to extreme measures to get any sustain out of it. I usually end up getting a good 60% of my snare sound (outside of the initial pop) from the overheads. Reverb alone can't do it.
Vocals - I like the wideness of the backup parts, but that's kind of a double-edged sword. If you pan your vocals 100%, they will get in the way of the guitar, assuming your guitars are hard panned like they "should be" (I'm granting that there are no hard rules with any of this). When I work backup vocals, I will pan a max of 75% either way. Since this song has six backup tracks, I did 75%, 50%, and 25%. That way everything has its own space to work. There's more space that needs to be created than simply in frequency ranges. Also I would like to hear the backup vocals come down and have ambience added instead. Try a reverb send per track that's panned opposite where the track is panned. For example, Vocal X's track is panned 25% left, so pan the reverb send 25% right. Solo these changes and you'll hear a massive difference from what you had before. Also try speeding up the attack time and slowing down the release time on the backup vocals vs the lead vocal. That'll let the lead vocal pop through and add body to the backup vocals.
Bass - I like the bass, but I feel like it could use a gentle high pass (read: 6dB/oct) to about the 100 hZ range. Lots of very low frequencies in there. I feel like that in conjunction with the kick notes I sent would clean the low end of this whole mix right up.
Sorry to rip up your mix but I hear a lot of work that still needs to be done. So you can hear my words in action, I attached my own mix that I did today.
I would love revisions in return. Also, if you're not able to replace the kick I can happily do that for you and send the file over!
Edit - I bounced in mono (because I'm a professional and I charge people so obviously I know what I'm doing haha) and my snare mult was muted
Kick - You should replace that kick immediately. It's super duper distracting. The track they gave is absolute garbage. I hope you agree. It also seems like a lot of your kick sound is from the overheads, and I personally advise against doing that. Every time the kick hits it dips your cymbals out in a bad way. It also makes you lean on the bass for the entire mix's low end content, which seems to be damaging the master. I do like the attempt at giving the kick a high end presence. I have to applaud you for that.
Snare - I would like to hear a bit more snare actually. There's a lot of cymbal bleed in the snare mic so I know it's hard to gate that out (if you tried). But if you can manage, I think a compressor with a 10-20ms attack and a 2:1-4:1 ratio will make the snare pop through without needing too much makeup gain. This is a very poppy snare with not much body. I wish they had provided a bottom head track so we could get a little more sustain out of it. I found myself going to extreme measures to get any sustain out of it. I usually end up getting a good 60% of my snare sound (outside of the initial pop) from the overheads. Reverb alone can't do it.
Vocals - I like the wideness of the backup parts, but that's kind of a double-edged sword. If you pan your vocals 100%, they will get in the way of the guitar, assuming your guitars are hard panned like they "should be" (I'm granting that there are no hard rules with any of this). When I work backup vocals, I will pan a max of 75% either way. Since this song has six backup tracks, I did 75%, 50%, and 25%. That way everything has its own space to work. There's more space that needs to be created than simply in frequency ranges. Also I would like to hear the backup vocals come down and have ambience added instead. Try a reverb send per track that's panned opposite where the track is panned. For example, Vocal X's track is panned 25% left, so pan the reverb send 25% right. Solo these changes and you'll hear a massive difference from what you had before. Also try speeding up the attack time and slowing down the release time on the backup vocals vs the lead vocal. That'll let the lead vocal pop through and add body to the backup vocals.
Bass - I like the bass, but I feel like it could use a gentle high pass (read: 6dB/oct) to about the 100 hZ range. Lots of very low frequencies in there. I feel like that in conjunction with the kick notes I sent would clean the low end of this whole mix right up.
Sorry to rip up your mix but I hear a lot of work that still needs to be done. So you can hear my words in action, I attached my own mix that I did today.
I would love revisions in return. Also, if you're not able to replace the kick I can happily do that for you and send the file over!
Edit - I bounced in mono (because I'm a professional and I charge people so obviously I know what I'm doing haha) and my snare mult was muted