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Diesel13 - Colour Me Red
#11
Thanks again everyone for the feedback. It was much appreciated. I have had another go and tried to incorporate as much of the advice I got here as possible. I'm surprised by how different it sounds. The extra bass is better, and it sounds a bit better glued together than the previous version.

Having said that, I'm still struggling with some bits. It is still a bit left-leaning I think....it could be that my head is just a bit sideways after a week at work...but probably not. I did try to move the guitar a bit more to the centre, but that just seemed to throw everything out of whack, so I moved it as much as I dared. I put a bit of parallel compression on the kick and snare, and EQd the snare at 160Hz! I broke the vocals into separate busses and mixed them that way. And of course I got my wife to verify that no-one was sitting on it.

Anyway, as I said, it sounds quite different....


.mp3    colour me red V4.mp3 --  (Download: 7.85 MB)


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#12
I have to admit it sounds kinda thin. I hear everything clearly but it's lacking low end power. I hear it on the kick and toms but not on anything else. Especially the bass. I hear every note of the bass guitar but can't say it matters if it isn't giving the mix that 'push' that it needs. That said, I usually have too much bass in my mixes so take it with a grain of salt.

The kick and snare sound pretty good. Is 160hz a weird frequency for snare? It's a fine area for 'body'. Or sometimes boxiness. I've often eq'd snares anywhere from 60hz to 20khz. It mostly depends on the eq and how it reacts.

It sounds good and headed in the right direction.
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#13
Just to be clear.....this is the submission that I would like to be judged please.

So here's my final mix of this fantastic song. I have to stop and submit now because honestly, I'm going to obsess myself to death if I keep going.......a little bit more of this here, a little bit less of that there......I could probably keep going for years and still be finding things to change!

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback. I have tried to incorporate as many of your ideas as possible, and pretty much all of them have contributed to what (I think) seems to be a better sounding mix. Here's a summary of some of the things I changed :

1. Turned up the bass and tweaked it's EQ a bit
2. Tried to fix the drums, particularly the snare. Joe Lonsdale (and Roy Matthews), I nearly sent you a screenshot of my EQ on the snare drum on my first mix......remember you said to beef it up at 160Hz? Well when I went in to fix it, the ONLY thing on the snare EQ was a big cut at 160Hz. Don't know what made me think that made it sound good (maybe I should have stopped at 16 vodkas!), but I nearly fell off my chair laughing. You nailed it fellas! I also gave a bit of stereo width to the bottom end. I think it beefed it up a little more......but maybe not
3. Paid a bit more attention to the background vocals. Divided them into separate groups (as suggested) and tried to balance them a bit better.
4. Paid a bit more attention to the EQ on the acoustic guitars
5. Tried to bring it a bit more to the centre, however, it still sounds a bit left-leaning, but I've decided to leave it that way as a special tribute to the late Fidel Castro....
6. Seeing as how all the Black Friday sales are on at the moment I took the opportunity to grab Izotope Neutron for a great price, and I must say, on the tracks I used it on it definitely made an improvement. It seems like quite a promising plugin, but then, all the Izotope stuff is pretty good.
7. I did part of the mix with headphones. Because my listening setup is SOOOOO bad (like really bad - my room is literally full of junk....big bits of junk that make all sorts of weird reflections...) I whacked on the headphones and switched to mono and then tried to get some separation for each instrument. Whether this improved the mix or not is open to discussion, but it definitely helped to firm up some ideas

So there it is. When I compare this mix to the first mix I submitted it's like chalk and cheese. I really have learned a lot doing this song, and that's due to the feedback I have received here. Thanks everyone for taking the time to not only listen, but also to suggest improvements. Best of luck to everyone, and may the best mix win.


.mp3    colour me red V6 final.mp3 --  (Download: 7.85 MB)


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#14
Hmm. I know this is your Final submission but here's what I hear.
#s correspond to your summary.
1. It still feels like the bass is missing. I need to double check some other mixes to recalibrate my ears but it's really light. I hear the bass but I sometimes wasn't sure if it was the bass or another guitar.
2. The snare sounds good. Could be a bit beefier but that's just a matter of taste.
3. The BGVs feel ok. They're pretty subjective and open to interpretation so I don't really worry about them too much.
4. Acoustics sound good. Bright but don't have that annoying high end thing that's on the track.
5. I don't really notice the left leaning too much. I mean the electric leans left but it's not drastic. The kick does too but I suspect that's the influence of what's in the overheads/room. The L/R balance feels fine.
6. I'm not familiar with Neutron or what it does but overall the mix is very pleasant to listen to. It's smooth and bright but not harsh. I don't know if that plug in played any roll in it but something is working well.
7. I only listen on headphones these days so I understand. Don't thing of the junk in the room as junk but diffusion. Ok maybe not. Maybe find some packing blankets and cover things up when you mix?

Overall it's a very good sounding mix. I just really wish it had more of the low end of the bass guitar.
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#15
(27-11-2016, 04:21 AM)RoyMatthews Wrote: Hmm. I know this is your Final submission but here's what I hear.
#s correspond to your summary.
1. It still feels like the bass is missing. I need to double check some other mixes to recalibrate my ears but it's really light. I hear the bass but I sometimes wasn't sure if it was the bass or another guitar.
2. The snare sounds good. Could be a bit beefier but that's just a matter of taste.
3. The BGVs feel ok. They're pretty subjective and open to interpretation so I don't really worry about them too much.
4. Acoustics sound good. Bright but don't have that annoying high end thing that's on the track.
5. I don't really notice the left leaning too much. I mean the electric leans left but it's not drastic. The kick does too but I suspect that's the influence of what's in the overheads/room. The L/R balance feels fine.
6. I'm not familiar with Neutron or what it does but overall the mix is very pleasant to listen to. It's smooth and bright but not harsh. I don't know if that plug in played any roll in it but something is working well.
7. I only listen on headphones these days so I understand. Don't thing of the junk in the room as junk but diffusion. Ok maybe not. Maybe find some packing blankets and cover things up when you mix?

Overall it's a very good sounding mix. I just really wish it had more of the low end of the bass guitar.

Thanks Roy. I know what you mean about the bass. I have just spent the last couple of hours trying to do something about it. I did manage to get a bit more bass into it, but it made the bass sound a bit woody in a couple of places (like really, really, really badly annoyingly woody). I think it's probably just another valuable lesson learned on my part - I should have paid more attention to the individual tracks in the mix before bunging them all onto a bus and then effect-ing the living daylights out of them. I don't think my particular arrangement with the bass tracks and bus is what you would find in a textbook (not that I'd know - I've never read one!) - all 3 individual bass tracks have the fader at -24 with no effects, I have 6 effects on the bass bus, and the bass bus fader is at a hair above -6. I'm guessing this probably isn't a 'correct' way to do it! Unfortunately it means that if I make a little change somewhere it can have big effects elsewhere, and I'd probably have to completely try to redo the bass sound. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, but not today, Zerg. Much as I love this song, my ears need a break, and the Final Arbiter of Taste and Style is also the Final Arbiter on How Many Times One Particular Song Can Rock The House, and she says that the limit has been reached

So I'm going to stick with that as my final submission.

Thanks again for all your comments and help

Gerry
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#16
UPDATE

Oh dear......I didn't read the rules. Here's me going on about 'please judge this one', and 'this is my final submission' etc.......and I was blissfully unaware that the competition was for Patrons....aaarrrgh! Much embarrassment on my part.

My apologies to Mike, and anyone else my confusion (more like plain stupidity...) may have inconvenienced in any way.

I hereby award myself the 'Wally of the Month' award for the next 12 months.

Please disregard any talk of competitions in this thread!, but please don't disregard my mixes - feel free to listen and comment.

Aaarrrggghhh.....I don't think there's one of those little smiley face things to quite convey the depths of my embarrassment at the moment.
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#17
I wouldn't worry about the contest stuff. I'm sure Mike is on top of things and you haven't inconvenienced him at all.

As far as the song goes, I say give it a break for a few days/weeks then just start fresh. When the wife is out, of course. I don't know if you've been tweaking one session but it'll help to take what you've learned and what you know of the song and create a new mix from scratch.
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#18
Quote: So there it is. When I compare this mix to the first mix I submitted it's like chalk and cheese. I really have learned a lot doing this song, and that's due to the feedback I have received here. Thanks everyone for taking the time to not only listen, but also to suggest improvements. Best of luck to everyone, and may the best mix win.

I couldn't agree with you more Dr.Gerry - I've learned a lot and I really appreciate all the incredibly insightful and helpful comments that we trade on here, plus the laughs from your vodka-related hiccups... :-)
As Roy said, I wouldn't worry at all about the contest stuff. It's been cool to hear your mix progress, and the latest version is really really good. I can't tell you if it's bass-light, but it sounds damn good on my monitors and on my Bose Mini-soundlink, which does some nightmarish things with its own compression and bass exaggeration algorithms, so this is definitely "Mastered for Bose" ! All the best and speak soon, Graham

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#19
Thanks Roy, Good advice, as always, and thanks Ironwork for you kind comments

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#20
Hi Dr Gerry,
Don't worry about the competition stuff ,however it has inspired us to comment on mixes and definitely improve our listening and mixing skills ,maybe we should treat all mixes from now on as a competition to help each other improve ,this is just a hobby for me turning out to be an expensive hobby (addiction ) for the fascination and love of music spending a fortune on gear and plugins for no real reason.
Listening to your latest mix sounds great to me ,thinking the vocal reverb may sit better being a touch more subtle or less decay and slight dip around the 1k area.
thinking the bass could come up just a touch ,not sure if less upper mids on the kick may help the bass cut through more in that area ?

Well Done Big Grin

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