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Admiral Crumple 'Keeps Flowing' [MixdByD]
#1
My mix is kind of boring but I manged in the end. I used Waves, FLStudio12, and some Sennheisers. I'm having trouble getting the kick how I want it and i'm not too confident in the way the snare hits. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks for listening. P.S. needs more Deesser. [/size][/font]


.mp3    Admiral Crumple \'Keeps Flowing\' [Master mp3].mp3 --  (Download: 5.09 MB)


.mp3    Admiral Crumple \'Keeps Flowing\' [Mix mp3].mp3 --  (Download: 5.09 MB)


.mp3    Admiral Crumple \'Keeps Flowing\' [Final Master mp3].mp3 --  (Download: 5.09 MB)


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#2
I only checked the Master version but here's what I hear.

I like the kick. I think it could use a very slight cut in the low end. It's a little too much "I'm my chest" if that makes sense. It should be a compression thing. I don't notice if there's an overall mix/master compressor but it's possible the kick is triggering that. If there is a mix bus compressor see if there's a side chain filter that will keep the kick from hitting the compressor too much. It's minor and a subtle thing I notice though so don't worry about it too much.

The intro feels a little clumsy right where the song comes in. Maybe a quick fade in or bring some parts in a few beats or bars later. Maybe just use the piano and bring in the drums where the snare first comes in.

The snare works. It just needs more punch and be a little more up front and on par with the kick. Maybe use less reverb or if the reverb is on the track already try duplicating the snare track and adding a gate and compressor to accentuate the attack and blend it in with the original snare.

I don't think it needs more de-essing. The Esses are fine. The vocal does need something to make it a little more aggressive. Maybe some parallel compression or subtle distortion or overdrive to give it some thickness and edge.

I'm not sure what's going on with the bass. It's a little washy and indistinct but I suspect that's how it is on the track. The song could really benefit from having a focused bass line to anchor the mix. I don't know the multitracks so I don't know what you have to work with.

Edit: I just checked out the multitracks. It looks like there's just a 'sample' track to work with so that explains the lack of bassline
The sections of the song could be more distinct. Especially the chorus.

I think that's it. It's not a bad mix it could just use some excitement. Hope that helps.
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#3
Hey thanks for the review RoyMatthews. I'm a little embarrassed though because I've always been to lazy to learn to side chain and gate. Those techniques always seemed to advanced and complicating to me and i'm regretting it because it shows in my work I guess.

I mixed all the drums together on a bus track and there's all kinds of compression all over my mix so one of them or the combination could be triggering that effect. I tried to use them lightly though. I've been messing with the 'opto' setting lately. My goal was to make the kicks beat pretty hard but since this is a more underground rap song I felt the kick might need to chill out a little bit but I forget to approach that issue and let it thump. I guess to approach fixing that issue I will have to learn how to make the drums more linear instead of pumpy using a side chain.

I could have sworn I faded the sample in because I noticed the plain intro but by the time I was checking the master and realized the fade in wasn't there it was already 4am and I decided to let it be. Shows me I can't overlook things i feel might be a small problem because somebody will notice. I couldn't decided how to arrange it because it's just so basic so i faded the hats in and brought the drums in as entertaining as I can at this time lol. I can try to throw a bass line on it but I don't know how to find the key of the song because I don't know music theory.

The snare I know is too weak. I didn't do much to it because I didn't want to throw in yet another compressor and I have trouble choosing Attack and Release times so I just gave it my best guess from what I've learned. I didn't want to cheat myself by looking up settings while working on this one and that's the best I came up with for the snare. To approach the issue I might use a transient tool to adjust the attack and tweak the compressor settings until it snaps a little.

I thought it needed a deesser because I did the whole thing on my Sennheiser 201 and when everything was done I checked it out on some $8 Walgreen's earbuds I use and the esses were louder than what I expected. Guess I could leave it alone but I might warm up the hi end to make it sound a little better. Your completely right about the vocals. Although I feel like I made it blend good and don't have much complaints about the vocals it really doesn't have much character and is a little too clean for an underground storytelling hip hop track so thanks because I subconsciously told myself the vocals are too shiny and I never addressed it. Instead I tried to hide my amatuerness by blending it in. I guess I will mess with some distortion or saturation and look around to see if waves has any tools for this in the bundle I have.

Your advice really helps i'm going to note your suggestions to make sure those things are more important to my process. I'll post the results soon as I figure things out. Thanks again!
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#4
Meh, side-chaining and gating aren't too complex but I'll admit I'm usually too lazy to do it too. It varies depending on what system you're on but I'd say try it out and see what happens. It won't hurt anything to try it. Usually though, I'll admit to rarely finding a use for side-chaining in most of the ways I work. I use de-esser plug-ins but they do all the work. Other than that it rarely comes up. (Except for in the mix version I talk about below)

Absolutely "cheat" and look up compressor settings. It's a great way to learn what works and what doesn't. I've been doing this a long time and I still throw up a preset and get surprised by how someone else set a compressor for certain things. Then I tweak it from there. If it sounds great then, done. If it sounds awful then look at it and try to figure out why. Don't take presets as gospel but it's definitely a way to learn.

After I downloaded the multitrack of this song to see what's going on I decided to mess around and give it a somewhat rough mix. http://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/showt...?tid=17245
Here's some things I did specific to what came up in talking about your mix.
-I copied the sample to a different track. I made it mono and filtered everything down to 200hz or so to give it a fake bassline. It sort of worked but ignorer to try to give it some more movement I copied the "bass-line" to another track put a gate on it and triggered it with the kick via a side chain(!). The two bass parts together give it some movement. It's not a great solution but I think it helps. You can hear what it does at the end.
-I added a delay to the snare to give it some more bounce and occasionally muted the snare to break up the loop a bit.
-Copied and filtered the sample track and added it to the chorus and intro.
It's pretty rough and the balances aren't great but I think it hi-lites some of the things I mentioned earlier.

Hope it helps.
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#5
I really like what you did with the sample. The groove is nice. It is a little loud on the hook but you brought the piano out a lot. I feel like I should have known better to try layering and filtering the sample a bit. Turning a sample into a bass track is something i'm a little familiar with but I don't work with sample loops much anymore so i didn't think about it too much and disregarded the whole idea. I'm going to try out a variation of your technique if you don't mind.

The vocals sound really cool. Maybe I should utilize the compressor a bit more to get a more distinct sound. I only used it to flatten it up. I really need to work on effects because that's what I feel my version is lacking the most. After comparing mine with yours and some others I noticed how incomplete it sounds. When the "all i see is light" part came I was really enjoying it. It makes it fun to listen too. I want to learn how to do some stuff like on this version I found last night https://soundcloud.com/tearecords/admira...-by-4aynyy

Your mix overall is nice. I'm not a huge fan of dirty kicks though. I feel like there a handful. Your perspective on this is interesting and sounds really underground as it should and is impressive for mixing with earbuds. Yours taught me that my mix has too much dead space and I really need to address that problem now so my work doesn't sound like there's something missing all the time.

Definitely helps a lot with my strategy and perspective on how I should be mixing in whole. I really have to pay big attention to effects if I want to stand out from engineers. I also have to work on giving the vocals some character and filling up some space. I have trouble deciding what to do in mono so I usually check on it then go back to stereo and don't take the risk with leaving anything mono besides 808s. I'll see what I can do with this and try to use some side chaining and gate to get the learning out of the way. Thanks again I'll post my results!
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#6
Cool. I figured it was better to give an example than try explaining everything. I'm not a fan of the kick sound I came up with either but I just went with it.

Good luck with it!
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#7
I uploaded it to the original post as [Final Master]

So I learned the side chain move. It was difficult and i'm not really sure how good it sounds.

I moved the kick back in the mix some and filtered a copy of the sample to enhance the low end. I also automated an extra eq channel on the original sample to take effect during the hook to get a similar sound to yours during the hook but its really subtle.

For the snare I threw on a gate compressor and tweaked a preset a but it doesn't snap like I originally aimed for. Just boosted it up to match the kick really.

The vocals I ended up automating with chorus and flange to bring out certain parts of the lyrics. I threw in proximity to see if I could get an effect out of it but I ended up using it just to change the tone a bit but I managed to get a less basic sound by adding another compressor and pushing it pretty hard.

Overall I'm satisfied but it's not as clean as I expected it to turn out but I didn't go back to it because underground hip hop is okay to be a little imperfect. For a small 10 multitrack it was pretty time consuming but I learned a lot like the side chain and making sure I don't leave too much empty space. I would usually just clean everything up and be satisfied but I have to continue to challenge myself with things like effects and automation so I can do better work faster without getting lazy about editing. Thanks again for your input and help. I'll look out for some of your future mixes to tell you what I think!
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#8
(29-11-2016, 02:11 PM)MixdByD Wrote: My mix is kind of boring but I manged in the end. I used Waves, FLStudio12, and some Sennheisers. I'm having trouble getting the kick how I want it and i'm not too confident in the way the snare hits. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks for listening. P.S. needs more Deesser. [/size][/font]

You should do a video on how you mixed it because you made it sound more spacious i don't know how to explain it but it's what i've been wanting to do i can make vocals sound clear but never spacious
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#9
Good Idea. I'll try that when I upgrade my computer and get the software. But I pretty much utilized spacial imagery during the mixing session with FLStudio's stereo seperation tool in the mixer on the vocals and the sample then applied the S1 Imager stereo plugin from waves on the master channel during the mastering process after the mixing session. It's extremely easy to do. Pretty much just slide the track from mono to stereo and vice versa.
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