Hammer Down - adgreen's mix

[adgreen]

I started out compressing all the things. Then compressed less things. Pushed some faders and this is what came out.

Edits:
May 01, 2017 - Added V2

[Blitzzz]

Hey adgreen,

thank you for mixing our song!

It's a cool mix. You have managed to get most of the critical things right, but there is also a lot of stuff that you can do better As an example your mix is missing some of the fatness and excitement compared with the mastered version or mixes from Kapu or DCP on this forum.

The Background vocals are too loud throughout the whole song - their quality is just not good enough to be in the spotlight. We only recorded them to give the main vocals more beef, but they shouldn't be used as a "hey, listen to me, I´m interesting"-spotlight for the listener. Rule of thumb: as soon as you can clearly hear them, they are too loud. The hihat needs to come up - Dirk Verbeuren is playing so many interesting variations that I sadly can't hear in your mix. Overall the cymbals are too quiet.

Hope that helps - have a great day and keep up the good work
Dirk

[adgreen]

Hey adgreen,

thank you for mixing our song!

It's a cool mix. You have managed to get most of the critical things right, but there is also a lot of stuff that you can do better As an example your mix is missing some of the fatness and excitement compared with the mastered version or mixes from Kapu or DCP on this forum.

The Background vocals are too loud throughout the whole song - their quality is just not good enough to be in the spotlight. We only recorded them to give the main vocals more beef, but they shouldn't be used as a "hey, listen to me, I´m interesting"-spotlight for the listener. Rule of thumb: as soon as you can clearly hear them, they are too loud. The hihat needs to come up - Dirk Verbeuren is playing so many interesting variations that I sadly can't hear in your mix. Overall the cymbals are too quiet.

Hope that helps - have a great day and keep up the good work
Dirk

Thanks for the listen Blitzzz. I really enjoyed the feedback. This is an awesome track to learn on.

Some of the changes I made to V2 based upon your feedback:
- Cymbals up. I had pushed the HH low because it sounded like a drum machine to my ears, I added a phaser and some verb to the hats track and was pretty satisfied with turning them up
- Swapped a couple guitar tracks to verb instead of compression to add space.
- Lowered BGVs
- Literally inverted the EQ on the snare to get a little extra punch
- Stuck on a master limiter with 2db gain

I think the changes make a pretty big difference in the quality of the mix. Thanks again for the feedback.