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Duty & Memories - Mix & Master
#1
Hope you like it. It's not perfect but I like it.


.mp3    Perpetual Escape - Duty and Memories.mp3 --  (Download: 12.59 MB)


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#2
Hey !

I'll be honest cause we're all here to practice and make progress. In my opinion, you should restart from scratch. Your mix is very unbalanced. Drums are so much behind everything else and they sound lofi. Guitars have tons of mids and hide a lot of instruments.

So first things first : try to make a solid static mix with nothing but your volume faders and pan. Loop the last chorus, and spend like 10 to 30 minutes to make a balanced static mix.
Then use some reference track(s) to adjust your static mix. In some cases the drums will be louder, sometimes it's gonna be the guitars. How the vocals are placed ? In front ? Just in front the band ? What about the bass ? Is it above or below the kick ? Etc...

Then you can use the top down technique : add some little EQ in your master bus, trying to match the overall tone of your reference song. Nothing big here, just 1 or 2 dB cut/boost max to make the tone sound better. Then compress a little bit to bring some glue, but same as before, just a little bit, 1-2 dB max.

Now compare with and without your plugins on the master bus. Is it better ? If yes, keep going...

One last thing: use a limiter when mixing, so you will know how your mix will react when mastering is in.

Keep practicing ! And if you use Logic as your DAW, you can contact me if you want me to show you some tricks Wink

Cheers
Florian

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#3
(16-06-2017, 05:16 PM)Mandubien Wrote: Hey !

I'll be honest cause we're all here to practice and make progress. In my opinion, you should restart from scratch. Your mix is very unbalanced. Drums are so much behind everything else and they sound lofi. Guitars have tons of mids and hide a lot of instruments.

So first things first : try to make a solid static mix with nothing but your volume faders and pan. Loop the last chorus, and spend like 10 to 30 minutes to make a balanced static mix.
Then use some reference track(s) to adjust your static mix. In some cases the drums will be louder, sometimes it's gonna be the guitars. How the vocals are placed ? In front ? Just in front the band ? What about the bass ? Is it above or below the kick ? Etc...

Then you can use the top down technique : add some little EQ in your master bus, trying to match the overall tone of your reference song. Nothing big here, just 1 or 2 dB cut/boost max to make the tone sound better. Then compress a little bit to bring some glue, but same as before, just a little bit, 1-2 dB max.

Now compare with and without your plugins on the master bus. Is it better ? If yes, keep going...

One last thing: use a limiter when mixing, so you will know how your mix will react when mastering is in.

Keep practicing ! And if you use Logic as your DAW, you can contact me if you want me to show you some tricks Wink

Cheers
Florian

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I'll admit I don't do the static mix (although I should). I do however use master bus compression and eq within the parameters you mentioned. But, I found the main culprit of my unbalanced mixes. It was my monitors. The mix and master sounded great. Even on my phone and some other places. As soon as I plugged in the other pair...Bam! I heard it immediately. I probably won't re-do this song, but for future mixes, I will stick with these monitors and start doing static mixes. Thank you for your advice.

P.S. I use Studio One v3 Professional
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#4
(06-06-2017, 11:14 PM)et_the_extraterrestrial Wrote: Hope you like it. It's not perfect but I like it.

Your low mid is sucking all the detail from the mix.

You don't need to start over but maybe listen to the mix with the Bass guitar muted to hunt down the offending frequencies.

Bass frequencies are longer and build up quickly, especially if many instruments are occupying the same range e.g. Kick, Bass guitar, Guitar, Snare, Toms and even OH and RM mics.

Good Luck.
My Original Music

"One often learns more from ten days of agony than ten years of contentment."

Pro Tools 12.6/Studio One 3 Pro
Studiolive 16 Series III
Yamaha HS5/HS8
Console 1
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#5
(28-06-2017, 09:10 PM)wesleyamltd Wrote:
(06-06-2017, 11:14 PM)et_the_extraterrestrial Wrote: Hope you like it. It's not perfect but I like it.

Your low mid is sucking all the detail from the mix.

You don't need to start over but maybe listen to the mix with the Bass guitar muted to hunt down the offending frequencies.

Bass frequencies are longer and build up quickly, especially if many instruments are occupying the same range e.g. Kick, Bass guitar, Guitar, Snare, Toms and even OH and RM mics.

Good Luck.

It sounds like the kick. Which makes sense, because everything else has a high-pass filter set a tad higher than normal. I got some new monitors which are more accurate so hopefully in the future it can be avoided
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#6


It sounds like the kick. Which makes sense, because everything else has a high-pass filter set a tad higher than normal. I got some new monitors which are more accurate so hopefully in the future it can be avoided

[/quote]

Highpass filtering can take away a lot of low mid detail that can be useful to the mix. That's why its called High-Pass, because it allows all of the high frequencies to pass un-effected. Which can result in a brittle top and sound hollow too.

Carving out a solid low end is difficult and requires a little discretion. I'm sure its more than the KD.

Keep working and good luck with your new monitors.
My Original Music

"One often learns more from ten days of agony than ten years of contentment."

Pro Tools 12.6/Studio One 3 Pro
Studiolive 16 Series III
Yamaha HS5/HS8
Console 1
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