I'm not sure how everyone else tackled this, but I cleaned up the drum tracks to remove the bleed using Accusonus Drumatom, and edited the tom and vocal tracks, cutting out any dead (bleed) air. I used RX-Denoiser on the guitar group to get rid of the amp(s) hiss. I used Slate Trigger 2 to replace the kick, and Slate plugins for most everything - Exceptions were FabFilter EQ's for low/high passing, their De-Esser on the vox, and Soundtoys Decapitator (comp) on the vox. Finished with Ozone 8 on the mixbuss for final touches and FabFilter Pro-L 2 for limiting.
Lovely mix overall. A few tweaks (which are preferences of mine) the snare bottom is a tad prominent and the drums sound a bit mono. Maybe it's the toms? Great job overall. Cheers, Mick
(04-01-2018, 10:24 AM)mick2015 Wrote: Lovely mix overall. A few tweaks (which are preferences of mine) the snare bottom is a tad prominent and the drums sound a bit mono. Maybe it's the toms? Great job overall. Cheers, Mick
Thanks for bringing my attention to the drum spread. I discovered an important lesson... I always mix drums from the drummer perspective. There isn't a great spread in the OH mics on this track, but I discovered that they were labelled from the "front of drummer" perspective. So, my panned Hi-Hat and toms were competing with the panning in the OH's. I changed my panning, and get a much better spread now. I also pulled back on the snare bottom a little, as I had it in unison with the snare top level. Good ear!
Regarding the panning of the Drums there is a free plugin called "MSED" which lets you switch the L/R channels and manipulate mids and sides a bit. It's very neat if you want to flip the OH to drummers perspective.
I also think your mix is very dark and could benefit from an more "open" sounding high-end especially the vocal. Might also be an "issue" with your mixing enviroment or my listening enviroment.
Maybe it's useful if you check your mix against some pinknoise and a spectral analyzer. A "balanced" mix should roughly resemble the shape of pinknoise as it has the same energy across the frequency spectrum in relation to human perception of audio.
But of course it's all up to taste.
Anyway, very balanced and nice mix otherwise(Dynamics and individual EQ).
(04-01-2018, 10:24 AM)mick2015 Wrote: Lovely mix overall. A few tweaks (which are preferences of mine) the snare bottom is a tad prominent and the drums sound a bit mono. Maybe it's the toms? Great job overall. Cheers, Mick
Thanks for bringing my attention to the drum spread. I discovered an important lesson... I always mix drums from the drummer perspective. There isn't a great spread in the OH mics on this track, but I discovered that they were labelled from the "front of drummer" perspective. So, my panned Hi-Hat and toms were competing with the panning in the OH's. I changed my panning, and get a much better spread now. I also pulled back on the snare bottom a little, as I had it in unison with the snare top level. Good ear!
This sounds much more natural to me, good job. Noticeable improvement.
(05-01-2018, 10:40 AM)LukasL Wrote: I also think your mix is very dark and could benefit from an more "open" sounding high-end especially the vocal.
Funny you mention that - When I came up with my initial mix, I had a brighter, more open mix. Then I loaded a reference track (a song by a band named Mingo Fishtrap) because Mingo's music is very similar to this track, and I think their latest CD was mixed/mastered very nice. It's not a "pushed into the reds commercial radio" mix - Their mix is very inline with their more classic (70's) sounding music.
Anyway, when I did an A/B, I found my original mix was very "modern" and much glossier on the top, especially the vocals, as I'm so used to modern music with that shine on the vocals. My original mix was even louder.
So, that brings up an interesting point - When mixing, are we paying attention, and paying respect to the style of music we're mixing. Obviously, we wouldn't mix this track the same as a metal track. So, if the song has a more classic (60's - 70's) vibe, do we mix it using all cliche's of modern mixing, or do we honor the sounds of those classic recordings (a little darker, A LOT quieter, etc). We probably shoot for somewhere in the middle, eh?
I was mixing my version for a few hours and then immediately listend to yours thats why I thought I was "unbalanced" or too dark.
Also when mixing music, I think everyone should try to achieve the vision for a given song in your head(so an old-school vibe and a Mingo Fishtrap Sound for you)
When I heard the raw tracks I heard a more modern and brighter but still natural feeling mix in my head and tried to achieve that. Would be happy if you listend to it.
But after refreshing my ears I can certanly appreciate both versions. But I do still think that your kick is a bit overwhelmed by the bass.
(05-01-2018, 10:40 AM)LukasL Wrote: Maybe it's useful if you check your mix against some pinknoise and a spectral analyzer.
Great tip. I actually do keep a spectral analyzer open when mixing. I basically use it to check between my mix and my reference mix. On this mix I after some of the minor tweaks I mentioned earlier, I actually achieved a pretty comparable "shape" to my ref track. Kick and bass were both bouncing in the same frequency range, and dropping off (high passing) at the same point. Mids were full, and high end had a gradual dip in the same spot.
I'm curious if others use an analyzer in the same way (to glean insight from a reference mix).
