Unicorn Radio - Maybe [mydogboris mix]

[mydogboris]

hi hat and ride seemed to be on same side of overheads.

I am a little confused about the vocal tuning. You definitely changed a lot of notes, in the chorus you shifted the melody line to a different key, which sounds kinda off to me.
What you also need to keep in mind is the singer´s intention: I´m pretty sure she would not be happy with such drastic changes to her melody line when the recorded melody is the one we all agreed on.

The low-end is quite a mess indeed. It´s cool to have a boomy kickdrum for the intro, I did the same. When the bass begins to play, it needs to be tamed though: the bass tone doesn´t have a lot of definition in the low-end anyway, so you gotta watch out in that area.

cheers
Michael / UR

Thanks for the reply and thanks for clearing up the drummer setup. At least I know I am not going crazy! Different is cool. Overall, I hope I did the drums justice. As for the kick, I applied a lot of automation to pull the kick down at appropriate times, but perhaps I needed to be more drastic at certain points. I also introduced a bit of a trigger sample which may not have been the best choice...too boomy and not dynamic enough. I am also working with a new monitoring setup, with some high end mid-field monitors (10" dual concentric) along with new APS Klasik near fields. Of course, they sound tremendously different in the low end and I am still trying to learn to find the sweet spot between the two. In fact, I had so much trouble settling on the low end that I ended up mixing primarily on a set of Sennheiser HD600's with Sonarworks correction software. There are pluses and minuses to this approach. I am sure I will get better as I get used to my monitors.

As for the vocals, when I first listened to the track I almost decided not to mix it because of the vocals. But I decided to forge ahead b/c I liked the vibe and the genre and I really wanted to make this sound epic! So I simply decided to Melodyne the vocals, going as drastic as necessary but stopping short of sounding auto-tuned. If I moved a note or two to the incorrect spot, my apologies. Since this isn't a paying gig, I had limited time. :-) My intention was certainly not to change the melody line. I don't think I changed the "key" of the song though. The song appears to be in C minor and I generally snapped any questionable notes to that key (in both verses and choruses). Please correct me if I am wrong.

Again, thanks for taking the time to critique my mix. My goal is to get better and getting quality feedback, particularly from the band, is priceless.