AB - It Was My Fault For Waiting - Too dry?!

[David V.]

Hey guys,

I'm not that big fan of too much reverb, etc.
Do you think it's too dry?
Maybe a bit overprocessed?

Thanks and best regards,
david

[davemcg61]

Hi David, welcome to CMT. What I'm hearing is a need to cut out the bass of the electric guitar power chords. The lowest note of a guitar in standard tuning is 82Hz, so from there and down needs to go, to make room for the kick drum and bass guitar that need to be down there. With distorted electric guitars, I also roll off quite a bit under 200Hz, sometimes -9 or -12dB, and some folks around this board still think I've left too much. The concept being, there's toms and snare frequencies down there that can be drowned out, so its a balancing act. Some snare drums have lots of overtones in the 250 - 400Hz range that gets in the way of vocals. There are little piano riffs that are getting covered up too. With this tune, I think the lead singer is pretty good, but her volume still fluctuates a bit - even it out with a compressor set at 6:1 with medium-slow attack and fast release. In rock, the drums and vocals are the most important parts, everything else gets allocated some space around and underneath. I hope I've given you some ideas to listen for and try out.

[David V.]

Thank you very much for your tips dave!
I really appreciate them and of course, tried to fix the issues.

So I put some work on the low end to clean it up. Set a low cut at about 130hz and also rolled the bass of the guitars down, about 9db. I also took care of the overtones of the snare and the fluctuations of the vocals.
The piano still seems to get lost sometimes.

Here's the new version ^^

Best,
david

[davemcg61]

Sounding much clearer now, Dave. Its a science and and very subjective art, what we mixer/engineers/producers do. Play with the tracks, get some various tones, speculate what a paying customer might like and try to achieve those tones.