Viviendo Del Revez (not a walk in the park) CEF

[Monk]

The synths are there. Some of them had no melodic impact. The back bone of my mix is the acoustic guitar and the bass.. The groove of the bass is what made the song interesting to me and the rythm drive of the guitars is what keeps the rest of the synths in place in my opinion.
Having said that the status which contribute to the melody are present but in the context of "fill". The vocals for me are very important in this song and boosting some synths up create conflict with the voice.

I've had a look at the multitrack because I couldn't remember anything!

My major mixing gripe with the acoustic is it's repetitive nature. It's just not interesting. I don't recall it even changing key. There's a moment where the part loses time, and a couple of points where it's been edited which breaks it's flow. Keeping it frontal exacerbates all these problems. I took the stance that it needed muting in places, to help add variation and interest, while allowing other instruments to step in. There's plenty of choices.

When I see nothing but stereo tracks in a multi, my heart sinks. The synths are all stereo and stacked, and everything is completely saturated in reverb. For a high density multitrack (and with those damn reverbs!!), you'll have some hard decisions to make in the revision.

I did get the synths in your mix originally, but I was implying their balance was weak and I should have said this clearly, sorry. I understand now why you did what you did though. If you are fixed on the acoustic being a backbone element, I think you're in trouble because of it's repetitive nature. Some brains like repetition, most don't. Totally agree about the bass though, that's why I cranked mine up. Also note it's not eq'd correctly in the tracking, the harmonics are missing which makes it mumble incoherently.

Nevertheless, there's some learning opportunities. I've learned to leave it alone, on reflection, the reverbs killed it for me. Now I understand why I made the opening comment in my thread

Nearly forgot to mention. Some of the vocal issues could be addressed with dynamic eq (some here use Nova, it's free) where he/they fire up the room modes and for those proximity boosts. It would save you automating to a large extent. However, be mindful they've actually boosted some words which will hit your processing harder one moment, then perhaps not hard enough on others!