I only listened to this on desktop speakers yet, but it made me grin For my ears, your mix builds up a momentum that the others were lacking. I look forward to examining this on proper monitors and figuring out what you did differently to accomplished that, but I'm already pretty sure that the snare is one of the... hm... roughly three main factors (I suspect the guitar and the background vocals to be the other two).
At the same time, I find the snare overly prominent, and the bass too fat. I think this is a fantastic recipe, but the quantities could benefit from some fine-tuning.
yeah, i like the snare big and up front...maybe a bit too much.
as for the bass, i mix mostly on genelec 8020b's, my studio, like a lot of people who mainly work live gigs, and live in rentals is the desk between my bed and my tv, so i wouldn't be surprised if my bass is a little hyped. and is actually good to find out so i can change how i mix.
can't wait for what you think after a decent listen.
Funky vocal delay -- a definite ear-catcher! I wonder whether a couple of moments could have the return automated, though, because I found it just a touch distracting from time to time. You've created a seriously heavy bass/kick combination too. I'd like to hear a bit more of the little high strum in the guitar part in the choruses, so you might want to experiment with automating that up in level. In fact, I also wonder whether the long-term dynamics might work better with a touch more guitars overall in the choruses, although in general that aspect of this mix seems pretty well handled.
It's also interesting the way you've moved away from the 'band in a room' idea more towards an electro sound, which works better than I'd have expected it to. Some nice creative thinking with the vocal edit-fest before the solo too. You've identified a definite lull in the arrangement and patched it over in a great way. I still find the vocal tuning distracting, though, in this track, and I think it'd work better if it was a bit tighter in this respect.
cheers mike. i'll take your advice and see what it sounds like and where it takes me.
the vocals at the end were somewhat of a happy mistake. l let go of the mouse too early, and decided to see what it sounded like. and that's how the higher vocals on the backbeat happened. then i was just screwing around, figuring i'd ctrl-z it all away, ended up liking it.
as for the electro feel, i'll have to take your word for it, as it's a genre i'm not at all familiar with. i was just going for a punchy low end, and thwacky snare. seems like i went a bit big with the low end.
For my ears, your mix builds up a momentum that the others were lacking. I look forward to examining this on proper monitors and figuring out what you did differently to accomplished that, but I'm already pretty sure that the snare is one of the... hm... roughly three main factors (I suspect the guitar and the background vocals to be the other two).