Daisy Daisy first mix

[darell.clark]

I wanted to brighten up the tracks, EQ out the unwanted noise from each, and place some components around the stereo image. Please let me know what you think, don't worry about offending me if it isn't good, I am trying to learn more about this whole mixing stuff.

[alexthebassist]

My personal thoughts on this are:
1. Too much vocals. While for most people it's an essential part, it shouldn't be on top of everything else. I hate most modern, even professional, mixes for this too-in-the-face attitude. Vocals should blend nicely into the accompaniment, creating a solid soundscape.
2. No compression on vocals. Or it at least seems so… Anyway, loudness level of vocal part seems to be different for different words in different places. Even after compression, some words here are quieter (because they aren't double tracked), but this is easily fixed with fader/region loudness automation.
3. Double tracked lead vocals don't work in the way guitars do. There's no reason to pan vocal double tracks that much wide, as almost all the singers in the world have timing as sloppy as it's imaginable. Only a small fraction of singers is capable of double tracking their parts as decent as wide panning requires it. For that reason, a double tracked lead vocal part should be panned to center, and the second voice needs to be volume adjusted (and sometimes time shifted) according to the first track, all this in order to give the part some fullness and a slight chorusing effect. Then stereo image synthesis comes, after essentials like EQ, compressor, and de-esser.
4. Guitars sound really smooth, I like it. But they could benefit from EQing less.
5. Can't really hear the bass. I hear there's something in the low end, but in most song parts I can't tell if it's a bass (even a “blurred” one, like in my version) or just too much low end on guitars. You can try the good old distortion trick to get the bass sound brighter, or use a different EQing strategy. There are two bass tracks, perfectly in phase, so you definitely can play around with that.
6. Drums. Kick is weak, lacking both low end and ~5 KHz click. I think drums are all too unprocessed and slightly drowned in the mix. This isn't the best recording even in this library, but it certainly has some potential to reveal via wise processing. Try brightening the snare, playing with individual drum compression to get that snare really slapping and that kick really kicking, slightly compressing overhead mics to tame excessive snare bleed, EQing and compressing toms to make them sound unlike cardboard boxes.
7. Effects. What makes a mix professional, besides all the right EQing, compression, and panning, is lots of subtle, but still meaningful effects. Parallel (called also “New York style”) compression on drums, at least two reverb busses, parallel delays, saturation, and especially gating. If you only were to gate guitars and vocals, your mix would sound a bit cleaner without touching any sort of EQ. If you were to gate drums, the effect would be even more noticeable, as they are the most demanding instrument for this kind of processing. Hihat bleed in snare mic, snare bleed in kick mic, overhead bleed in tom mics—all of this is causing problems when trying to achieve a great sounding mix.

[Deliza]

Alex's report is way complete. Agree with pretty much everything, though bass wouldn't be much of a problem if you mono the vocals. I think it only feels weak when there's nothing above it and as a Smashing Pumpkins fan, I'm pretty tolerant with muddy undefined bass as long there's something above (every section without melody in this tune is a waste of time, IMHO, those have the most inconsistent drum playing and just drag the song to no end).

Good guitars, indeed!