Hannes Keseberg: 'You Know Better'

[TheBouff]

Great song and fun to mix

Hope you guys like my take on the mix

v1 - My first attempt
v2 - Tidied up the end of the track, un-muffled the vocal a bit and reduced the vox delay effect
v3 - Mostly arrangement changes, an EQ haircut to bring a little more clarity and some volume automation across the board
v4 - final tweaks

[Mixinthecloud]

Fun. Good take. Thick and full. The fuzz on the bass line is playful but I'm dubious of the echo on the vocal.

Is there an aversion to ending this song gracefully. Haven't heard many good treatments of that.

[TheBouff]

Fun. Good take. Thick and full. The fuzz on the bass line is playful but I'm dubious of the echo on the vocal.

Is there an aversion to ending this song gracefully. Haven't heard many good treatments of that.

Hey Mix in the cloud, thanks for taking the time to listen and for the feedback. I have made a couple of changes based on your comments and uploaded a v2 which unmuffles the vocals and reduces some of the vox effects a little

I quite like the fuzz bass effect, not sure i have nailed it 100% yet though

[Mixinthecloud]

Lead vocal is better. Still not sold on the vocal effects as they are getting brought up with the mastering compression which makes it a bit hairy. Love the bass.

[TheBouff]

Lead vocal is better. Still not sold on the vocal effects as they are getting brought up with the mastering compression which makes it a bit hairy. Love the bass.

Thanks again for the feedback, i have now provided a v3 mix, based on your notes and some of the discussion points in Mike Senior's podcast (especially around the overall arrangement)

[TheBouff]

Lead vocal is better. Still not sold on the vocal effects as they are getting brought up with the mastering compression which makes it a bit hairy. Love the bass.

Thanks again for the feedback, i have now provided a v3 mix, based on your notes and some of the discussion points in Mike Senior's podcast (especially around the overall arrangement)

Final small tweaks made for v4, i think I'm done now, no more edits

[Mike Senior]

Hi TheBouff -- you've delivered another intriguing new vision this, almost straying into remix territory in terms of all the fun arrangement stunts! Some specific thoughts:

• Overall there's a fatiguing 3kHz peak in the mix tonality, which makes me want to turn the volume down. I felt I wanted to cut about 6dB there, for instance.
  
• The kick's big, but it's also pretty tight, which I like. The side-stick and snare are rather diffuse, though, which seems out of keeping with the kick and bass -- I think they just need more actual midrange, rather than relying so heavily on the more lightweight upper frequencies.
  
• The subs are coming mostly from the kick, which leaves the harmonies rather unsupported, and I'm not sure how well that suits singer-songwriter material in general. I like the novelty of the fuzz element in the balance, but I think the body of the sound could just be bigger in the mix and take more of a share of the low end.
  
• In general, the effects feel over-egged, especially the reverb. I have no problem with dubby elements in a production like this, but I think it's better to use such effects as 'features', rather than making the whole mix as ambient as this. The brightness of the reverb doesn't help in this respect, as it dates the sound somewhat too, I think. As a rule of thumb, it's best to EQ long/obvious reverbs quite assertively to maintain mix clarity.
  
• There's a low resonance to the conga part that's confusing the bass line when that arrives. I'd notch this out, if only just for when the bass is playing.
  
• I think you could do more automation work to solidify the vocal level and bring out nice background details (such as some of the guitar fills) more.
  

Hope some of that's useful -- thanks for posting!