#30 Siren - My first brick!

[Deliza]

“I’m ssspinning around…” While I wait for Kylie's call, I guess mixing this may be the next best thing.

At first I thought there were just too many of everything, but it made more sense when I started to look at those seemingly redundant guitars and pads as a cool alternative to EQ, so most global tone shaping was just fader balance, it's such a well crafted arrangement. As always, bass will be a hit and miss thing, not having way to know how it translates out of my cans, though main offender here it’s likely I tried to cramp too many things in there. Takka360 and BETA managed to get a pretty solid darkish tone that left me thinking mine was pretty scooped.

Also, there’s a good chance I totally messed up with mono compatibility, so I’ll appreciate your feedback!

Mix printing time, I ended up with an oddly reasonable DR13, with a RMS/peak ratio wider than most of my guitar music mixes, which I found strange. So my hack-mastering was way more aggressive than usual, giving me my first brick, still kinda tame for a dance tune yet.

[Monk]

#30 Georgie Wonder - Siren

Mix printing time, I ended up with an oddly reasonable DR13, with a RMS/peak ratio wider than most of my guitar music mixes, which I found strange.

Hi,

There’s quite a lot of processing on this already mixed multi. Adding more increases the distortion and leads to further unpleasantness on the ears. One example is the acoustic gtr. It’s harbouring some nasty resonances that urgently need taming. The brick loses musical dynamic, not only the instrumental ones.

Going for loudness at the cost of losing audio quality, is a bad move.

Dynamic reduction brings up the ambiance more and loses instrumental contrast and increases listener fatigue here. I understand the principle of using tracks as eq, however, level doesn’t remove density and there’s way too much going on (not helped by the bulk of over-wet tracks that confronted us in the multi). Some elements aren’t musically coherent. The rhythm thrashing of the acoustic gtr, for example, doesn’t work with the rhythm in the vocal’s lyric. Actually I found it’s harsh rhythm a contradiction to the silky, gentile vocals, but that’s an artistic choice. My artistic choice was to mute the gtr(s) in the main.

On the way in, I was lost in the spectral congestion and really didn’t know what you wanted my brain to focus on? The fatigue I got from the intro was, I have to declare, highly unpleasant, though I think the culprit source may have been the gtrs? The first verse felt a lot better, with instrument’s standing out for my ear to latch onto and those errant gtrs out of the way, but I would have preferred just a little more instrumental definition because that’s where the music and interest is. It makes for hard work on the listener otherwise.

Something that might benefit the song’s engagement is crafting the instruments more in the depth region so there’s better contrast between front-to-back (i.e. dryness to wetness). For me at least, it would help keep the interest up.

On the outro, a big bloom verb with a long decay would have worked well.

A quick way to check mono compatibility is with a phase meter, especially during the mix process with so many stereo tracks.

I hope the others return your feedback! This forum feels like it’s full of takers and too few sharers.

Has Kylie phoned yet?

[Deliza]

That was quite a bashing! Nah, kiddin'. Lots to recheck and think about.

I wouldn't really mind if someone writes back or not. There might be people who doesn't really know what to say about a mix, or those who doesn't trust their English that much, or those who just doesn't find the time to do so. Life is already full of duties.