My Friday Night Mix of Schoolboy Facination

[lowstring]

I'm going to try to do quick Friday Night Mixes to relieve some stress from the week, and get in to regular practice developing and honing my skills. Here is my mix of "Schoolboy Fascination". As always feedback and criticism is welcome. Thanks for listening!

[ERJEE]

Hi!

I just mixed this song so I'm a little bit biased
My first feel is that the vocal is too upfront( but at the same time too 'cloudy' due to your delays). I also think the kick is nearly hearable; in general: try to balance the drums more.

Hope it helps!

Cheers

RJ

I'm going to try to do quick Friday Night Mixes to relieve some stress from the week, and get in to regular practice developing and honing my skills. Here is my mix of "Schoolboy Fascination". As always feedback and criticism is welcome. Thanks for listening!

[Voelund]

Agree the vocal is upfront. Its a very short song ?
For starters try turnin the vocals a fair bit down and please upload a full mix.
I like to write while I listen :-)

[Olli H]

I agree with others. Drums are quite powerless and vocals too loud.

[lowstring]

Thanks for all the feedback!! I'm sorry this is so short, it was my first Friday Night Mix and I think I may have downloaded the "Short Excerpt" files instead of the full mix - this is as much as I have. I've tried to strengthen the drums, and pull the vocals back. I did try and both pull down the vocal volume, as well as add some reverb to make it sit back, but please tell me if this was the wrong direction to go - some of you said that the delay already obscured the vocal.... Again, Thanks for listening!!

[Olli H]

Balance is much better now.
Now that I listen to the sound of instruments, I think you're using compressors and limiters much too hardly. You're probably trying to match loudness level to Mike's mix.

With this song I would suggest you first to do an 30 minute quick mix without any compressors or eqs. According to my knowledge, most of the pros create some kind of rough mix first. And furthermore, most of the track in this song are ready as such. Just concentrate on the overall sound created by the balance of the instruments. And when you're happy with that balance, print that to one stereo track and use it as checking point. When you start adding eqs or other effects, check every now and then that your mix with effects sounds better than one without.

And IMPORTANT!, if you compare your mix to any reference cd's or other's mixes, bring those references to your DAW as reference tracks, reduce the level on those reference tracks about 10-12 db, so that apparent level is about the same as your mix. You cannot mix correctly if you try to match the level to mastered mix.

Cheers, Olli

[lowstring]

Thanks Oli,
You are totally correct that I find myself over compressing to combat peaking. It's a bad habit and I know better, but I find myself somehow subconsciously doing it anyway. Thanks for the very good advice, and thanks for keeping me in check before I fully ingrain bad habits and they turn to poor practices (I don't want to work so hard and produce bad results). I'm printing your post and keeping it on hand to review while I mix for a while.

[grizwalter]

Agreed that you should lay off the compression and leave everything open until the first pass on a solid mix is done. You can always add and adjust, but getting things tight, loud and balanced with the compressor almost guarantees once it is added you'll be in great shape with some simple adjustments.

I generally mix for hours before even thinking about a compressor or limiter--even on the individual tracks. Until everything is in the mix, it is often hard to tell the direction you might want to go and how things will cut through. A crappy sounding kick drum may end up being perfect once all the other elements are in place. Crunching it too much, too early, means you might have missed that possibility.

Then with master limiting/compression, the final "bring everything together judiciously," step for volume can be applied, and if everything else was done correctly, few adjustments will need to be made; primarily a few volume tweaks, and maybe some slight eq adjustments (usually high and low end from my experience), depending on the music style.