Al James: 'Schoolboy Fascination'

[juanjose1967]

Fun song to mix. Not my type of music but I think it was a good exercise!

Feel free to comment!

[Olli H]

I had already decided that I won't listen anybody's mix of this song, for this song has been playing in my head again and again…

Something weird with the vocal sound. You must have tried some new trick? It sounds like a singers head is in bucket, or the singer is behind the door or something.

For some reason that vocal sound disturbed me so that I couldn't listen other issues with attention.

But if you listen your mix with headphones, you'll notice that there's some problems with left-right balance.

[Voelund]

Juan, it could be the tuned stereo delay you sonetimes use, like in another song i remember did the same pan thing.

[juanjose1967]

I think I've fixed the problem. Just let me know if it's better now and I will let you know what it was!!!

[Olli H]

I think it's more natural now. In the first version all the ss-sounds were odd. My guess is that you had some sort of parallel processing of vocal track with pitch shift or modulation.

I think you have nice balance most of the time. But it feels that there's dust on the vinyl. The high frequencies sound a little bit dull and tired. Some brightness to main vocal and snare could open your mix to a new level. But no more brightness to that school bell

[Voelund]

What Olli said

[juanjose1967]

The problem was that while mastering (I'm still striving not to damage the mixes) I added too much wideness to the trebble range and that's what made sound like that.

Now I've found out what the problem was, I can concentrate on fixing the rest!! Thank you for giving me the hint with your comments!!

[flyrecords]

juan son 62 tracks completos o pedacitos mas pedacito mas pedacitos??? me parece liviano el zip para tener 62 tracks, contame. me gusto tu segunda mezcla.

[juanjose1967]

La mayoria son tracks completos, pero hay unos pocos que son trocitos pequeños. Por eso no pesa tanto. Todavía tengo que mejorar la mezcla pero al menos he descubierto lo que me estaba estropeando las últimas mezclas :-)

[Olli H]

The problem was that while mastering (I'm still striving not to damage the mixes) I added too much wideness to the trebble range and that's what made sound like that.

In my opinion: as a mixer your shouldn't be thinking that you'll fix some issues as a master. If you think as a mixer that the mix is not wide enough or something, you should solve that issue with mixing tricks. You also have better possibilities to do that without causing any phase issues. For example as a mixer you can apply widening trick only to drums, or only to band but not to vocals. At mastering phase that kind of things are almost impossible.

But when you think as a mixer "now it's perfect", have a break and come back later as a mastering engineer.

But I would suggest to use only "home-made mastering": add limiter and boost the peaks near zero, shave couple of desibels here and there, check the overall frequency balance when you hear the limiters effect.