Overhaul Mix

[pauli]

Kay. So Mr. Voelund pointed out some technical flaws in my original mix of this tune, and I have to agree with him. I've learned a lot since I took my first stab at this with lots of help from friends voelund, sergio, dave, alx, don, among others. So I'd love your thoughts on this, maybe so I have an idea where I've improved and where I still need improvement?

Thanks as always for listening.

[thedon]

Hi Pauli !
Enjoying listening to your mix and sounds great ,Version 2 is definitely a Huge improvement to version 1 in such a short time !!!!
I haven't downloaded the multi tracks yet so please take my comments with a grain of salt ,just trying to help you excel in mixing , others who have mixed it already may disagree including me when I give it a go lol !
Being a piano player I like to hear the piano left hand lower chords could come outa touch more , a guess could be around the 400-800hz area !
I like a to hear a Deep sounding bass guitar ,as sounds a touch upfront in the 200hz area ( could be my room )
love the sound of the electric guitar ( did do anything to get it to that sound like that ) sounds a touch upfront , There could be some frequencies that may need some notching with a parametric eq in the upper Mids and maybe softening up with some stereo effects stereo effects ?
The acoustic guitar that comes in at 1.21 sounds a little soft ,I like the build up to the end the cymbal that comes around 2.26 sounds a little harsh around the 4-5k area !

[pauli]

Enjoying listening to your mix and sounds great ,Version 2 is definitely a Huge improvement to version 1 in such a short time !!!!

Thanks, I was hoping so . In some ways this tune is a bit of a booger... you'll see when you give it a shot. I was way out of my skill range when I tried it.

..please take my comments with a grain of salt ,just trying to help you excel in mixing..

You've been nothing but helpful... I appreciate that you take the time and listen and help me improve.

Being a piano player I like to hear the piano left hand lower chords could come outa touch more , a guess could be around the 400-800hz area !

I high-passed a lot of the instruments really far in this one, so maybe I was too cavalier with the piano. My brother said the same thing, so I'll pull the filter back a little and see if that helps .

I like a to hear a Deep sounding bass guitar ,as sounds a touch upfront in the 200hz area ( could be my room )

Do you figure a boost around 125 with a dip around 200 would do the trick? I think I may have been a little lazy with the bass... I highpassed it just far enough to get it out of the way of the loop, then sidechained a compressor to a new instance of the loop with the "kick" isolated to keep it out of the way a little more, but that's it, so a little more processing couldn't hurt.

love the sound of the electric guitar ( did do anything to get it to that sound like that ) sounds a touch upfront , There could be some frequencies that may need some notching with a parametric eq in the upper Mids and maybe softening up with some stereo effects stereo effects ?

Thanks, the guitars in this song are the real booger. There's two that are heavily distorted and the raw versions sound like sloppy poop-soup. Then there are three picking very rapidly. Basically I did wide band-passes on the ridiculously distorted guitars so that only the character frequencies could come through, cut the lead-ish ones around that area and let them breathe where the other ones filter out... it's all I could figure out to maintain any sense of separation without losing the string section and the piano, and those are the real gems of the tune!

What kinda stereo effects? Widening or modulation? I wondered what the crunchy ones might sound like with a flanger but didn't follow up

The acoustic guitar that comes in at 1.21 sounds a little soft ,I like the build up to the end the cymbal that comes around 2.26 sounds a little harsh around the 4-5k area !

That diddly little guitar part... lol... it was all I could do not to delete the stupid thing. The performance accuracy is a little iffy and my weakest area is audio editing for timing and tuning.. I started "Lament" by the morris band and thought "why do you hate me" while staring in the general direction of the UK . Believe it or not, that little guitar diddly thing was playing over the entire track, so I just left it to add some texture where there wasn't anything else going on. I think the quietness might be another case of over-filtering, so I'll give it a look

Taming that harshness should be easy This was just a quick re-do so I probably wore my ears out and couldn't hear it. Rookie mistake, still makin it all the time!

Thanks again, Don! Your mixes sound pro to me, so I'd love to hear your take on this one.

[The_Metallurgist]

hi Pauli,

there are rather a lot of project mult's that leave a lot to be desired in their Arrangement, indeed, i've worked with some that haven't even got that far where it seems like the artist (i use that word loosly) has hit the render button on the VST instrument, then gone off for a pee and on return only then discovered the stop button. essentially, a well thought out arrangement by a musician who knows what he/she/they are doing, is pretty well mixed before it hits the DAW, thus making Mixing (note the capitalisation here) a polishing exercise rather than a full-on brutal assault. indeed, i've sometimes wondered in the case of a really basic "mess" if it's been presented in order to see what other people might make of it so they can go off and finish the job themselves armed with the best ideas! nothing would surprise me....

rather than try and make a round peg fit a square hole, it might be healthier, less stressful, and indeed far more educationally conducive to perhaps be more "critically" selective about the project you decide to take on. this process in itself might actually prove a highly valid and credible exercise in it's own right, because in downloading mult's into your DAW and just checking them over first with a critical ear before making a judgement on what to work next, will surely assist in the development process - what's good and why, what's not good and why, etc..

from my own personal experiences, i actually used to choose a project totally at random (no previewing the mp3, or reading the watch-it posts, or checking other's threads to see what had been done so far, etc etc) and force myself to make it work, regardless of it's inherent issues. i've since modified this for my own sanity and personal value on my time! life is way too short!!

so, armed with an arrangement that works (or is pretty darn close as to make no real difference - i.e. you decide how much you are prepared to compromise), you have at your disposal the opportunity of actually "Mixing" according to the real definition of the word. also running parallel to this idea, i'd suggest selecting projects in genres you are familiar with listening to, and/or performing. this way the sonic landscapes and terrain should be more manageable to negotiate because your Terms of Reference will be more accommodating. it's better to take dolly steps and make progress that you can measure and benchmark against rather than perhaps crashing and burning in a pile of frustration - we've all been there, and some of us still are here

i loaded this up in the DAW a few weeks ago now, and actually forgot about it until running an inventory check just the other day, then i thought of you. check it out. i don't know your genre, but this is a funky tune, and a nice beat at 137bpm and 24/44.1, and best of all, i think you will appreciate the arrangement - i think it's one of the better ones i've so far come across. i'm personally looking forward to working this, without having to carve the thing to death.... which will make a refreshing change

Jockers Jacks Kings - MR1204

comments on the strategy are of course, welcome
Dave

[pauli]

Thanks for the tips, as always

You're right that the arrangement is dodgy on this one. The guitars a pretty unwieldy and needed brutal processing to get anything close to the sound I was hoping for, but given what I had to work with, I feel good about the results. My thinking was that as a mixing engineer, and I will bust heiney to evolve to that status no matter how far I am from that point, I might confront tunes with these sorts of issues, so I gave it a couple goes to see how I've progressed. Personally, it feels like a promising improvement

I think it could be a good tune given more thought at the recording stage... even considered re-recording the guitar parts myself to get a better and more manageable tone, but time is money, ja?

Jokers Jacks and Kings, eh? I'll download it today and see what happens