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Jokers, Jacks & Kings: Sea Of Leaves
#11
thank you, Pauli! I wish I had a musical education like yours because everything becomes easier and you're more used to instruments and how they're supposed to sound than me. But I'm quite stubborn and I'm determined to learn no matter what! Thanks again for your thoughts and advice Smile
mixing since April 2013
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#12
Ah... I'm always happy to give advice. Unfortunately my musical education doesn't help me terribly with the mixing and I'm often a little disappointed when I compare what I consider to be big achievements on my part to the superb results that you and a few others seem to attain quite handily! I rather enjoy listening and commenting on your mixes, as they give me a lot of perspective on mine and how they could be better. Keep it up man, it's an inspiration!
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#13
nice one, but there are some points you need to observe with seriousness.

i don't normally like wet-nursing (it's counter productive to learning, to be honest), but given so many people here have lavished praise, i think you need to know some very important issues that have so far been neglected in the feedback. goodness is always relative, OK? what i've listed below are some of the more important things you are neglecting or have over looked. i've tried to keep the issues relative, so you can APPLY THEM TO OTHER MIXING PROJECTS, so please make some effort to take it on board.

so, herewith some things you might like to look into:

toms...
gating them to stop the decay sooner. you have the floor tom on the right channel, as viewed from the drummer's perspective. it's polite to place drums relative to your audience's perspective...but as some engineers play drums, they find it challenging to do this, and so some people view it as a legitimate technique. please yourself on that one....but please be aware it's irritating for people who know music - bands need all the sales they can get, so it's perhaps best not to pi$$ anyone off Wink To me, personally speaking, it makes a mix sound amateur, especially if an engineer can't adapt from being a musician. if you get the chance, spend some time with a serious audiophile (or even just a keen one), and view life from a real listener's perspective not just as a musician. it is different.

you have the floor tom panned to extreme? listen to this on headphones and see if you still want to keep it that way. i recommend you fix this. a good tip would be to pan it just off center, say 20 percent....and put it's bass element (i.e. anything lower than 150Hz say) DOWN THE CENTER! i'll let you research that. you should know by now that:

-----> BASS IS NON-DIRECTIONAL

so, panning it is a waste of time, and it also puts more strain on a single woofer rather than spreading it equally over 2 by keeping it center. 2 speakers handle bass when it's spread between them far better than just one. also, if one speaker is being asked to deliver more bass than necessary, you are wiping out it's ability to present the mid-range elements which contain the detail, therefore the song will sound not so clear as it should do which is lost opportunity and doesn't make for happy bunnies.

kick...
it's good to have it level with the bass guitar. i think yours is louder - it's certainly too demanding of attention here, this isn't dance. you also need to keep it focused down the center and not allow outputs to the stereo sides...at least NOT the sub 150Hz'ish material, but the click from it could be - think on your feet and take advantage where it's practical. there's some strong technical reasons for honouring this "requirement" of bass-central, as mentioned. it's best to keep it out of reverbs and dry (in the main...though some situations will warrant placing it using emulation, but i don't think this is really the place, hey?).

i'll say that bit again:
KEEP BASS ELEMENTS OUT OF REVERBS.
if you can't do this, then low-cut the reverb with a suitably steep filter and sensible frequency. i can't give you figures, only idiots do things like that...so you will need to use your ears, judgment, and make reference to commercial material. i can tell you aren't doing this yet, so it's going to constrain your growth and level of skill. BENCHMARK your work against qualified material, or die.

also, this kick, especially when in mono, is about 100 times louder than the snare?

this is telling me that your strategy for setting the levels in your mix needs working at as a matter of urgency.

during the verse, where things cool down a bit...this kick is WAY TOO rude. i note you have it triggered, but you haven't paid attention to it's level. it must be automated. i'm not sure of your reasons for triggering, when the one given in the multi did a reasonable job for the genre? perhaps you listen to music of a different genre...be careful of your perspective and the effect your Terms of Reference has on your mixing strategies and visions. Wink


bass guitar..
you need to control the chorusing here, at least keeping the bass elements (sub 120Hz'ish) out of the stereo field and centered, for reasons noted.

hi-hat....
it's buried, you need to dig it out. be alive to the fact that if you give this instrument any EQ gain, it will get brittle very easily and cause fatigue. be careful Wink To be honest, you should not really boost anything if you can help it, at least until you've been around a bit longer and better understand the tools and the consequences of their correct and incorrect usage. research is good. look to get the clarity by cutting other instruments to make space. listen out for the offending instrument(s) and see where there's scope. solo your way through the mix with the hat running, and identify which is having the biggest impact...and fix it.

general....
you've spanked this hard in the master, which makes it fatiguing for me. for musician's with blown hearing (i.e. that's ALL who fail to respect their personal health and safety) they won't notice. indeed, they need a mix pretty hot to get the delivery - what condition is your hearing in? do you know? had it checked professionally? while many kids today are ensuring their hearing is impaired by prolonged listening to loud music, especially over ear buds...they won't notice either. but of course, some genres depend on loudness as being part of the scene (which may well have occurred as a consequence of hearing damage, believe it or not!), so one needs to respect the trends to a fair degree. if you haven't heard of EBU R128 or it's equivalent outside of the EU, i recommend you explore it for your own information. i actually tried to do a mix recently to the specification and found it REALLY difficult. the Loudness War is pretty much over...or at least it's on it's last legs.

what i don't understand, is why your material is peaking at -3dB? a good level would be -0.8dB in the Master, because the lossy encoder needs headroom to do it's thang, and if it doesn't get it, it WILL DISTORT the file. you'd have to be desperate, with a gun to your head, if you set it to -0dBFS by the way. again, there's loads of information out there if you want to know more. i'm not saying, by the way, that -3dB is bad, on the contrary. but you are missing out on level..and moving the limiter up to -0.8dB won't harm anything. what you need to do is back off on your compression, to bring some dynamics back into your mix overall?

OK, i think this should keep you busy for a while.

i'll be checking up on you Smile

keep well
cheers
Dave
Beware...........Cognitive Dissonance!
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#14
just thought....

if you want a bad mix to sound impressive, compress and brickwall the sh1t out of it....it never fails.

cheers!
Beware...........Cognitive Dissonance!
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#15
oufff!! you gave me a lot of things to think about, Dave!! but I can see that all the information is very, very good!! I will follow your advice and suggestions for sure!

You know, I'm new to all this and I need guidance, and you've done very well by explaining all this points with such detail for me! thanks!! Smile
mixing since April 2013
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