Promises and Lies

[pauli]

Mike's Mix Rescue column for this track was very helpful, although a few of his suggestions I wasn't able to implement because of my DAW. No side-chain routing, unfortunately, so I had to tackle the bass buildup the old fashioned way.

I don't know much about this style of music... this sounds good to my ears, but I'd appreciate any input that might help me improve it.

cheers!
pauli

[thedon]

Hi Pauli

Sounds like you have got a good balance, the bass could come down a touch more in the mid bass area !
I posted on my thread some pictures on how I tried to tame the mid bass by playing around with basic DAW plug ins !

[pauli]

thanks, don. the mid-bass was plaguing me here, and my instinct was to side-chain that band to the kick drum to avoid that nasty build-up around 140. unfortunately, my daw doesn't appear so support sidechaining -_- so I'll check out your tips!

[Pedaling Prince]

I don't know much about this style of music...

Then I think I can help you. This is basically 80's style heavy rock, a genre of music I am very familiar with and have a strong affection for.

That being said, to be honest I had trouble even judging this one. Eighties heavy rock is meant to be listened to loud and unfortunately the level on your mix here is so low that the whole mix is whisper quiet even when I turn my gain up to max.

I was able to make a few observations, though.

First, one thing I did like here was the tone of your electric guitars. You gave them just the right balance of distortion and clarity, bringing out that nice solid high frequency "bite" that they needed.

Unfortunately, I wasn't all that fond of the rest of it. First off, that bass is way too mid-heavy, not to mention too loud; you need to back down on any boosting you may be doing between 250 and 500 Hz and maybe boost more in frequencies below that to give the bass a good solid body but without the excessive mids. Vocals? The tone was good and I liked the reverb but they were way too loud relative to the overall volume of the mix. One of the hallmarks of 80's vintage music was vocals that struggle to be heard over the wall of electric guitars, just barely making themselves intelligible.

I posted my mix of this one some time ago; you commented on it so I know you've heard it. But you might want to poke your head in there again so you can hear the sound I'm talking about.

[Andres330]

Hey Pauli.
I'm new on this site but I'm trying to listen all the mixes here so I can get an idea how to improve mine.
About your mix, I think it had a good HQ even when you say you don't know the genre so well. Nice work there!
But I have to say that the volume was way down, I had to turn my monitors all the way up to barely listen. Try turning the output fader up a little, have no fear . But I think I understand what you did it that way, the song is very hard to control because the instruments are so loud and closely-miced that the channels are always on red saturation! I had to compress all the instruments a lot. And personally I think it's not very well done by me either. I have posted my mix also. I would very much like to hear your opinion on mine