Lyndsay Ollard - Catching Up

[juanjose1967]

Hello! here's my mix of this beautiful song. It took me a while to mix because I had some problems with the guitars, but I think that eventually I made it sound good. As usual, comments are always welcomed!

[bmullen]

Very nice Your work on the guitars paid off.

[juanjose1967]

Thanks, Bob!!!

[Voelund]

Its a hard one to get right. The dynamics are tricky and the guitarfills need thinnin to mane sense.
Theres a dark ringin sound to snare could it be lows from the reverb ?
I like the guitars.
The wilder part could be wilder, I mean louder in volume, specially drums.
I know the pedal steel is noisy but it sounds so good that the noise is a small price to pay, and I find it a little too dark in your mix, also voice could be a tad brighter.

I think you did a good job on this. A mix can always be bended and these are just my thoughts - based on my preferences.

[juanjose1967]

Hi, Niels! as usual, your comments make me think and pay attention to things that go by me often

- I added a plate reverb to the snare and I checked the EQ I applied. There were no low frequencies because I used a HPF. Maybe the dark sound you here is my attempt to fatten it up. It sounded too thin to me and I added some distortion in the low mid-frequencies... I don't know.

- I'm glad you liked the guitars. They took me longer than usual to make them sound decent

- I've added some automation to raise a little bit the drums in the last part of the song when the drums are playing.

- the pedal steel gave me headaches from the beginning. It was much noisier before!!! I added a noise reductor and I got rid of most of the annoying noise, but there is still some remaining and I was not able to fully clean it because it was affecting the sound of the instrument and that was my priority.

- I've slightly changed the pedal steel and vocals EQ according to your suggestions.

The changes are small, but at least they will make the song sound better. Thanks once more!!! [/align]

[Spede]

Even after the second revision I feel there still are some balance issues. The drums at the end are still pretty quiet and I felt the brush drums were way too aggressive (and loud). Also the Uuh backing vocals were distractingly loud IMO.

All these balance issues were very easy to notice on quiet monitoring levels. I wonder if quiet monitoring levels might improve your mixing; sometimes it's hard to determine balances on loud levels due to fatigue and wow factor from sheer volume.

If you listen to this mix really quietly (just a tad louder than noise from keyboard typing) how do you feel about this mix? Do you feel the balances are good?

[juanjose1967]

thank you Spede for your suggestion about quiet monitoring. I always mix with low volume but never that low!!

But anyway, it helped me hear (and not hear) what I had to fix. Probably the song sounds better by now. I will try this from now on!! sometimes I hesitate about my levels and this will make me feel more sure about it!

Thank you again for your help!