Japan Song Mix

[j_ohnny]

Here is my mix of Japan song. The cellos where tough to fit in. I took a lot of the meat out of the guitars to try to make the cellos fit. Not sure if it worked. I'm still restricting myself to cuts only in the EQ and LCR panning. I did boost at 100h and 10khz a decibel or two when i did my pseudo master.

[Mike Senior]

Nice overall balance, with everything seeming to sit at a decent level. I generally get the impression that it represents the multitrack well. I do wonder whether the overall tonality is perhaps a bit heavy on the low mids around 200Hz or so -- it just sounds a bit woolly, despite, if anything, a little too much 8-10kHz. (In that respect, I wonder whether your mastering EQ might have been self-defeating!) I wonder whether the guitars might benefit from a bit of extra 700Hz a lot of the time too.

The mid-section vocals and cello feel like they need a bit more work to blend properly. It'll be EQ and short reverb that'll be the ticket for my money.

I like the way you've brought the melodic cello line through at the end of the song, although it feels as if the cymbals are being overplayed during that whole section otherwise.

In general, while there's still something which feels a bit rough-edged about this mix, what I really like about it is that you're really communicating the long-term dynamics of the arrangement quite convincingly, I think -- your mix somehow becomes more than the sum of its parts.