Dark Ride: 'Hammer Down'

[mikej]

If you save and print that initial mix, then you can always refer back to it to see if you think you've made things better or worse and if you feel that you are landing somewhere between that initial mix and the reference mix.  I find the effects bypass button is quite handy for this too.  It might just help with the overthinking/overprocessing side of things? You might find that you don't really need to do a whole lot to every track.  Sometimes just a little eq or whatever is enough rather than big moves. 

That is about all I got for now. Good luck.

Cheers!

[SonicTramp]

Thank you. I will do that. It may take some time but I'll give it my best. I get your last sentence and agreed. But that's how one does when one first begins, just hacking away happily. Then one will learn that sometimes a smaller knife is better to cut a steak than a machete. I appreciate the little tricks and tips you hand out. I use them. Thanks.

[SonicTramp]

I have been using the ref to mix this one for a couple days. What I got from it: I noticed the guitars didn't have a lot of top end, I LP mine to 3K (never reached this low for distorted guitar before) and still have more top end than it. I love the snare in the ref although I suspect it was a sample. Sounds too familiar to me. But no matter, I still love it. Can anybody confirm or dispute? The kick didn't have a lot of low end. It makes sense for this genre, so I HP mine to try to copy the sound. I am not sure if I did it, but I am happy with what I got for now. The main synth sounded dry in the ref, so I took my reverb/delay off of it but I think it's just a matter of personal taste. I actually like it dry like that bc it sounds like it has a groove leading the guitars in on the next part. The rest of the mix was trying to follow the instructions given. I am not sure if I got it or not, but it sounds ok to me. I tried to separate them enough where the listeners can hear anything they want, unmasking.

I noticed that the guitar solo could be louder in the ref but the mixer chose not to. I wonder why. The guitars also sounded lower midrange-rich, dangerous neighborhood, yet sounds so good and powerful, and most importantly, not muddy up the whole mix. The ref is so clean it's scary. I also thought the kick in the ref could be louder, more powerful, more be fitting to this song, but "who am I to disagree", right? So I turned mine up where I thought it should be and strayed away from the ref.

[Blitzzz]

"Blitzzz, it took you 2 years to be able to find reference useful, I suspect it'll take more for me."

Oh, it seems I have expressed myself in a misleading way because reference mixes were immediately useful to me when I started using them. I was referring more to the overall time it took me to mix our album, regardless of the fact that I was using ref tracks to check my mixes. I think I remixed our album at least 3-4 times because I was permanently frustrated that it never sounded like my ref tracks. Back then, I was also using tons of plugins to fix tracks without really listening to them in the context of the whole mix, eliminating certain frequencies on instruments like guitars or bass just because some dude in a video on Youtube said so. It's like trying to paint a huge painting by editing only a tiny section at a time and never checking the entire image.

It all changed when I watched a couple of streams with well-known mixers like Nolly, Daniel Bergstrand, Jens Bogren or Henrik Udd over at Nailthemix. They mixed some of my favorite songs like Lamb of God`s Redneck, Future Breed Machine by Meshuggah or Gone with the Wind by Architects live while answering viewers` questions in the stream. They all mainly used faders and panning to get the mix to 85-90%, and only made use of plugins when there was a good reason to do so. After adapting this method, my mixes finally sounded much, much more like my ref tracks

It seems like you have adapted this style of mixing, too, which is great. It will definitely make your mixes better and will set you apart from a lot of people. Still, mixing is art; there is no right or wrong. If you really want a guitar to buzz or a snare to sound very harsh, that's your freedom as a mixer. I totally respect that, and it`s great if someone has a vision and brings it to life. There are several Darkride mixes on this forum with very weird tonal choices, but the mix sounds great and powerful. I personally would not have mixed it that way, but still, if it sounds great, it is great.

However, on most of the Darkride mixes on this forum, such choices are not intentional but the product of a completely overloaded workflow. I criticize that because people need to learn to listen. Listen to the original tracks without EQing and compressing every track. Do you really need the cut at 400Hz on the guitar? What if the guitars already don`t have much energy at 400hz because the band was intelligent enough to get the guitar tone they want while recording the tracks? Wouldn`t it be a better idea if you then mix the tracks exactly as they are delivered to you and use faders and panning, and automation? If you can`t get a good mix with only those basic tools, then it`s time to figure out what needs to be done on top of that.

A mixer should use the DAW like an instrument. Breathe life into a mix, make it heavy when it needs to be heavy, and fragile if it needs to be fragile. Most people don`t get that because they lack confidence and/or skills.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. You are on the right track, and you will get better over time, and your mixes will improve a lot with this new workflow. Add ref tracks to your arsenal and use them to meet the expectations of the band and the potential listener, and your mixes will stand out from the rest. Looking forward to hearing more from you in the future!

[Blitzzz]

Btw nice mix, Mikey. Very punchy for a rough mix! I really like the balance in your mix, it already creates a lot of tension. The vocals have problems cutting through the guitar wall, which is pretty normal for a rough mix. That`s where I would start with compression and eq`ing to carve room for the vocals in the guitar tracks and also give the vocals more consistency with compression. After that, I would say most of your groundwork is done, and you can focus on making the mix more engaging by creating more tension with automation. Eg.g narrow the verse by panning the guitars more to the middle, so the verse feels smaller. Make the song progressively "louder" with every chorus by driving the mix more and more into the compressor, and pan the guitars hard L/R again to make each chorus sound wider.

[Blitzzz]

I have been using the ref to mix this one for a couple days. What I got from it: I noticed the guitars didn't have a lot of top end, I LP mine to 3K (never reached this low for distorted guitar before) and still have more top end than it. I love the snare in the ref although I suspect it was a sample. Sounds too familiar to me. But no matter, I still love it. Can anybody confirm or dispute? The kick didn't have a lot of low end. It makes sense for this genre, so I HP mine to try to copy the sound. I am not sure if I did it, but I am happy with what I got for now. The main synth sounded dry in the ref, so I took my reverb/delay off of it but I think it's just a matter of personal taste. I actually like it dry like that bc it sounds like it has a groove leading the guitars in on the next part. The rest of the mix was trying to follow the instructions given. I am not sure if I got it or not, but it sounds ok to me. I tried to separate them enough where the listeners can hear anything they want, unmasking.

[quote pid='121936' dateline='1674340536']

I noticed that the guitar solo could be louder in the ref but the mixer chose not to. I wonder why. The guitars also sounded lower midrange-rich, dangerous neighborhood, yet sounds so good and powerful, and most importantly, not muddy up the whole mix. The ref is so clean it's scary. I also thought the kick in the ref could be louder, more powerful, more be fitting to this song, but "who am I to disagree", right? So I turned mine up where I thought it should be and strayed away from the ref.
[/quote]

Regarding the guitar tone: Yeah, I wanted the guitars to have the "brown" tone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juA98y_nMv0), but with more distortion. If you listen to early Killswitch Engage, that was exactly my goal, and I spent months of research and money to get it right. Ultimately, I got what I wanted from a plugin from Neural DSP (https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/fortin-nameless-suite). 

Info about the drums: The drums were recorded live with an E-kit and 100% sampled. Listen to any modern Metal production or anything from Joey Sturgis from 10 years ago, and you will hear the snare sample. It`s probably the most used snare sample in the world. He explains the process and the samples in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEa3oSAccO4). And here is the part where he adds the snare reverb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1mm4SFHzJU
Oh, and yes, that`s the level of detail if you want to make things sound right in the mix

Regarding the low end of the kick: Too much low end on the kick, and your mix is in ruins whenever the drummer plays double bass. There are ways to prevent that from happening, even with a kick that's heavier on the low end, but you also need to make room for the bass. So for songs with double bass, I would choose a kick sample that`s pushing 70-90hz instead of 40-60hz. I would then split the bass into two tracks, one for the low end, one for the mid/high end and completely leave out the low mids. Compress the shit out of the low-end bass track until it has absolutely no movement whatsoever (a limiter if perfect for this job). Then use an eq to carve a hole into the low bass track for the low end of the kick, exactly where the kick has most of its low-end energy. E.g. if the kick hits its peak at 80hz, use a sharp bell curve for the eq and carve out 3 db from the bass track at 80 hz. Great - you have made room for the low end of the kick. Next up I would now remove as much low-end below 50-60hz from the kick so the low end of the bass track has enough room in the mix. Listen to both tracks (and to the whole mix) while making small volume adjustments until you clearly hear the kick, but also have a full and heavy bass.

You can check the trick with the two bass tracks here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00kI0Ashqp8

Regarding the solo: I didn`t want to lose the heaviness of the rhythm guitar in the solo part and also give the nice rhythm track in the second half of the solo some love, because it`s a nice rhythm. Yes, the solo is the king and needs to be in the spotlight, but I wanted the listener also to be able to hear all the details in the background after listening to the song for a while.

[SonicTramp]

Thanks Blitzzz, for all the info and answering my questions. I suspected the level of editing is high and very detail but never got to learn how, why, when, where and what. I have a clearer idea now, and perhaps even extrapolate the techniques to other things. Thanks for the info on the snare sample. I had been wondering about it for all these years how "they" got the snare sound so good. I tried a couple times (importing a sample) but could never get it to sound either the same as theirs and/or enhance mine in any meaningful way, so I came to conclusion that there's must be a snare everybody uses to produce such recognizable sound. I wish I knew Sturgis's video prior; it could have saved me some time. I appreciate your pointing the way for me. I guess the pros have an army of assistants to do those tedious editings. But the devil is in the details. I've heard that more than once. I'll pay more attention to it from now on.

Thanks for the tips on the splitting the bass. I heard it in the ref and admired the skills involved when I heard the top end of the bass, crunchy and clear. And yeah, perhaps I didn't clamp the lower part enough. My skill with the compressor is still clumsy; I have yet to recognize the sweet spots for all the parameters. I will try it again and see.

The "brown" tone guitar is awesome. I didn't know one can use color to describe sound, but I do agree with you. I like it bc it's diff than guitars sounds I grow up with listening to.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. It means a lot to me. I always give it my best even when my best is still not good enough. I love mixing in a very strange way, and it brings joy to me when I am alone with the tracks. My heart skipped and beat out of rhythm when all of a sudden I was able to hear the guitars like the way I thought it should be, or the compressor pumps in a pleasant way, etc, much like how I felt when I was young thinking of my first gf. That's the feeling I have when I mix. Is it love? I say yes. I hope you will allow me to ask you in the future for tips and tricks to improve my skills in mixing. Thanks, man. I appreciate the time you spent teaching and helping. Btw, you're not just teaching me. I am sure loads of mixers here will benefit as well. Me? already I know more than yesterday.

[Blitzzz]

Thank you, but I´m just a regular dude who didn`t know what he was doing in Cubase until he had the chance to watch some of the pros mixing the songs he loves. I probably spent over 6k for hardware and software at that point, and seeing guys like Sturgis or Bergstrand mixing with Stock Cubase plugins was shocking. Up to that point, I was constantly looking for the magic plugin to make my mixes sound "pro", and those live streams finally taught me an important lesson: There is no magic plugin, it`s the quality of the tracks and only doing what needs to be done

What also helped was the fact that Nailthemix gives you all the original tracks of the original song so you can actually use the live stream as a step-by-step guide to mix the original song and see how it all comes together. E.g. I was mixing Future Breed Machine like that and had a mix that actually sounded almost identical to the one in the live stream, with mostly stock plugins. After that, I removed most of the plugins in my plugin folder except for a few really useful ones (mostly Fabfilter and some special one trick ponies like Waves L1 (it`s the best limiter for stuff like the low-end trick on the bass and on guitars).

One last trick if you wonder how guys like Sturgis or others create this superdense guitar wall sound: Ditch the compressor for guitars (doesn`t really do much anyway). Instead grab a limiter (again, L1 is awesome - it`s the only plugin from Waves I would recommend), put it on a rhythm guitar track, and use the same technique as on the bass: Drive the guitar track into the limiter until it`s volume is not really moving anymore, and voilá - there you have it. Only use two rhythm guitar tracks, panned left hard and right, and use automation to actually change the volume of the guitars as needed. That`s how I mixed our rhythm guitars.

Anyway, I haven`t mixed a song for the last 3-4 years, and I´m definitely not up to date in terms of new technology and stuff. When I quit mixing, the whole AI/self-mixing tools just started to emerge and I guess they only got better over the last couple of years. Which is to be expected, because technology always improves and gets better. I remember buying Gulfoss as one of the last plugins and how it made any mix instantly 5-10% better. Crazy

[mikej]

Btw nice mix, Mikey. Very punchy for a rough mix! I really like the balance in your mix, it already creates a lot of tension. The vocals have problems cutting through the guitar wall, which is pretty normal for a rough mix. That`s where I would start with compression and eq`ing to carve room for the vocals in the guitar tracks and also give the vocals more consistency with compression. After that, I would say most of your groundwork is done, and you can focus on making the mix more engaging by creating more tension with automation. Eg.g narrow the verse by panning the guitars more to the middle, so the verse feels smaller. Make the song progressively "louder" with every chorus by driving the mix more and more into the compressor, and pan the guitars hard L/R again to make each chorus sound wider.

Thanks. 

Yes, there are no plugins or automation on this, just fader balance and panning. 

The idea here was just an exercise to try and put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.  Basically to try and show how far you can get without using any plugins or automation.

(I see you already found the completed mix which I posted here, if anyone is interested.)

[mikej]

seeing guys like Sturgis or Bergstrand mixing with Stock Cubase plugins was shocking. Up to that point, I was constantly looking for the magic plugin to make my mixes sound "pro", and those live streams finally taught me an important lesson: There is no magic plugin, it`s the quality of the tracks and only doing what needs to be done

I can't tell you how much I agree with this. For me this was by far the lesson that took me the longest to properly understand.

Cheers!