Revelation mix

[Skapunk]

Hey,

This is my first upload. Love the 70s vibe of this tune. This is just a first pass static mix.

Grateful for any thoughts/comments

Cheers!

Skapunk

[HbGuitar]

Hi skapunk,

had a quick listen to this...really liked it. I haven't tried this mix yet so not sure of the intricacies of this particular project but it sounds good to me on first listen....nice balance, stereo width is good. Bottom end sits nicely with kick and bass...snare is nice and crisp....mid range is clear - vocals and guitar sound great. Maybe, just maybe a little bright for my taste in the upper reaches around 4-6K, but its bold and it works and i have no problem with it.

great job

[Skapunk]

Cheers HbGuitar. Interesting you think upper mids are a bit bright. I'll go back and have a listen, and do a bit of referencing.

[HbGuitar]

Cheers HbGuitar. Interesting you think upper mids are a bit bright. I'll go back and have a listen, and do a bit of referencing.

I've just about finished my version of this mix, so i can now be more specific...I think the cymbals are a bit loud in middle 8 sections

[Skapunk]

You're absolutely right. Bit of automation I think. As they say - 90% of a mix is just getting the relative levels right!!

[pauli]

Hey Skapunk. I don't personally think the mix is too bright... most analog recordings are a bit darker but modern tastes usually prefer a brighter mix, so it's no issue for me but I'm wondering if maybe you overcompressed the master bus a bit? It's not really uncomfortable, but there's not a whole lot of dynamic contrast (in my opinion.) Gotta say though, I love the Hammond sound you've got... comes through clear as a bell and makes its contribution known . You might also want to take a look at Guitar 1 during the solo... I can barely hear it at all. It's not a mix/EQ issue, really, the fader just needs to come up I think.

I'm just previewing the mix on headphones, but my main suggestion is to reduce the master bus compressor a bit and compress the individual instruments a little more aggressively if compression is needed. Did you trim out the track sections where the principal instrument isn't playing and it's all leakage? That might also go a long way toward getting the compression settings you want, too, since the master bus processor is going to react more than you might want it to if superfluous bleed is passing through.

Thanks for sharing, good work.

[takka360]

Its far too loud .

[Skapunk]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Pauli - I do use a 2mix bus compressor (analog) but it is only 'tickling' the VU: usually less than 1 dB, then into a valve EQ (HPF, dip mud, +/- air/upper mids) to print; from the print I used a waves L2 limiter to bring it up to level. Listening back - I think you're right: it is too compressed - I'm going to go through the tracks and see what can be loosened up a bit. Again this was a first pass static mix - no automation: so guitar solo and ear candy parts to come thru next. Will probably drop the vocal level a touch. The organ part has both a mic on the horns and one on the low speaker. I high passed the horns and gave them a significant amount of air. As a result you can hear more of the room in the track: for me, thats what makes it really work. I tend to do quick digital edits on the tracks to get rid of spillage when the instrument is not playing, and so, compression can be used more readily.

Takka360 - Loudness wars again?

Cheers guys! L8rs

[pauli]

Just be careful about using compression on big parts of the mix when mixing from tape. Tape has less dynamic range than digital and they had to record it as hot as they could to beat the noise, which also naturally compressed the signal, so if you're using compression on individual instruments and I'm sure you are, compression/limiting on the master bus might be a bad idea altogether.

Honestly, loudness is just an illusion because we all have volume knobs, so it's really not worth it to compress the master bus in this genre of music, especially if you're not "mixing into" the compressor. On this mix I can't turn my volume knob past 2 without it being very uncomfortably loud, and this is on cheap PC speakers... most people are going to be frustrated by a tune that they can't get to a comfortable listening level, and the rest of them have huge speakers and probably can't hear very well anyway