First Reggae Mix

[Vinnie]

Here is my first Reggae mix. When I heard the song I really liked it. Any constructive feedback would be great.

Vinnie

[Mike Senior]

A good overall balance here, and some nice general-purpose effects in keeping with the style too. Good sense of low woof, which I like, and the vocal sits fairly sensibly against the bass and drums for me. Interesting to hear a harder-sounding take on drums here too, given that I went for something slightly softer-edged myself.

There are two main areas I'd concentrate on in terms of tweaking further. The first thing is that the mix feels rather narrow. There are lots of potential reasons for this, but I suspect that it might be partly because the effects you're using are quite narrow. Try using a stereo dedicated manipulation plug-in (there are some suggestions here) in the returns and fading up the stereo Sides component a little. Some kind of stereo widening effect on the vocals would also probably help. The cymbal (for example at 0:33) sounds like it needs to blend a bit better, so you could probably use that blending effect to paint out to the edges of the picture a bit as well.

The second thing I'd work on a bit more would be to try to increase the sense of 'air' and 'height' in the mix. The mix as a whole feels somehow slightly muffled, and the vocals in particular would seem to warrant a bit more in the way of upper-octave breathiness, given that this seems to be such a characteristic part of the singer's raw delivery. I think I also ended up adding in some background noise to the final mix for this general purpose myself, so you might want to experiment with that idea too.

[Vinnie]

A good overall balance here, and some nice general-purpose effects in keeping with the style too. Good sense of low woof, which I like, and the vocal sits fairly sensibly against the bass and drums for me. Interesting to hear a harder-sounding take on drums here too, given that I went for something slightly softer-edged myself.

There are two main areas I'd concentrate on in terms of tweaking further. The first thing is that the mix feels rather narrow. There are lots of potential reasons for this, but I suspect that it might be partly because the effects you're using are quite narrow. Try using a stereo dedicated manipulation plug-in (there are some suggestions here) in the returns and fading up the stereo Sides component a little. Some kind of stereo widening effect on the vocals would also probably help. The cymbal (for example at 0:33) sounds like it needs to blend a bit better, so you could probably use that blending effect to paint out to the edges of the picture a bit as well.

The second thing I'd work on a bit more would be to try to increase the sense of 'air' and 'height' in the mix. The mix as a whole feels somehow slightly muffled, and the vocals in particular would seem to warrant a bit more in the way of upper-octave breathiness, given that this seems to be such a characteristic part of the singer's raw delivery. I think I also ended up adding in some background noise to the final mix for this general purpose myself, so you might want to experiment with that idea too.

Hi Mike thank you for the positive feedback I really appreciated it.

I got my tweaking cap on and went to work to see if I could make this mix better.

I dealt with the narrowing issue by changing 1/8th delay rtn from 33% to 100% wet this increased overall spaciousness of the vocals, also added some air to the main and background vocal by changing the -2.5db HF shelf and boosting it by about +5.4db this brought out the nice nuances in the singers voice.

Fixed blend issue by adding a short separate ambient reverb to all instruments really help to increase depth and added a little bit more spaciousness (paint around the edges) to the drums and other supporting instruments as well as fattened up the vocals. In the original mix I was trying to get the blend and space all with one reverb; which I felt upon a closer listen wasn't working.

What was causing the muffled sound was the lower organ sound which needed to be HPF higher up to remove some mud in the low end. Work on trying to tighten the Kick and Bass relationship which also gave better clarity and less muffled sound in the lower mids.

I now feel better about the mix and really like the the depth and spaciousness, the tweaks definitely made things sound tighter and more cleaner and the vocals seemed to have more breath.

Vinnie