Street Noise - Revelations (mixed by carl arsenic)

[carlarsenic]

Curious to hear what feedback you guys have on this. I'm a newbie mixer so complete honesty is appreciated.

[azwayne]

Hi! Welcome to the group!

My quick thoughts:

The guitar in the right channel is up too high.

Vocals could probably come up more but if the guitar goes down, they may be good where they are.

On first listen, your kick drum sounds overcompressed but it *can* work.

The bass really does sound overcompressed. With everything else where it is, try pushing the attack time past 30 milliseconds and see what happens. Flip back and forth wuth where you have it now and see if you can't hear the difference. Then when you get that where you feel good with it, try bringing either the ratio down or backing off on the threshold.

Also, watch out for the buildup at about 250-300 Hz. That can quickly sap the presence in your mix. Now some tones in that area do belong there so don't overdo it but be aware of how quickly the different instruments can throw energy at that area of the sound spectrum.

It's a good start, though. Give it another run through and see what you end up with. (An ddon't forget to occassionally listen to music you *know* from the same speakers/headphones to recalibrate your ears as you work.)

So tell us what you felt was the greatest challenge you had with this mix? What made you really furrow your eyebrows and work at it? What were you pleased with? What felt right to you about your final mix?

[carlarsenic]

Thanks for all the tips, I will try them out and see how it goes. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out.

I did compress the bass a lot because it was so unevenly played - I guess it's the wrong decision to try to remedy that with compression instead of working the volume envelope a lot, so that was one of the big challenges. I also found that the drums were thin and had a lot of bleeding, so it was difficult to make them sound full but still dry.

So those are the two main standout things I struggled with. But as I said, I'm new at this so most of it was a challenge - finding the right EQ for the various things, and making it sound fuller in general without using too much reverb since I wanted it to sound pretty dry still like much of 70s rock does. I'm currently reading Mike Senior's mixing book but still have a lot left to read in that.

I thought when I was done that I managed it okay and got a pretty good distinction between the instruments, I think you can hear each instrument pretty well. I turned down the Hammond a lot though, it seemed to muddle things so I used that mostly for background texture and extra fullness. I think I managed to make it sound like a rock song with a bit of heaviness to it.

That's not to say I'm really happy with the result, it doesn't sound professional to me. I think it's made me understand a few things and tells me I have an incredible amount of learning left and I have to train my ears more too. I just felt like I needed to stop when I did because whatever I tried afterwards seem to make it worse.

Thanks again for taking the time. I'm just about to go on vacation so I will get to trying your changes when I get back. Good probably also to rest my ears for a while. And by then I should have been able to finish Mike Senior's book then too so I have a bit more theory under my belt.

[azwayne]

Yeah, that hammond can be a problem. It doesn't really have to be heard to add it's value. It's a pad. it's job is just to be musical glue. That's the sort of thing that the level is right if you don't notice it until you hit the mute button. With the pad, songs out to sound nice and well rounded, musically. Without it, it will probably sound a little jerkey and just tug at you like it wants something more.