Why aren't there more mixes of this song posted? It's such a good song, and it was a lot of fun.
The main difficulty here for me was that the majority of the pads and synths are all living in the same range, frequency-wise, and muting any of them seemed to big a sacrifice since they all contribute tremendously to the momentum of the song. So the ones I couldn't unglue without carving them into near nonexistence are spread out or autopanned and I tried to carve some smoother spaces out so they'd make room for eachother in mono... thoughts on that aspect would be helpful.
I don't know much about trance music, but I figured gain pumping to the kick made a lot of sense, although it's absent in the preview mix so it might not have been the intention.
Anyhow, thanks for listening, and I hope you give this one a go. I had a good time with it.
Sounds like a record to me. Also like a record that I won't find from my collection.
I have nothing to complain about your mix. It goes on very smoothly and balance feels good all the time. Instruments live together very naturally, they don't overlap but still blend very nicely, so I'm sure you've done great job when carving the space.
One thing came to my mind. Normally when I by accident hear this kind of music, it doesn't feel so smooth. There's always some elements that are annoying to my ears. But in this mix there wasn't. What would happen if you added more attack, sparkle and drama to some parts of this story? Would that enhance even more the smoothness of you mix? Would it make even more deeply relaxing to return to the smoothness? I don't know. But don't spoil your great mix by trying my ideas, I just don't know anything about this genre
Comp on kick sounds spot on, smooth mix well done.
Thanks for commenting and kind words, guys!
Olli, you're right about it being oversmooth for the style I think. Part of it is that music in this genre tends to be hard limited and I generally try not to do that, if for no other reason because I can't seem to do it without ruining my mixes, at least to my ears. I'm not against it, but it never seems very flattering on my work for some reason. As far as sparkle and drama go, I tried
but I fell a bit short of my goal. After sleeping on it and listening to it now, I'm wondering if maybe I could have made the delays shorter, slightly more feedback, and left more of the high end, especially on those chimey bell type pads... maybe that'd give it some more of a glistening quality?
Apart from getting the pads/synths getting along with eachother, giving the mix a realistic space is the other big challenge because it's so busy in some places... I remember rolling the highs off smoothly but pretty heavily on the send returns... I almost do that by default because it generally sounds more natural, but in an electronic piece I guess you can get away with sounding a little less natural? And maybe that's why it's just a little TOO smooth?
Takka, thanks for listening for that comp. This maybe the second or third time I've tried it
and I wasn't really sure if I did it right.
I think you made a pretty good job of separating out all the synths and the overall balance is good but I agree Olli H that your mix overall sounds a little polite. Maybe setting the master bus compressor a little more aggressively to give more attitude and pump the mix ever so slightly would help it. Adding more low end to the bass would help a lot too.
You mentioned about it being electro and not needing it to sound natural. Well I think that's the key !! That's the fun for me mixing this style of music. You can distort, mangle, high pass filter the life out of it etc, to get it where you want, no one's gonna complain that it sounds wrong.
I agree with sano, Pauli! when you're mixing instruments that everybody's familiar with (like pianos, guitars and so) you can't make big changes in them because then they will sound unnatural; but with synths you can take advantage of the fact that nobody has a clue about how it is supposed to sound... so you can freely highfilter them or do whatever you want that suits the mix and nobody will complain at all ;-)
(25-03-2014, 10:29 PM)sano Wrote: [ -> ]I think you made a pretty good job of separating out all the synths and the overall balance is good but I agree Olli H that your mix overall sounds a little polite. Maybe setting the master bus compressor a little more aggressively to give more attitude and pump the mix ever so slightly would help it. Adding more low end to the bass would help a lot too.
You mentioned about it being electro and not needing it to sound natural. Well I think that's the key !! That's the fun for me mixing this style of music. You can distort, mangle, high pass filter the life out of it etc, to get it where you want, no one's gonna complain that it sounds wrong.
thanks for listening and your suggestions! I should capture some pictures of the EQ work I did, because it's pretty ridiculous
right now I'm pumping to the kick at about 3 dB gain reduction... you think perhaps I should go further with that, or compress the entire mix again on top of it? I didn't use a limiter either since I usually wind up ruining my mix
so that might also be a problem.
(26-03-2014, 08:48 PM)juanjose1967 Wrote: [ -> ]I agree with sano, Pauli! when you're mixing instruments that everybody's familiar with (like pianos, guitars and so) you can't make big changes in them because then they will sound unnatural; but with synths you can take advantage of the fact that nobody has a clue about how it is supposed to sound... so you can freely highfilter them or do whatever you want that suits the mix and nobody will complain at all ;-)
haha yeah, the pads especially I carved up like a turkey. I think I bandpassed a few of them which I'd never consider doing to a natural instrument unless the arrangement was extremely dense.
Main issue it sounds like though is that I didn't go far enough with the compression.. I could probably get away with a lot more of it in this case.
nice sounding !!! well done Pauli!!
!