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time to let the DAW cool down.....and put some coffee on.

Sounds great to me. And nice use of effects.

If this music is meant to be listened with full volume, then vocal could come down a little bit. It would also give a reason for a singer to shout.

This is one brillant use of effects, and possibly mute and copy ? Very interesting to listen to and tasteful editing I guess, not knowing the multitrack. I agree with Olli the vocal could easily come down a bit.
very creative use of melodyne ? Or something similar, changin formant of the singer and copying that around, wish i had that, sounds great.
Eq work is good. I would like little more drums, little less vocal. But I never would have thought of half of what you put into this so I forgive you :-) Great work !

when A&R walk in and demand a 'Vocal up' mix for radio, what can you do? lol

thanks Olli and Niel for taking the time here, appreciated. the vocal was difficult. do you ever try out quick ideas without paying too much attention to the structure in the DAW with the intention of tidying up if it works? well, i never got round to tidying it up....and it got worse with time. i had Aux's all over the place and stacked inserts galore, sidechains and more automation than i could shake a stick at - it was ugly. i worked this project over a 3-week period, and i think i ended up with over 100 tracks to try and remember what was doing what.

i used the Cubase plug "Pitch Correct", quick and dirty for the formant tweaks.

now, these drums.....

...i ditched the OH's. for some reason the phasing issues were really bad. listening to the other mixes herein, it's quite marked. i found it irritating, so tried to dig the cymbals and hat out of the single room mic. this had issues....pulling out the instruments caused abundant fatigue (i wasn't surprised), so major compromise was in order. the snare too was tricky; the room mic tracking actually wanders in it's timing with the other drum tracks which was alarming (fixable, with unlimited time constraints). anyway, it was a lot of faffing about and quite a tough price to pay. can't "fix it in the mix"?

i will flag up the outro here. the original tracking was problematic from the arrangement, such that a significant part of the vocal was wiped out irrespective of processing. i changed it, making sure the instruments finished [unnaturally] dry while the vocal was fed into a big reverb which faded out. i liked the contrast and the subtle ambiguity. oh, and the clarity!

final note...i've since been into the project and fiddled around a bit with the vocal, but to be honest it's going to be a lot of work to tidy it all up and get a new balance going, and even then it's possible i might not be able to get back to the original idea. learning point? i should know better by now

Cheers!

I think if I were listening to the radio one day and heard a song you mixed, I would know right away. There is a very distinctive character to your mixes, and I enjoy the way you used reverbs and delays as instruments in their own right. In this case, some of the reverbs sounds a little bit washy in the context of the mix, and maybe could come down a teeny bit. However, unless I'm not hearing it right, it sounds like you're using very long pre-delays on most of the really diffuse reverbs and I love that sound, sort of like a dark, very roomy club.

Don't think there's much I can say about the creative processing because it very clearly speaks for itself. I like how it sets the song apart from most examples within the genre, and it's very clearly well controlled and executed with intention, which is top praise in my book.

For my personal taste, the bass guitar could be just a teeny bit stronger in the bass frequencies, though it has a very nice bite in the attack and it's certainly getting along with the kick drum and floor toms. I'm not sure why, but the snare drum hits sound a little bit more like a "splat" than a "crack," almost like there's some flamming, which is most likely related to the room mic issue you mentioned (I haven't heard the raw tracks, so my observation there may be useless.) And some of the distorted guitars sound like they could be a small amount fuller in the low mids.

Any sort of mastering you've done here is very transparent, I'm jealous, and I demand an explanation

As always, great work and top respect for the close attention to detail. This is a very refreshingly different mix of what could otherwise have been a very cookie cutter example of the genre.

(30-06-2014, 08:49 PM)pauli Wrote: [ -> ]....In this case, some of the reverbs sounds a little bit washy in the context of the mix, and maybe could come down a teeny bit.

i'd use the term "exposed" because it attracts undue attention to itself, if i understand you correctly? i think there is indeed some scope for a re-visit to this part of the mix. i don't know if i'd turn it down or rather maybe make it blend more so it's not quite so prominent? or even do both...but it could be fine tuned, for sure.

Quote:For my personal taste, the bass guitar could be just a teeny bit stronger in the bass frequencies...

i think this would risk putting the mix out of balance, but it also depends on your listening level etc....crank the level up and it might change your view because of the equal loudness thaanngg? i must say, i don't usually crank the monitors up when mixing for the forum, so at louder levels things could get marginally out of shape. i usually instead go the other way, and drop right down so only the mid's are showing and the bass and top end are just about to pop through. it doesn't have the same degree of reliability as 85dB, but it keeps the neighbours happy, and my ears fit. my gear is calibrated, and i do own a decent SPL meter for referencing.

Quote: I'm not sure why, but the snare drum hits sound a little bit more like a "splat" than a "crack," almost like there's some flamming, which is most likely related to the room mic issue you mentioned (I haven't heard the raw tracks, so my observation there may be useless.)

let's not talk drums here. you are totally right. if it was only the snare that was a problem, i'd drop a sample in there.

Quote:And some of the distorted guitars sound like they could be a small amount fuller in the low mids.

i totally agree, it's a fair observation. the problems with tracking didn't only stop with the drums, unfortunately. immediately below the filter here, is quite a bump of content. i tried to find a way around it, but decided to opt for caution and clarity. some have bravely waved caution to the wind and pumped the side channels with it, which i can image sounds great in stereo sitting in the sweet spot. however, this, coupled with the bass line, has had it's consequences in allowing low-mid congestion to occur....and i'd bet my pension that over normal consumer speakers it would distort something terrible, and REALLY get out of shape with more amp level!! in a normal situation, i'd encourage the band to find some good space, and get their cabs off the ground and spend time exploring the best mic position, and re-track it. if they don't have the skills or resources, it's always best to find someone who does. once the recordings are made, they will last forever. it's an asset, not a liability. more bands need to think this way.....

Pauli, many thanks for dropping by and sharing your obs with me. it's great that you spend quality time giving feedback; always appreciated. but please go easy on the compliments, you're making me blush!

laters
D

Listening to your mix actually inspired me to give it a look... and I'm not sure it's fair to criticize any mix of this tune. Usually I can tease something vaguely musical out of a mix in about an hour to get an idea of where I want to take it and then I start over... and after 3 hours of mixing with only marginal improvements, I was ready to flip my desk over. Unless I'm going nuts and overcomplicating matters, this multi is a mess . Everything's all out of phase and the guitars are more noise than tone.

I actually tried notching out all the ugly resonances in the guitars and... well, that wound up removing half the harmonic content of the signal, and there's no way to make that sound good. So color me impressed, I'd love to hear how you managed so well on this one.

I tried to mix this song with no samples but I couldn't see/hear how to fix all the problems without replacing most of the drums

so after messing around with the drums for an hour or so I kept the overheads, the hihat and the room and used samples (trigger) for the rest. I still had to kill everything below 2k on the OHs to make the drums sound good.

back to the topic: There are some nice effects and interesting ideas in your mix (e.g. the voice at 3:20). It was quite interesting to compare your mix with mine which is more upfront/in your face and less experimental.

(07-07-2014, 04:50 PM)pauli Wrote: [ -> ]...I'd love to hear how you managed so well on this one.

i spent a considerable amount of time on it, too much, if i'm honest. but sometimes it's difficult letting go of a song which has something that you just gotta try and get out, despite the odds.

you can probably tell i muted a bucket load of material and deleted even more. i thought this was probably a 5 piece band...then i checked them out - it's only 3!! unfortunately, the way it was arranged made it impossible to try and present it as a 3-man band, even allowing for modest artistic license in a studio mix. to sound so completely different to your live gigs is what i'd call a risky marketing strategy...so, you watch the performance, buy the CD at the scene, take it home and spin it up only to hear a completely different band? anyway, it gave me some space to flex the creative elements.

the guitar i ran with in the main, was wildly EQ'd. the double-tracked was EQ'd differently, but close e.g. gains in one were matched by attenuation in the other, more or less. then i used a graphic EQ and worked ONLY within the region that had significant material left, alternately boosting and attenuating by around 4 or 5dB? the double-tracked was mirrored (i.e. gain on one frequency was attenuated in the other track). i can't remember if i used my Little Labs IBP to work the phase and delay signal of one of the tracks.....looking for some strength here, if possible, and avoiding thinning was the critical criteria? i'll take a look later on and see what i did and get back to you if i've missed something important that can possibly help. oh, i most likely parallel compressed the E-Gtr buss using something that would add colour and some character back into the guitar.

(07-07-2014, 11:58 PM)Blitzzz Wrote: [ -> ]I tried to mix this song with no samples but I couldn't see/hear how to fix all the problems without replacing most of the drums

so after messing around with the drums for an hour or so I kept the overheads, the hihat and the room and used samples (trigger) for the rest. I still had to kill everything below 2k on the OHs to make the drums sound good.

back to the topic: There are some nice effects and interesting ideas in your mix (e.g. the voice at 3:20). It was quite interesting to compare your mix with mine which is more upfront/in your face and less experimental.

thanks for dropping by Blitzzz. the problem with drastically low-cutting the OH's is loss of character of the cymbals, because a significant part of their signature occurs well below this line. so, what you are left with here, in effect, are cymbals that are quite fatiguing. the snare's harmonics encroach well beyond the 2kHz of your filter, so it's not a win-win situation and the cymbal action is still doing it's weirdness meanwhile. in my opinion, nothing sounds good unless it's ALL working right! but i respect your efforts in the drum department, it's more than i was willing to engage in in the circumstances. we all lost this battle because the outcome could only be a fistful of compromise unless the whole kit was replaced...then we're faced with the next weakest link....vocals?

i note you compressed the hell out of your mix in the master. if you level-match mine against yours, and listen to the chorus section in my mix, i'm confident you would form a different conclusion. also, the problem with throwing everything at your audience, full-on, all the way through, is that you leave yourself with no room for delivering impact when the need arises, like during the choruses for example. i wanted my choruses to bang...and the verse to drop right off. if there's no contrast or expectation, what is there to look forward to?

with respect, your mix has significant low-mid congestion issues which is fooling you into thinking you are delivering power. all you've done is added to the problems of distortion. in my Ovation headphones, this mix is pumping in both ears well beyond the call of duty and the consequence is HIGHLY fatiguing, not helped by the erratic bass-line which booms quite alarmingly. couple this with the drum issues inherent in the mix which you've further exposed by excessive compression on the master buss and less than 20 seconds in i'm looking for the exit. what really worries me, is that you might have missed the fact this multi had significant quality issues everywhere. i'm sure your Foofighter's reference CD (i hope you didn't use an mp3!!!! did you?) didn't have a flabby, uncontrolled, boomy bass guitar for example?

personally speaking, i think if you eased up on the compression, got the bass guitar working, and focused on achieving quality throughout the mix rather than outright loudness, it would appeal to a larger audience.

Very creative!