Darkride - Deny Control

[crownoise]

Hi,

Thanks for checking it out.

I know the mix is not working. This will be a long post. Sorry for the essay - I have lots of questions!

I did consider putting all these questions in the first post, but figured that everyone can hear what is wrong in the mix.. I was hoping I would get some pointers.  Many thanks for the comments so far, much appreciated.

I will likely need some more help yet... 

I have shied away from revisiting mixing metal as previous attempts were really quite disastrous, but thought it time to give it another try at least.

Mixing modern metal is it's own thing in itself - with it's own terminology and techniques - and I obviously don't really know what I am doing with it yet, despite reading the notes and also watching a few tutorials.  I find with mixing you really need to get to the point where it is instinctive as to what is right and wrong as such, and I am so far from that point with this stuff.  I hear it straight away when people try and turn dance drums into rock drums and it sounds wrong to me straight away...  Likewise, I get it that it is painfully obvious I don't know what I am doing with mixing metal.

For me anyway, you need to be able to figure out and understand the 'why' yourself, rather than watch someone quickly twiddle an eq and add the latest plugin they are selling... on an already great sounding mix... I also don't really listen to this genre that much, other than for research purposes, which probably doesn't help matters either....

Right, Ok...

Kick - I did take loads of low end off, well I thought I had... I high passed it to around 80 or so, but I  also gave it a bump around 80hz.  I guess I will take off the bump, and maybe try not have it quite so loud in the mix. 

Towards the end of the mix I revisited the balance and maybe ended up putting the whole drum group too loud overall perhaps...  Maybe should have left them where I had them initially...

Oh, I did create a bus for the kicks, and put an automated low shelf on it for the blast beats though.

Snare:

Yeah I know it's wrong, but I really couldn't figure out how to get to the right sound.  I did gate it and take out a little around 500, but from what you are saying, bcs_mix, I should maybe scoop out most of the mids and compress it really hard?  I did take out a little 500, but seems that I don't need to be shy with it as such?  I was thinking it was maybe more of balance thing I was maybe not getting! I'll try hitting it hard with the compressor instead. 

Is the snare also too loud in the mix?  When I got it about right, you couldn't really hear the lighter hit snare during the blast beats at all.  Is the built in snare balance right, or do I need to be automating the levels here? I really wasn't sure.

Main (Rhythm?) Guitar:

The library mix feels like it maybe has some mids carved out, kind of 1k 2k ish.. not sure... Is this the case, or is it just the mix balance?  Or is there some additional processing going on?  I didn't do anything with it because 'don't change the guitar tone' but at the same time, I do feel I am missing something here.  I understand some people actually do automatically carve out 1k or 2k, or whatever their taste is, but I try not to do things automatically as such, without some understanding at least.

Overall mix:

Right, I hope this makes sense...

To me the library mix sounds a little tube-ish, maybe kind of mid scooped (which kind of highlights the drums and bass) and a bit 6k-ish.  Is this more down to the eq and balance of the individual elements, rather than some overall mix bus processing?

I recall my first impression of listening to this stuff is that it is kind of bass light in a way, but I am understanding it is more a case of high passing everything a bit higher than one might normally do, to avoid build up of the low end frequencies during faster passages, etc?

Normally I feel I can figure things out and get somewhere close just by listening and trying a few things, but I am really struggling to work out what is actually going on with this stuff.  I have also learned that heavy guitars tend to mess with my perception of things a bit too, so it is also a struggle to maintain perspective after going at it for a while.  It's sometimes difficult to take that break you need, when you really want to keep working at it!

Thanks all!

Cheers!

Hi Mike! I don't think this is a bad mix at all tbh. I love your way to describe the issue with mixing metal, it boils down to many things, as you said and compared the sound with having metal sounding drums in a pop or house sounding song being something different then the contrast. Also i do agree with the way you described looking at a quick youtube video not always contributing to understanding and finding the whole sound you are going after. Sure it can be a nice guideline for beginners to understand how to get somewhere near what they are looking for, but it often results in super stale sounding drums being in your face and sounding distracting but "right" in a sense etc. I will try to help you somehow, i'm not a pro but i feel that i lately have been understanding that i am leaning more towards mixing okay when i am working on metal songs then lets say a pop or "house" track. When you said that it's more about finding the why when mixing metal i think you touched the essence of mixing metal, you sort of need to "gamble" a bit i believe to get to where you want to without loosing the key elements (since you often need to do a bit "wrong" things to find the "right" sound). When going for a more fullblast sound which often is what metal demands more times then not you want to have a more smashed sound in my opinion, and for me clipping/limiting and distorting elements are what rings the right bells, but these are the tools that can really mess things up. My advice would be to not get too technical at a glans (by cleaning to much with gates and making to much room for things to loose the perseption since it takes time) by first and foremost mixing at quite ridiculously low volumes, because this allows you to hone in on transients and dynamics better because your own perception gains more dynamics (hope this doesn't sound to bad, its hard to describe  it in a second language). This will allow you to really go harder on lets say having a distortion plugin on your snare that allows you to totally obliviate it and still in relation to the other elements have it well placed since you now have a good headroom, i would say don't just turn down the volume in your monitoring but do gain stuff down with maybe a simple gain plug also so you can have physical headroom when doing so aswell. After you tried this ask yourself a couple of times if its way to much or if it makes your head bang a bit more lol  . A snare that is digital for instance can sound much better or totally much worse when first equing lowend into it into a very slammed distortion and putting a compressor before or after the distortion that nukes it. I think having these paletts and then blending them back (I like dry wet knobs) to still have the tone there and making them cut thru out the song but still keeping the originality and "rightness" by preserving the transients could be a nice move many times. But be very critical and see if lets say a faster release gives you more of all of the snare hits hitting or if the releasetime actually is giving you like one hit and then pegging the compressor and never letting the other faster hits to come back. Im trying to be a bit objective analyzing your mix. For me that kick sounds grate , really good tone but it is almost to powerfull vs the rest of the mix. The bassguitar DI or amp lacks all of the lowend energy, so trying to puzzle the kick in relation to the bass could honestly to be to boost super lows like 30 hz - 90 hz and then bringing it down, if you lack highend and transients in the kick after that just eq some into the kick back in again to make it cut or gain it with a transientshaper that actually works so it brings all of the hits in there and not just one (or smash it on a seperate channel before the transient designer so you gain more hits could be an idea aswell), then i think the bass would breathe more around the frequencies that it is more naturally acouring and resonating. You said something about cutting bass in kick, this is something i never do, especially if i try to gate the kick because you want the gate to work on and letting thru the essential frequencies in the kick and not the highend that you are trying to get rid of that is bleeding. But i do understand and know that its easier many times to deal with a mix that isn't blooming everywhere in the bassare so yea i can relate. BUT i do believe that you often subjectively can hear a "shy" mix, and cutting powerful frequencies often sounds thinner and more "lame" to my ears, even if it is cleaner and more modern. So my other idea i would bring to you here is to stop cutting to much stuff and more try to give the right energy into the elements instead, i find this working more often when mixing metal and rock then other genres, i believe its because as you said it comes down to finding the why, and you want to bring energy into metal and not taking it away, so by focusing more on that it probably would lead you more into the right areas, if you have headroom to do so. I would say that i lately find that for instance equing very low frequencies and very much not higher bassfrequencies then that into a guitar can lead to a powerfull mix and then NOT cutting around the same area in the kick to actually LET it fight and compeat to cut vs the guitar can be a more "right" way then trying to shy away from it. Sure you will probably need to do it conservatively and also sometimes controlling it afterwards. I also do know its very hard and i am far from making the mixes that are possible and how i hear it in my head, but we are getting there together. I think Blitz gave a good help in the answer above this, i think that its a good idea to blend addatives and just to keep a look out if it sounds phasey. Also i think that automating things if you have and want to put the time in is the gratest way to taking it to the next level and keeping faster hits audible, this takes away alot of the comprimizing sounds and issues, for some reason i never do this lol i must start to haha! Hope this brings you something new to the table, i think you did a good mix here so don't be too hard on yourself.