05-04-2014, 09:59 PM
It was my pleasure, I enjoyed hearing your vision for the song. I can hear some subtle changes in mix 2 that are accumulating into considerably more clarity... a huge improvement and a huge step in the right direction.
I think the technique you used for separating the kick and bass guitar got a lot of mileage toward clarifying the mix, but I'm wondering if some of your changes have reduced the subjective level of low end energy in the bass guitar? I think you've cleared the reverb out of the mud frequencies, which is a good thing, but it's possible the verbs at the bottom end were making the bottom end subjectively bigger... it'd likely look about the same on an analyzer but it can trick you into thinking you've got more welly than you do. If it were me (and of course it's not... consider my suggestions with your own personal taste) I'd give the kick a small broadband boost somewhere between 80 and 100 to give it more power and cut everything below 40 to let the kick occupy that space. Then feed the sidechain of a multiband compressor or dynamic EQ on the bass guitar with the kick and focus the active frequencies on wherever you feel the best low end energy is coming from on the kick so that the low end power remains more consistent... maybe a tiny bit of extra control with a master bus low end compression at the mastering phase and I think your mix will be pretty solid.
The main challenge in this song was getting the kick and bass to an appropriate level for drive, IMHO, but you're a lot closer than you were before. A little (less is more) more surgery and dynamic control from 300 Hz downward and you'll find you have a lot more headroom to bring that region up without the typical bottom end cacophony that's always a risk in a funky song, especially if there are tons of rather distorted electric guitars (which song great in your mix, btw... great work with the filtering... sounds even better with the smaller reverb) threatening the lower mids! If you choose to bring the low end up in any revisions you may feel like doing, you might find you have to fiddle a little bit with your filtering, but I don't imagine it'll be too difficult because it sounds like you've got a decent ear for electric guitar equalization, which is great because those are almost always the hardest elements to mix. I also think the overbearing cymbal intrusion sounds much better too.
Great improvement! Keep mixing and posting, you'll learn a lot here!
I think the technique you used for separating the kick and bass guitar got a lot of mileage toward clarifying the mix, but I'm wondering if some of your changes have reduced the subjective level of low end energy in the bass guitar? I think you've cleared the reverb out of the mud frequencies, which is a good thing, but it's possible the verbs at the bottom end were making the bottom end subjectively bigger... it'd likely look about the same on an analyzer but it can trick you into thinking you've got more welly than you do. If it were me (and of course it's not... consider my suggestions with your own personal taste) I'd give the kick a small broadband boost somewhere between 80 and 100 to give it more power and cut everything below 40 to let the kick occupy that space. Then feed the sidechain of a multiband compressor or dynamic EQ on the bass guitar with the kick and focus the active frequencies on wherever you feel the best low end energy is coming from on the kick so that the low end power remains more consistent... maybe a tiny bit of extra control with a master bus low end compression at the mastering phase and I think your mix will be pretty solid.
The main challenge in this song was getting the kick and bass to an appropriate level for drive, IMHO, but you're a lot closer than you were before. A little (less is more) more surgery and dynamic control from 300 Hz downward and you'll find you have a lot more headroom to bring that region up without the typical bottom end cacophony that's always a risk in a funky song, especially if there are tons of rather distorted electric guitars (which song great in your mix, btw... great work with the filtering... sounds even better with the smaller reverb) threatening the lower mids! If you choose to bring the low end up in any revisions you may feel like doing, you might find you have to fiddle a little bit with your filtering, but I don't imagine it'll be too difficult because it sounds like you've got a decent ear for electric guitar equalization, which is great because those are almost always the hardest elements to mix. I also think the overbearing cymbal intrusion sounds much better too.
Great improvement! Keep mixing and posting, you'll learn a lot here!
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!