Adam Buckley: 'Drag Me Down' is my first mix on this forum

[Cranky Emu]

Luke;

I just installed Reaper today and was overly keen to give it a decent run, as such I decided to have a crack at this song.
This song is quite complex, there is a lot going on in it and it takes a bit of taming. My mix is a very rough one and by no means final, I am no Chris Lord-Alge or Bob Clearmountain either.

There are no effects on the mix, nor any EQ. Everything is as it was from the original files. The only automation I used was a fade on the master bus at the end.
Whilst I am not the greatest of mixers and I am sure there are far better than I here, I pay very close attention to levels and try to avoid clipping where and when possible. As Shul said "Louder is not always better".

I feel the mistake you have made is just trying to get everything loud and using a lot of compression, what kind of compression ratios did you use on different tracks?

Why I asked if you were a guitarist (not having a go at you - just an observation), is that I remember back to when I did live FOH mixing and guitarists were always the one's in the band who would constantly be wanting you to 'turn them up'.

Your mix is not bad by any means. Take all the effects off and start with the basics and get the mix going to where you are happy with it. Then add effects if needed, if they will enhance what is there, if they don't - toss em.
Easy to say huh?
I make the same mistake myself with effects to, reverb is my nemesis

Don't know if you picked it up, at around 17 seconds in there is something out of whack, can't put my finger on it just yet, think it may be the snare sample but not sure.
Until I can work out how to get Reaper to stop the cursor at exactly where I stop the track (hit space-bar), I can't really pin it down.

Looking forward to hearing your next mix for sure.
I will keep working on mine, there is a lot of things with my prelim mix I am not happy with. Hopefully together we can come up with something decent!