10-06-2013, 11:07 AM
Hiya Cobbers and welcome!
I don't think that it's the bass volume that is causing the problem as I can hear it quite well even in your first mix, but some notes have not been played with a lot of power so they are disappearing. Compressing the bass channel and adding makeup gain to match the level of gain reduction will start to make the notes sound more even. Maybe also try reducing the 'boom' range of the bass a little. Somewhere in the 160-300Hz (or thereabouts) range there will be several areas of nasty 'boom'. When these are reduced, the playing will, again, sound more evenly played and the overall level of bass can be brought up so more detail in the mid range area can be heard. The first and second notes being played in the repeating chorus cycle are the main offenders I'm hearing.
>.
Some mixes seem to have very powerful vocals...I'm struggling to achieve that.
>.
You have the vocal quite effected in this mix, so it sounds like the microphone is placed further away from the singer so we're hearing a lot of the room and we're not focusing on him as much as we should. (It's OK - most of us have also gone through that stage in our early mixes when we drench everything in reverb....heck, I released an album with it LOL)
Back off the send to the reverb for the vocal channel - or if you have a reverb plugin dropped directly on the vocal channel then play with the wet/dry mix to let more of the dry signal through - and you'll hear Jay's voice more forward in the mix, as if he's closer to you, with the effect sound of the room coming in under the vocal as a more subtle presence.
Just a pro-tip, if you have used a reverb directly on the vocal channel, try using it as an aux plugin effect instead. That way you are getting the fully 'dry' signal getting sent to the master buss all the time. Use an aux send on the vocal channel to send some of the vocal to the effect's channel, and add as much 'wet' sound as you require.
I'm not sure how much you already know about utilising aux channels/busses so you might be completely bumfuzzled by what I am trying to explain. Let me know and I'll PM you with some links to useful web pages you can check out.
...or you could buy Mike Senior's helpful book called "Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio" (like how I did that little plug there?)
Dags
I don't think that it's the bass volume that is causing the problem as I can hear it quite well even in your first mix, but some notes have not been played with a lot of power so they are disappearing. Compressing the bass channel and adding makeup gain to match the level of gain reduction will start to make the notes sound more even. Maybe also try reducing the 'boom' range of the bass a little. Somewhere in the 160-300Hz (or thereabouts) range there will be several areas of nasty 'boom'. When these are reduced, the playing will, again, sound more evenly played and the overall level of bass can be brought up so more detail in the mid range area can be heard. The first and second notes being played in the repeating chorus cycle are the main offenders I'm hearing.
>.
Some mixes seem to have very powerful vocals...I'm struggling to achieve that.
>.
You have the vocal quite effected in this mix, so it sounds like the microphone is placed further away from the singer so we're hearing a lot of the room and we're not focusing on him as much as we should. (It's OK - most of us have also gone through that stage in our early mixes when we drench everything in reverb....heck, I released an album with it LOL)
Back off the send to the reverb for the vocal channel - or if you have a reverb plugin dropped directly on the vocal channel then play with the wet/dry mix to let more of the dry signal through - and you'll hear Jay's voice more forward in the mix, as if he's closer to you, with the effect sound of the room coming in under the vocal as a more subtle presence.
Just a pro-tip, if you have used a reverb directly on the vocal channel, try using it as an aux plugin effect instead. That way you are getting the fully 'dry' signal getting sent to the master buss all the time. Use an aux send on the vocal channel to send some of the vocal to the effect's channel, and add as much 'wet' sound as you require.
I'm not sure how much you already know about utilising aux channels/busses so you might be completely bumfuzzled by what I am trying to explain. Let me know and I'll PM you with some links to useful web pages you can check out.
...or you could buy Mike Senior's helpful book called "Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio" (like how I did that little plug there?)
Dags
So many songs, so little time!