26-11-2018, 01:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 27-11-2018, 02:33 PM by OctopusOnFire.)
Great song to mix, plenty of challenges on two very different parts that vary in dynamics. It forces you to mix making compromises in order to fit the two different parts accordingly.
I went for a natural sounding mix with lush verb. This song is a great opportunity to practice using reverb, so I tried to make it contribute to the song without taking away too much attention and avoiding problems in the second part (however, I didn't use any automation to get it out of the way)
In the end I kept all the tracks, there's automation, but very, very subtle.
The main challenges were achieving a clear, beautiful voice without thinning it, and letting it go a little wild in the second part. There were also many guitars, so I spent a lot of the mix moving them around and trying to find a way to make them work together. I avoided obvious hard panning as it gave me a feeling of artificiality. Instead, I used EQ and modulation to make the illusion of separation while keeping everything either quite centered, or panned around 50-65%. The acoustic guitars are panned 100% L/R since they come up in the second part.
I barely touched the drums or bass. They practically mixed themselves.
Personally I'm very happy on how the voice turned out, but let me know what you think about the mix. Comments are always appreciated.
I went for a natural sounding mix with lush verb. This song is a great opportunity to practice using reverb, so I tried to make it contribute to the song without taking away too much attention and avoiding problems in the second part (however, I didn't use any automation to get it out of the way)
In the end I kept all the tracks, there's automation, but very, very subtle.
The main challenges were achieving a clear, beautiful voice without thinning it, and letting it go a little wild in the second part. There were also many guitars, so I spent a lot of the mix moving them around and trying to find a way to make them work together. I avoided obvious hard panning as it gave me a feeling of artificiality. Instead, I used EQ and modulation to make the illusion of separation while keeping everything either quite centered, or panned around 50-65%. The acoustic guitars are panned 100% L/R since they come up in the second part.
I barely touched the drums or bass. They practically mixed themselves.
Personally I'm very happy on how the voice turned out, but let me know what you think about the mix. Comments are always appreciated.
Quote:UPDATE V1.3
Okay, I noted and applied most of the feedback given here (Thanks!), but then I took the mix in a different direction. Take it as an alternative mix if you will. I tried to push some boundaries here. After cleaning up some of the mids in the drums, I went crazy with the low end. I wanted to make it as huge as I could, inspired by some mixes from Mike Patton's Mr. Bungle and Mondo Cane albums. I also kept working on the voice to make it shiny, upfront and silky while keeping it under control. I don't know how would it sounds in smaller speakers, but in my studio it sounds huge.
The new mix is fuller, things should be more glued and the top and low end should have more presence. I worked more on the voice to keep polishing it.
I also experimented with dithering, something I didn't really know a lot about. Apparently, you should bounce your 24bit file to 16 bit using dither, and then bounce the result to mp3 without dither.
In any case, I hope you find this new approach interesting, even if you don't agree with it. Let me know how you feel about it.
ITB Setup: Reaper, Airwindows, IK Multimedia TR5, XLN AD2 ATrigger and RC-20, Waves.
Monitoring: Dynaudio BM5 mkIII, Behritone, Sennheiser HD 650. Semi-treated room.
Monitoring: Dynaudio BM5 mkIII, Behritone, Sennheiser HD 650. Semi-treated room.