Welp, it's been awhile since I've posted on here, life happened and some fairly big things have happened (including recording and mixing 2 EPs for one of my friend's bands, and mixing them live at a local club) and it's mostly relegated me to lurker status for the past months, so with things starting to even out a bit here's my rough mix of Drag me Down.
I took some liberties with the arrangement by taking out the electric rhythms when the acoustic is playing, dropped the bass during the first half of the first verse before the drums enter, and some other small tweaks. Really just refining what's there already. and mix wise I just balanced out all the tracks with the faders, added some verb to the vocals and drums, and did some minor eq moves. Still need to do some automation runs to really glue it together but over the next couple days I should have something more refined.
Unmastered this track has an integrated Loudness of around 25 LUFS, for purposes of listening in a real world situation however I employed a plugin called Stream Master which raises the audio to a ballpark Integrated loudness recommended for various streaming services, for this mix I chose the "Apple Music" standard to bring the mix up 9.48 dB, and according to Loudness Penalty by Meter Plugs, on most platforms the mix would be turned up 1-2 dB with normalization.
Thanks for listening guys and I hope to have some revisions out in the next few days.
Cheers,
Doug
Updates: Mix 2: In mix 2 I've mostly just done some automation moves, and really just tried to work with the rough mix and even out the balance through out the song.
Bass: The bass during the verses was outshining the Piano and starting to get in the way for the vocals so I turned up the piano a touch and moved the bass down 2 dB during the verses. Same story with the bridge section and the build before the final chorus, during the build I gave the bass a sight crescendo with in the automation to add some interest there, otherwise the bass is pretty much the same tone wise.
Guitars: I forgot that I muted the Electric guitar 1 track for almost the whole song so I fixed that and left it out during the first verse but brought it back when the chorus hit and kept it in for the whole song. The rhythm guitars needed some help during the choruses to make them pop,so I grabbed Waves L1 to even them out a touch and brought them up 1.5 dB during the first and last chorus, during the first half of the second chorus I dipped them a dB and brought up the acoustic up to change things up. The acoustic eq was revised a bit to give it some more low end and to make them less harsh. I added some compression the leads during the chorus and intro to even them out and bring them up in the mix, they also got some dotted 1/4 note delay to liven them up a touch.
Drums: The only change to the drums was a crescendo added to the kick during the bridge.
Vocals: I ended up doing some compression on the backup vocals to keep them more even during the choruses and automated the low harmony down during the choruses because they were starting to overshadow the lead vocal. The lead vocal had some drops in them during the first verse and needed to be touched up during the chorus with some automation. Again mostly subtle moves here.
End Result: With those moves I managed to gain a couple of dB on the overall loudness without any gain reduction on the 2 buss, going by Loudness Penalty's figures the track would only have its loudness increased on Spotify and Pandora, the loudness remains untouched on Youtube, Tidal, and Itunes/Apple Music with Soundcheck (he numbers for iTunes are approximate with Loudness Penalty however). Overall this is more the direction I'm aiming for with the track.
Mix 3: This one is more or less a refined mix 2, the rhythm guitars needed to be dropped a dB or two so they didn't interfere with the lead guitars too much, the Piano got a touch of compression to give it some more sustain,in the second half of the chorus the acoustic guitar is muted and the intro guitar comes in, the acoustic is muted during the final chorus and the intro guitar takes over, I re positioned the telephone vocals to the end of the track so they didn't get cluttered up so much with the rest of the mix, removed the kick 2 track because it really wasn't doing for my overall kick tone (it was almost all the way turned down because it was a touch too extreme for this track), and finally I removed the low harmony from the first verse to open up the vocal a bit, so when the low harmony comes in during the chorus it's a little more dramatic. I'm mostly happy with this mix and I think I'll upload one more version with a touch of buss comp and some tone shaping eq on it just to polish it up a touch
I took some liberties with the arrangement by taking out the electric rhythms when the acoustic is playing, dropped the bass during the first half of the first verse before the drums enter, and some other small tweaks. Really just refining what's there already. and mix wise I just balanced out all the tracks with the faders, added some verb to the vocals and drums, and did some minor eq moves. Still need to do some automation runs to really glue it together but over the next couple days I should have something more refined.
Unmastered this track has an integrated Loudness of around 25 LUFS, for purposes of listening in a real world situation however I employed a plugin called Stream Master which raises the audio to a ballpark Integrated loudness recommended for various streaming services, for this mix I chose the "Apple Music" standard to bring the mix up 9.48 dB, and according to Loudness Penalty by Meter Plugs, on most platforms the mix would be turned up 1-2 dB with normalization.
Thanks for listening guys and I hope to have some revisions out in the next few days.
Cheers,
Doug
Updates: Mix 2: In mix 2 I've mostly just done some automation moves, and really just tried to work with the rough mix and even out the balance through out the song.
Bass: The bass during the verses was outshining the Piano and starting to get in the way for the vocals so I turned up the piano a touch and moved the bass down 2 dB during the verses. Same story with the bridge section and the build before the final chorus, during the build I gave the bass a sight crescendo with in the automation to add some interest there, otherwise the bass is pretty much the same tone wise.
Guitars: I forgot that I muted the Electric guitar 1 track for almost the whole song so I fixed that and left it out during the first verse but brought it back when the chorus hit and kept it in for the whole song. The rhythm guitars needed some help during the choruses to make them pop,so I grabbed Waves L1 to even them out a touch and brought them up 1.5 dB during the first and last chorus, during the first half of the second chorus I dipped them a dB and brought up the acoustic up to change things up. The acoustic eq was revised a bit to give it some more low end and to make them less harsh. I added some compression the leads during the chorus and intro to even them out and bring them up in the mix, they also got some dotted 1/4 note delay to liven them up a touch.
Drums: The only change to the drums was a crescendo added to the kick during the bridge.
Vocals: I ended up doing some compression on the backup vocals to keep them more even during the choruses and automated the low harmony down during the choruses because they were starting to overshadow the lead vocal. The lead vocal had some drops in them during the first verse and needed to be touched up during the chorus with some automation. Again mostly subtle moves here.
End Result: With those moves I managed to gain a couple of dB on the overall loudness without any gain reduction on the 2 buss, going by Loudness Penalty's figures the track would only have its loudness increased on Spotify and Pandora, the loudness remains untouched on Youtube, Tidal, and Itunes/Apple Music with Soundcheck (he numbers for iTunes are approximate with Loudness Penalty however). Overall this is more the direction I'm aiming for with the track.
Mix 3: This one is more or less a refined mix 2, the rhythm guitars needed to be dropped a dB or two so they didn't interfere with the lead guitars too much, the Piano got a touch of compression to give it some more sustain,in the second half of the chorus the acoustic guitar is muted and the intro guitar comes in, the acoustic is muted during the final chorus and the intro guitar takes over, I re positioned the telephone vocals to the end of the track so they didn't get cluttered up so much with the rest of the mix, removed the kick 2 track because it really wasn't doing for my overall kick tone (it was almost all the way turned down because it was a touch too extreme for this track), and finally I removed the low harmony from the first verse to open up the vocal a bit, so when the low harmony comes in during the chorus it's a little more dramatic. I'm mostly happy with this mix and I think I'll upload one more version with a touch of buss comp and some tone shaping eq on it just to polish it up a touch
Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer
Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6