Hi Chuck, it seems like you just tried too hard on some things while failing to realize what you were doing wrong, which it's perfectly normal. Beware, I'm likely you just one year after, so don't take any of this as expert advice, I'm no expert but it's true there are a lot of time consuming things I did a year ago that I've found to be not necessary most of the times.
1 - Voice sounds warm, delicate and has sense of space, so it's pretty clear those hours paid off. I used to be pretty anal on chopping vocals, trying to get dynamics under control before using any compression and worked too much time with tracks soloed. Once you get used to get levels a certain way and putting some things on your master bus, you realize you can do without all that much hassle.
2 - Most people start building mixes around the rhythm combo (drums/bass), but that's just up to you. Personally, I'm happy just doing simple steps: a) "gain staging" for every track (many people say that's a waste of time with a DAW, but I'm super slow so the time wasted doing that doesn't amount to much in the end compared with what it takes me to do a mix; those who mix a tune in a hour, I understand they don't want to spend 20 minutes doing something they really don't care for), b)move the faders until you get a super sketchy balance that feels good to you (if there are a lot of tracks with little subtle parts, you can mute those and just look for that balance with the really important parts) and finally c), increase or decrease volume of that sketch to the reference volume you want to work with. To do this, this is what I do:
- take another song for reference and use the "Analyze Loudness" function in Reaper to see how loud it is (tutorials are your best friend), then decrease its level (do that directly on the clip better than the fader, again there are more than one way to do this in Reaper) until that loudness is at the reference level you choose to work with. For me, that's a -20dB LUFS in the "Integrated" row within the "Analyze Loudness" window. I'm a real ignorant when it comes to loudness lingo, but that kinda works for me without trying to learn concepts I'm genetically uncapable to understand.
- create a VCA volume control for all your tracks (again, Youtube is your friend) so you can make your mix louder or softer by moving one single fader. Render your sketchy mix and analyze its loudness. If it says -10dB LUFS, move down that VCA fader and render again until you come with a balance that is around those -20dB LUFS (or whatever any other level you choose to work around). Now you can compare your mix to the reference track and they'll be roughly the same apparent loudness and you can go on with the mixing.
3 - That HH stuff you mention is way past overkill, specially when you think there are lots of people that won't even bother to use the hat track. Actually, I don't even understand what you did exactly but I do know that the hat sounds completely unrelated to the rest of the drums and it gets worse with the open hats, those are painful to hear. Listen to what happens in the part before the solo, the drums are hardly noticeable (though the drummer is hitting harder than the verses) and then an open hat hit comes out of the blue and it's the loudest thing in the mix. Again, most people will build the sound of the drumkit around the overheads. When doing that first balance sketch, with a tune like this, that would mean balancing bass, main guitar and overheads as if you had no more drum tracks. Once you get the drumkit in its place, you can start playing with kick/snare tracks to better shape the sound (except for that hat, listening to your mix you could think the drums were recorded with a phone instead of a multi-mic setup). Once you do that, how much of the toms and hat tracks you use is up to you, but it doesn't make any sense that the hat driven parts (the verses) sound louder and stronger than the ride parts, which are the choruses and are supposed to be the high point in the song.
4 - If you use a reasonably conservative level reference like those -20dB (some people will say that's loud, so go figure), unless you fail to see blatant problems with the mix, keep things balanced and the recording is half decent, you should be able to start applying proccesing on a track by track basis and over the stereo master without having to worry too much about the peaks. If, after you're happy with your mix, you see too many peaks close or over a certain threshold (that's -5dB for me, but again everyone has it's own habits), that's the time to check out what's happening. In most cases, they'll come from kick or snare hits, so you would have to find a way to tame those peaks without compromising your mix. Again, there are lots of way to do that, from hand editing volum envelopes on a clip basis, to just put a limiter over the drum bus (which will work more times than not, it's a way faster and easier to do and you won't hear the difference).
I know this is easier to say than to take, but you shouldn't really worry that much over volume. If your mix sounds good, then it can be boosted close to, if not right to nowadays levels (and those are still insane levels, btw). Render your mix, put it in another session with your reference track (back to its original level, or 2/3 dB's softer if you don't feel like competing with madness) and try a peak limiter, clipper, all-in-one mastering plugin, whatever... so you can get a reasonably similar loudness without distortion or clipping.
Btw, the bass sounds good, too. Quite muffled, but it's a bass playing root notes so there's not that much need for detail. Same with the flutes from the second verse.
One of the cool things about this site is that, if you feel so inclined, you can use another user mix as your reference track, which is obviously way more useful than havng to compare to a different song. Take a mix you like and try to get somewhat there, specially tone wise (this mix is just so mid and high frequencies lacking it's kinda like a ghost, you know?) and learn the drill about kick/snare/overheads/bass/guitar and that will keep you busy for months while never getting short of tunes to mix.
Woof, that was long. Hope this helps, buena suerte!
1 - Voice sounds warm, delicate and has sense of space, so it's pretty clear those hours paid off. I used to be pretty anal on chopping vocals, trying to get dynamics under control before using any compression and worked too much time with tracks soloed. Once you get used to get levels a certain way and putting some things on your master bus, you realize you can do without all that much hassle.
2 - Most people start building mixes around the rhythm combo (drums/bass), but that's just up to you. Personally, I'm happy just doing simple steps: a) "gain staging" for every track (many people say that's a waste of time with a DAW, but I'm super slow so the time wasted doing that doesn't amount to much in the end compared with what it takes me to do a mix; those who mix a tune in a hour, I understand they don't want to spend 20 minutes doing something they really don't care for), b)move the faders until you get a super sketchy balance that feels good to you (if there are a lot of tracks with little subtle parts, you can mute those and just look for that balance with the really important parts) and finally c), increase or decrease volume of that sketch to the reference volume you want to work with. To do this, this is what I do:
- take another song for reference and use the "Analyze Loudness" function in Reaper to see how loud it is (tutorials are your best friend), then decrease its level (do that directly on the clip better than the fader, again there are more than one way to do this in Reaper) until that loudness is at the reference level you choose to work with. For me, that's a -20dB LUFS in the "Integrated" row within the "Analyze Loudness" window. I'm a real ignorant when it comes to loudness lingo, but that kinda works for me without trying to learn concepts I'm genetically uncapable to understand.
- create a VCA volume control for all your tracks (again, Youtube is your friend) so you can make your mix louder or softer by moving one single fader. Render your sketchy mix and analyze its loudness. If it says -10dB LUFS, move down that VCA fader and render again until you come with a balance that is around those -20dB LUFS (or whatever any other level you choose to work around). Now you can compare your mix to the reference track and they'll be roughly the same apparent loudness and you can go on with the mixing.
3 - That HH stuff you mention is way past overkill, specially when you think there are lots of people that won't even bother to use the hat track. Actually, I don't even understand what you did exactly but I do know that the hat sounds completely unrelated to the rest of the drums and it gets worse with the open hats, those are painful to hear. Listen to what happens in the part before the solo, the drums are hardly noticeable (though the drummer is hitting harder than the verses) and then an open hat hit comes out of the blue and it's the loudest thing in the mix. Again, most people will build the sound of the drumkit around the overheads. When doing that first balance sketch, with a tune like this, that would mean balancing bass, main guitar and overheads as if you had no more drum tracks. Once you get the drumkit in its place, you can start playing with kick/snare tracks to better shape the sound (except for that hat, listening to your mix you could think the drums were recorded with a phone instead of a multi-mic setup). Once you do that, how much of the toms and hat tracks you use is up to you, but it doesn't make any sense that the hat driven parts (the verses) sound louder and stronger than the ride parts, which are the choruses and are supposed to be the high point in the song.
4 - If you use a reasonably conservative level reference like those -20dB (some people will say that's loud, so go figure), unless you fail to see blatant problems with the mix, keep things balanced and the recording is half decent, you should be able to start applying proccesing on a track by track basis and over the stereo master without having to worry too much about the peaks. If, after you're happy with your mix, you see too many peaks close or over a certain threshold (that's -5dB for me, but again everyone has it's own habits), that's the time to check out what's happening. In most cases, they'll come from kick or snare hits, so you would have to find a way to tame those peaks without compromising your mix. Again, there are lots of way to do that, from hand editing volum envelopes on a clip basis, to just put a limiter over the drum bus (which will work more times than not, it's a way faster and easier to do and you won't hear the difference).
I know this is easier to say than to take, but you shouldn't really worry that much over volume. If your mix sounds good, then it can be boosted close to, if not right to nowadays levels (and those are still insane levels, btw). Render your mix, put it in another session with your reference track (back to its original level, or 2/3 dB's softer if you don't feel like competing with madness) and try a peak limiter, clipper, all-in-one mastering plugin, whatever... so you can get a reasonably similar loudness without distortion or clipping.
Btw, the bass sounds good, too. Quite muffled, but it's a bass playing root notes so there's not that much need for detail. Same with the flutes from the second verse.
One of the cool things about this site is that, if you feel so inclined, you can use another user mix as your reference track, which is obviously way more useful than havng to compare to a different song. Take a mix you like and try to get somewhat there, specially tone wise (this mix is just so mid and high frequencies lacking it's kinda like a ghost, you know?) and learn the drill about kick/snare/overheads/bass/guitar and that will keep you busy for months while never getting short of tunes to mix.
Woof, that was long. Hope this helps, buena suerte!