Purple Hat Mob: 'Access Denied'_mix Tommy Marcinek

[OctopusOnFire]

Hi Tjm,

I like how you brought out the drums compared to the reference mix. I don't think you need that much (deep) low end in the kick, and the compression in the drums shows a little more than I wished. The voice masks the other instruments at some points, specifically in the mid range frequencies (500Hz ish). I like the overall balance, these synths are hard to place in the mix and you made very sensible choices.

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Oct....
Thanks for your input and positive analysis....much appreciated. Yeah, I want to go back into this mix and mess with it some more. I'm thinking of doing some ducking techniques during vocals for the instrument masking problem you pointed out, plus I'd like to reduce the 2nd and 3rd lead vocal dup tracks some more because I think there is too much lead vocal doubling with the three tracks mixed as I did. I sound-replaced the kick and tom 2 so they would stand out better. I like a nice clean kick track. However, I might try to use the original kick track/s and try some other techniques for the bleed issues on that/those kick tracks. There is also more scooping of frequencies in the other instruments that will help. I spent so much time on this mix that I might as well spend ever more and get it better. :-)

Peace,
Tom (P.S. The way you worded some of your comments......are YOU the artist for this song?.....just curious).

No, I'm not. I have a song in this library, though. It's easy to find since... well, I am the author, so just look for Octopusonfire. Can't guarantee you'll like it, though.

Here's something I've been doing lately to avoid 100% sample replacement. I have XLN's Addictive Trigger, a plugin that detects and replaces elements of a drum kit. It's quite good at identifying the actual kick or snare among the bleed. Then I'll print a track with the sample only, and use it as an aux track that feeds the detector of a gate plugin placed in the original raw track. This way you get a very natural gate. If I still had problems with, say, the hihat spill on some kick hits, I would filter that out and add a sample only for the top end of the kick, preserving most of the original sound.