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Skelpolu: Long Road
#4
Hey Juan, very interesting interpretation of this song.

Spectrum wise it feels pretty pretty balanced on the whole, though I think most instruments could use some aggressive smoothing out in the extreme high end, from around 8000 up. You mix on headphones if I remember correctly? Most headphones (especially close-backed) have a built in high frequency roll-off for more comfortable listening, so I'd suggest checking your high end on some cheap PC speakers, where the treble will be unfairly, brutally exposed, to make sure you're getting an accurate picture.

In terms of musical balance, the frequency management feels a little odd to me... it feels like some instruments have been given priority in frequency ranges where other instruments would sound more natural. The distant piano is a good idea, but the bass has some seriously dense harmonics and it's eating the piano up in a way that makes it feel so in my face that it's touching my nose. EQ cuts in the upper ranges where the piano attacks, and maybe a reduction in gain overall would be of benefit in my opinion. There are a few other similar (but less severe) instances where the percussion feels more forward than the lead, which is a little light on attack.

Part of why you're having a hard time keeping the lead forward is that the lead FX track, which is really just a reverb/delay type effect, is a little too loud and is occupying many of the same presence frequencies as the main track... bandpass that sucker and (maybe) bring it down a little bit and the lead will stay in charge a little better Smile

This might just be my taste, but the distorted arp seems a bit too quiet to me... that track in my view is important in adding tension and variety to the song as a whole, which is otherwise rather simple, so the quiet presentation feels to me like it's making the track's role in moving the song forward ineffective.

Still though, a nice mix, and the sonics in general are pretty good. For me, I feel like you didn't spend quite enough time on gain staging, which is a trap I fall into quite often when I really like the song I'm trying to mix. Spend a little more time making sure you've got the static levels right after cleaning up the low end, but before you try any sort of balancing with EQ and compression. And make sure you're using the make-up gain feature in your EQ and compression plug-ins so that your balancing moves aren't affecting the levels, and so you can occasionally switch off the plug-ins to check and make sure they're making things better with matched gains Big Grin

Good work, Juan!
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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Messages In This Thread
Skelpolu: Long Road - by juanjose1967 - 02-08-2014, 12:03 PM
RE: Skelpolu: Long Road - by sano - 16-08-2014, 01:25 PM
RE: Skelpolu: Long Road - by juanjose1967 - 17-08-2014, 11:33 AM
RE: Skelpolu: Long Road - by pauli - 27-08-2014, 10:54 PM
RE: Skelpolu: Long Road - by Skelpolu - 10-02-2015, 02:03 PM