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nzca lines - pure luxury - mixed by saint thomas ledoux
#1
Hey everyone, 
First time, long time.  Have been using this site a lot for a mixing course at MTSU lately, and for our last assignment we actually have to upload our work back to the site take our lumps on the mix.  If you've ever wanted to tear into a noob on this forum, here's your chance!  If you really hate it, blame John Merchant!   Tongue

Was a fun tune to mix, my only regrets being that I didn't have more time and that the drums weren't stemmed out.  126 tracks starting, wowawooah!

If this post is out of line or doesn't meet some guideline of the forum, please let me know.   Blush


.mp3    nzca lines - pure luxury - mixed by saint thomas ledoux.mp3 --  (Download: 9.81 MB)


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#2
Hi!

Yeah, a huge amount of tracks to sort through and organise for this one, before you even think about mixing them! Well done for getting through it.

It's a really good effort I think, especially taking the number of tracks into account. All the parts are reasonably well eq'd and balanced and I think you've done a great job of placing everything in the stereo field. You've managed to get more parts in than I ended up using I think too. The other thing that I note is that you haven't gone overboard with reverb and compression.

Couple of thoughts regarding possible improvements -

It sounds just a touch flat for me in the 1-6kHz range - I feel you could maybe boost a little there around 3k or so on the master, to balance out with the 40Hz that's going on in the low end perhaps?

Along similar lines I think you could bring the vocals up and out front a little more. I think for pop styles for me the vocals can be a little more up front.

What are your thoughts?

You know you can always come back and post another version of the mix if you want to spend more time on it.

There's plenty more mixes on here to tackle too of course.

Cheers!
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#3
Really?
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#4
(30-10-2020, 09:22 PM)JohnMerchant Wrote: Really? 
Just trying to be supportive, constructive and offer some encouragement by posting my thoughts on the mix. 

Please do let me know if I have said anything out of line here.

What are your thoughts? 

Perhaps you can offer a more informed opinion.

Cheers!
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#5
(30-10-2020, 09:22 PM)JohnMerchant Wrote: Really?
Joined in 2014 and has 2 posts? One I think has been deleted. Something's fishy.
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#6
Yeah, I clocked that too and thought the same Roy.

As an aside, I've noticed that there are the occasional bursts of students posting mixes here. What always strikes me as being a bit odd is that it on the whole it appears that they are told to upload the mix here as part of the course, but then neither the student nor 'professor' ever interacts with the site ever again. (Except on this occasion, which hasn't exactly been illuminating in quite the way I imagined).

Always seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to me all round.

Anyway, I've certainly learned something here I think!

Cheers!
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#7
I think John's post was more in response to me calling him out in my post like a goob than to your response, Mike.  As for other students, I think it's a mixed bag of 1) they don't normally post in these kinds of communities or 2) their first attempts at posting get no feedback, so they don't come back.  FWIW, we were encouraged to seek out a lot of potential forums, and I picked this one because I like the source material y'all host more than other places. Rest assured, your feedback is appreciated.

Would've responded sooner, but have been pretty slammed this week.  Don't doubt that there's some info floating around below 40 Hz that might be skewing my mix towards the heavy side, but I certainly can't hear it at home on my system!

As for increasing presence in the upper mid-range.  Would be interested to hear suggestions for how to achieve that without the vocal itself being somewhat harsh or sibilant?  I probably tucked it a little back in the mix before all was said and done due to my own fatigue.  Was def always surprised when referencing my mix to the commercial release by how in your face they mixed the vocal.  Seems like no matter how much I'd go back and boost it it was always still quieter that the original.
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#8
Hi!

Appreciated the reply.  I don't think I could have interpreted that response any other way really, but you live and learn.  Whatever.  I guess if it has prompted the first post in 5-6 years we can chalk that up as some sort of a win Big Grin

Anyway I think we can move on.

Yeah posting and getting replies can be a bit hit and miss.  I do find I learn quite a lot from just doing a mix and posting it though, so it's worth sticking with it.  You can also try reaching out to people too for advice and feedback.

The good thing about this site is that you can check out my mix of this track, to gauge where I'm at, as I am very much still learning.  As you mentioned it I think I've got some esses there that could be tamed a bit more.

I don't think there's too much info below 40Hz in your mix as such, the low end is hitting right at 40Hz I recall.  It's just that for me the low end doesn't quite balance with the upper mids. 

Yeah, the vocals are a bit recessed for me, so I was thinking that a little boost on the master might bring them out a bit more, and also balance with the bass, and bringing the vocals up in the mix would also help there too.  That was my thinking anyway.

Well, I asked for your thoughts, as it is quite subjective, and all depends what you have in mind, and what sound you are going for really.  Also I find some days just sound better than others for some reason.  I am far from an expert, just here to learn too.

I need to go listen to it again so I might be wrong, but what I got from the commercial release is that the drums didn't actually hit quite as I would have thought.  Bit lower in volume perhaps, not hitting quite as hard as they might, and not as much low end maybe.  Also the vocal tone is a bit challenging to get it up front.

If you want the vocals up front, just make them sound up front.  You can turn the vocals up - or everything else down, depending on how much headroom you left yourself.

I think there are many ways to get the vocals up front.  I'll try and list some things that I think work for me.  This will probably be a long post. 

These are just my thoughts, others will probably have different ideas and ways of doing things. For me  the important thing is to try lots of things and figure out what solution works for you for a given situation. 

One thing is that I get each instrument group on a separate bus/vca (I keep all sends within a group as well, so I'll have drums reverb on the drum bus, vocal reverb on the vocal bus, etc), so I can easily change the levels of each group relative to each other.

- Oh, big thing that worked for me is to listen at a quiet level.  Also listen at a fixed reference level.  That way you can judge how loud things are, and also better judge how to eq things relative to each other better.  Well, that's how it seemed to me.  Also if you have a reference volume, you can tell if you are turning it up too much and you need to take a break.

- A good balance can get you a long way, before you start adding effects, etc.

- Vocal Automation.  Once you have a good general balance, you can automate the volume of each syllable up and down to keep it on top of the mix.  You might also be able to volume automate the esses too, etc.

-  Compression - Could try something like 1176 style compression starting with fast attack and medium release.  LA2A is too slow release for me I think.  Something like rvox might work too, but I haven't felt the need to use it for ages.
 
- Parallel chains.  Parallel compression.  Vocal crush track.  Whatever you can think of! You can use parallel eq - duplicate the vocal track, add an eq with some mids dialled in, or Aphex exciter or whatever and blend it in with the main vocal, just enough to give it that extra lift.  Try waves doubler or similar, crushed with an 1176.

- Sidechaining.  If you've got some parts that are clashing with the vocal, and eq isn't quite working you can side chain parts so they duck down a db when the vocal hits.

- Widening - Try blending in a short, or not so short, stereo delay.  Something like 30ms one side and 40ms on the other.  Or even longer like 150 on one side and 200 on the other.  The idea is to blend it so you just get a sense of width.  Sometimes you can make it more obvious.  Or go the other way and have a wide track, but narrow vocal...

- Reverb.  It's worth spending time going through loads of reverbs and presets to find what works on a given vocal.  After a time you might be able to build up a shortlist of go to settings to try.

- Back to eq.  Eq the vocal in context of the mix.  I get this wrong occasionally and end up with the vocals a bit too mid-rangy, but you can sometimes get the vocals to pop by just adding a touch of midrange boost.  It depends.  It's hard to explain really -  I think it's something you have to experiment with in context.  Don't be afraid of doing huge boosts either, if it works, it works.  I prefer boosting rather than cutting anyway.  You can also add a high cut to remove harshness, and kind of eq into the high cut filter.  Eq in to compression too, to take the edge off.  For me if you can't boost enough because the compressor is eating it all, then you can add an eq after the compressor.

Oh, also check out Mike Senior's Sound on Sound podcast on distortion.  There's some examples for vocals.  I really enjoyed it anyway.

As I said before, just my thoughts, in lieu of an expert opinion.  Might help, might not.  I feel you are heading in the right direction anyway.

Cheers!
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#9
Thanks for the detailed feedback!  

I agree that the drums sound surprisingly chill in the commercial mix, esp. for this genre.  I'm a bit of a drum nut myself, so definitely felt a need to push them a little bit more forward in the mix, though I may have overdone it a bit with the snare.  Upon second listen, it's a pretty bright.  Having individual drum tracks would have really helped here.  Hard to really make things punch when all you've got is the stereo stem, cuz you can't smash / distort the stem nearly as aggressively as you might an individual drum mic.  Ah well.

Indeed spent a lot of time balancing vocals on the front end.  After that, I did the best I could to get everything as present as possible by high-passing and distorting the high end of the vocal in parallell, but it did start to create sibilance issues for me, which I had to counteract with a heavy dose of de-essing.  The sort of hyper-sibilance of the commercial release really is a testament to the original engineer's patience.  I imagine it took a good bit of tweaking to get all those breath sounds that up front in the mix without becoming too harsh. 

I tried a bit of deliberate clip-gain automation on the backside all the words in the lead vocal to achieve the same result, but it came across as a bit too much in my version.  Without time to do another pass at the automation, I ended up pulling the clip-gained vocal down in the mix a bit to counteract the issue.  I could have definitely been a bit more careful and also used clip-gain to counteract S-type syllables on the front end.  I bet if I just went through and cleaned up this automation I could pull that vocal to the front a few extra dB.

Side-chain compression did prove a bit useful, specifically for getting the the one pad-type synth to sit back when the vocal came in, though on review I maybe overdid the compression ratio by a factor of 0.5 or so.

Didn't think to put an 1176 on the vocal (I think I just used the generic channel strip comp in Pro Tools), but in hindsight the 1176 would have imparted a nice, gritty character to the male vocal that would have definitely benefitted it, presence-wise.  I usually only think to reach for that comp on drums, but should start experimenting with it on more sources.  

I remember that podcast episode on distortion, and could def afford to give it another listen.
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#10
Funny - I just checked and for the record it seems I actually did use the cla-3a on the vocals! Odd as I usually go for the 1176. Possible that I felt that this track needed something a bit smoother. I did use a stereo delay on a send for widening and a bit of plate reverb though.

It all adds up, but I think the main thing that is allowing the vocal up front, aside from the balance, is I have a db or so of pultec eq on the mix bus into the limiter. I think I just set the thing and flipped through the frequencies until I got the effect I was after.

Might be some ideas there to try, although it seems to me like you've got a pretty good handle on things. I think the main thing is to have an idea of where you want to get your mixes to, and keep on at it until you get there. Thats kind of where I am at anyway.

Oh - it occurs to me you could try waves trans-x multi or something similar to get a bit more punch out of the drum loop too. (Or just stick Xfer OTT and camel crusher on everything and call it a day haha).

Cheers!
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