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Ill Fate Mixed by Dcp
#1
So after listening to my old mix and master of this track I wasn't really happy with it. The drums didn't have the punch I was looking for in the mix and the guitar tones were really honky and brittle. This mix I feel undoes the problems I had with my old mix, the guitars have a meatier, more aggressive sound to them and the drums are sampled so they have more attack and bite.

There's no reverb on the vocals, just a ping pong delay set to 25 milliseconds with no feedback to add width to them. The drums have a very small 700 millisecond decay plate reverb mixed in subtly to liven them up and the guitars have a similar setup to the vocals with an added small verb patched after the delay with a 45% mix so they sound fatter.

I used a new amp sim called Ultra 530 by Mercuriall Audio which I found out about a couple of days ago. I only have the free version at this point which only allows you to adjust the overall volume of the amp, switch between 2 gain sounds and a clean tone, and adjust the mic placement on the virtual cab. Fortunately the amp sim actually gets some great tones even with those small set of tweak-able modules (there is loads of eq possibilities in the mic placement section alone) and you have independent control over input and output gain. The guitars have just a little bit of subtractive eq just to remove some fizz at the top end, other than, the guitar sound is just the plugin.

The bass was split into 2 tracks, one low passed at 500 Hz and the other High Passed at 500 Hz. The low passed track was compressed and left clean and the high passed track was ran through a different guitar amp sim to add some grind to it and blended with the low passed track to taste. Both tracks were then compressed by an 1176 emulation to glue them together and to remove any fluctuations on volume.

The vocals got some aggressive compression, limiting, and soft clipping to make them more aggressive and exaggerate the rasp in them. I eq'ed out some unwanted mud and harshness from them before they hit any compression as to not boost any unwanted crap in them.

Mastering was some eq balancing and final compression and limiting to bring it up to level

Please leave your comments and critiques, and enjoy.

Update: New mix with a blend of the original guitar amp tone and my reamp tone. The original amp tones here actually helped me get a more aggressive Low mid driven tone. The vocals are driven harder into the soft clipper I was using on them and pushed up abit in the mix.


.mp3    Ill Fate Master 1.mp3 --  (Download: 3.11 MB)


.mp3    Ill Fate Master 2.mp3 --  (Download: 3.1 MB)


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
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#2
This is a very nice and polished mix, but somethings missing. It almost sounds too polished, to nice, to sweet. I want to hear more dirt, more grit, more bite, more smear, more aggression.

Therefore I would
- Turn up the vocals or move the guitars out of the way (e.g. CLA is boosting lows/highs on the guitars and the mids on the vocals - and it works)
- add more distortion to the guitars. They sound great but need more bite. In real life I would use a Tubescreamer in front of the amp - or turn the level up if a TS is allready in use.
- add a subtle high shelf boost (about 1db) to make the mix a little bit brighter

If the distortion on the guitars is not enough to push the mix into the "red zone" I would try to add subtle saturation on the mix buss with decapitator or drive VCC into the red
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#3
(16-03-2016, 01:28 PM)Blitzzz Wrote: This is a very nice and polished mix, but somethings missing. It almost sounds too polished, to nice, to sweet. I want to hear more dirt, more grit, more bite, more smear, more aggression.

Therefore I would
- Turn up the vocals or move the guitars out of the way (e.g. CLA is boosting lows/highs on the guitars and the mids on the vocals - and it works)
- add more distortion to the guitars. They sound great but need more bite. In real life I would use a Tubescreamer in front of the amp - or turn the level up if a TS is allready in use.
- add a subtle high shelf boost (about 1db) to make the mix a little bit brighter

If the distortion on the guitars is not enough to push the mix into the "red zone" I would try to add subtle saturation on the mix buss with decapitator or drive VCC into the red

Thanks for the comment, The sound I'm going for is more in the style of the band Counterparts (in particular the song Slave off their 3rd album "The Difference Between Hell and Home"), Hollow Ground seem like a less technical more aggressive version of Counterparts so that's what I based my sound off of

The vocals are consistantly pulling 15 dB of soft clipping already and the level is almost pinned on the TS emulation infront of the amp sim, if I go further I'm really just adding noise and very tiny amounts of actual gain. I'm running an Andy Sneap style C4 multiband compression setting on the guitars so that maybe the reason there isn't alot of mushing up in the guitars. I didn't really turn up the makeup gain on that so the guitar has lost some low mid energy however the bass better fits now.

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
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#4
It's a great mix, don't get me wrong. I compared it with my Femme-Mix and it had the same feel - not too loud, very controlled. But still it's missing something for me.

Edit: Just checked Counterparts. Cool. Your mix is very close but this album from Counterparts definitely has this "something" I´m talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOhC-w0Cz1c

It's the guitars that add this grit, dirt or wahtever you want to call it - they are brighter and more distorted then your guitars.
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#5
I know what you're saying, The Current Will Carry Us is a great sounding record. The guitars on that weren't double tracked at all. Just the two guitarists in the band playing their own parts. Their parts do overlap but for the most part the guitars have a tonne of low mid in them (one guitarist uses a recto and the other uses a 5150 ii) and the cabs were recorded with a 57 and a r121 which gives them that sound.

I'm going to try inserting a soft clipper on the DI tracks to simulate more of that active EMG sound (another trick from Joey Sturgis ;P)and giving the guitars a low mid bump. Thanks again
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
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#6
New mix above see master 2
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
Reply
#7
After leaving this mix for a while I've done a complete re mix and master. This time I focused more on making it sound heavy and in your face, rather than trying to emulate a certain sound of a record that's out there.



.mp3    Ill Fate Master 1.mp3 --  (Download: 3.22 MB)


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
Reply
#8
Raw power, drive and emotion - this is one of the best mixes of this song on this forum if you ask me. Had goosebumps while listening. Hihat was a bit annoying at the end, and the vocal verb was also getting too much attention from my ears. I would turn down the volume of the hat in the last part (like -3db) and reduce the level of the reverb on the lead vocal a tiny bit.

Other than that it's great. Totally sounds like a commercial/pro mix for me.
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#9
(02-11-2016, 11:42 AM)Blitzzz Wrote: Raw power, drive and emotion - this is one of the best mixes of this song on this forum if you ask me. Had goosebumps while listening. Hihat was a bit annoying at the end, and the vocal verb was also getting too much attention from my ears. I would turn down the volume of the hat in the last part (like -3db) and reduce the level of the reverb on the lead vocal a tiny bit.

Other than that it's great. Totally sounds like a commercial/pro mix for me.

Thanks Blitzzz, glad you enjoyed the mix! After listening back I did notice in the last section the hats were pretty far up, I didn't really pay attention to that when I was mixing it in. Same with the verb on the vocals, although it does have that kinda feeling like the vocals are causing the room to reverberate from the volume of the vocals.

Cheers,
Dcp
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
Reply
#10
I took Blitzzz's suggestions and also automated the bass and guitars up during the instrumental sections about 1 dB and the Drums, bass, and guitar up a fair bit during the breakdown at the end. Some subtle mastering changes were made, overall the difference in sound is pretty subtle, it does give the mix alittle more impact though.

Cheers,
Dcp


.mp3    Ill Fate Master 2.mp3 --  (Download: 3.24 MB)


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
Reply