It's My Right - Matt's mix

[londonmatt]

Hi there, enjoyed listening to various other versions of this so thought I'd have a go myself. Nice song, decent sounding instruments played well with a good vocal - hope I haven't messed it up too much!

Any critique very welcome, thanks

Matt

[pauli]

Hey Matt.

From a purely sonic perspective, what you've got going here is a good start in the right direction. I won't comment too much on subjective issues, mix energy, so on, but I've a few technical pointers.

My main concern is that the lead vocal isn't staying in front, spacially, with the drums and electric guitars occasionally stepping in front throughout the mix. From what I can tell from the quick listen, your ambiance isn't causing the problem... it's partly a dynamics issue and partly a spectral issue, with the guitars being a little over represented in the very forward sounding high mids. A little dip on the guitars, probably somewhere around 3 or 4 kHz, will most likely push them back suitably. To bring the vocal forward, I recommend a gentle squeeze, maybe one or two dB, with a compressor something like an LA-2A, followed by a bit of gain riding on the fader.

Again, purely talking about sonics here, I'd take a closer listen to how much transient you're allowing through from the overheads, mainly in the high frequency department. On headphones I'm hearing quite a bit of pointy-sounding stick noise on a ride cymbal or something, primarily in the left channel. Easy fix though, yeah?

[londonmatt]

Hey pauli, thanks for listening, really appreciate it. Quite agree with both your points - I was pretty lazy with the automation and it shows will go back to this one in due course and make the tweaks you suggest, reckon they should help quite a bit.

Thanks again
Matt

[pauli]

Don't go too crazy on the vocal rides... A limiting amplifier should get you halfway there. We're talking about gain riding 2 dB max between both approaches in this situation. This style doesn't need to be hyper polished like chart pop.... Just keep the vocal in front and mild settings/rides should be plenty

[The_Metallurgist]

while you're in there, take a listen to the treble on the vocal, the "Tees" are hazardous; "I'm on T<pain>V....".

in addition to this, the mix is HIGHLY fatiguing.

you seem to be hitting this mix quite hard from the dynamic reduction angle, and it's perhaps one of the reasons the vocal's treble is errant. i think the song would come over much better with more dynamic and backing off on the gear. most people over-compress because they aren't accustomed to dynamic material in their Terms of Reference, which makes judgement problematic; something to watch out for perhaps (it's not the only reason...there are many of course). there is another reason you could be missing it here, me thinks - you've a LOT of treble going on generally, and it's perhaps masking your perceptions.....it depends on your playback device as well, of course, but given i've not listened to enough of your mixes (this is only the second), i can't make that call without a larger sample base.

also given the fact this mix is painful to my sensitive ears, i'd recommend you explore how you've missing it. you've applied some mastering tools to the mix and undergone a so-say mastering process? so based on the assumption you have, it's a further reason why you need to explore the weakness....as the mastering process should be the Final Inspection before goods are despatched to the customer - in the forum, however, it's often where further mix destruction can, and does occur. and let's not forget that Mastering is a professional skill acquired through many years of diligence and appropriate skill's development.

it can be difficult passing comments on posts, because fundamentally we should be judging the objective characteristics of the mix. we cannot readily do so, however, if the mastering process has been applied in a less than qualified manner. just something to think about......

just before i sign off and get some work done, i will mention a feature that haunts a lot of people learning to mix. given that most instrument's fundamentals occur in the low-mid's, it's a zone which gets crowded pretty quickly. when it does, the temptation is to seek clarity further up in the harmonic's, and that's when problems start. i think this is why you're pushing the trebles and i'm getting fatigued by it.

compression affect's timbre, and the more you spank the mix overall, or a given instrument, the more you will bring out the treble as a possible consequence - it's extent depends on the resultant envelope emanating from the parameter changes, of course.

laters..

[stoman]

I like this mix. Just a tiny bit more dynamics, and a tad more space to the vocals, and I would call it done.

[pauli]

it can be difficult passing comments on posts, because fundamentally we should be judging the objective characteristics of the mix. we cannot readily do so, however, if the mastering process has been applied in a less than qualified manner. just something to think about......

+1. I've come to realize that if I'm trying to broadly change the character of a mix during mastering, something's amiss in the mix itself. Lots of internet advice suggests a linear phase high shelving boost at mastering for "air" and "sheen" and a mastered sound. I think that usually only works if you're using really high quality mastering processors... lots of stuff between 15 and 20kHz, even the the junk I can't readily hear above 17kHz... well, I usually find it annoying, so I avoid boosting the trebles like that with the free/cheap processing that's available to me. Lots of folks think digital EQs sound brittle when boosting the highs.

just before i sign off and get some work done, i will mention a feature that haunts a lot of people learning to mix. given that most instrument's fundamentals occur in the low-mid's, it's a zone which gets crowded pretty quickly. when it does, the temptation is to seek clarity further up in the harmonic's, and that's when problems start. i think this is why you're pushing the trebles and i'm getting fatigued by it.

+5 Side note, not really related to this production, but worth thinking about: A lot of the times it's an arrangement issue more so than a mix issue IMO which really sucks... the slice and dice associated with addressing things like that is a real drag. If the majority of the fundamentals are occurring within the same octave, the production will become effectively unmixable. When you have to highpass and/or severely attenuate the fundamentals across most of the instruments in the mix, you're gonna cut the balls off the mix as a whole and wind up with too much high mid. But then if you try to pan your way out of it, you wind up with too much non-directional frequency content on the sides... which is generally bad both artistically and scientifically, unless you have a specific reason for doing so.

When you think about it, low shelving the bottom half of the spectrum isn't much different than boosting the top half after you volume match.

One more little bit... electric guitars by and large don't produce any musical harmonics above 5000 kHz... just noise... and the ratio of analog noise to harmonics starts getting unwieldy around 4000. The potential ugliness gets a lot worse if the signal is overdriven pretty hard, too, because the distortion is adding harmonics to the noise as well as the good stuff. The takeaway is that you can get away with lowpassing electric guitars most of the time, but a gentle lowpass, 6dB per octave, is usually best, since steeper curves usually create a sharp resonance at the corner frequency and that's just going to make things worse.

You can clear out a lot of the fatiguing crap in the treble by attenuating or removing it from electric guitars... acoustic guitars are another matter altogether and the two of the same make/model acoustic guitars can sound quite different in the highs depending on string tension, technique, how often the instrument is played, how old the strings are... it's mind boggling. But electric guitars are much more predictable in the highs-- you don't need em. Save that stuff for the vocal and cymbals. Might sound a little dull after the guitars have been sizzling your ears for a few minutes, but take a break, come back and you'll see what I mean.

[The_Metallurgist]

+1. I've come to realize that if I'm trying to broadly change the character of a mix during mastering, something's amiss in the mix itself. Lots of internet advice suggests a linear phase high shelving boost at mastering for "air" and "sheen" and a mastered sound. I think that usually only works if you're using really high quality mastering processors... lots of stuff between 15 and 20kHz, even the the junk I can't readily hear above 17kHz... well, I usually find it annoying, so I avoid boosting the trebles like that with the free/cheap processing that's available to me. Lots of folks think digital EQs sound brittle when boosting the highs.

+100. taking a step back...... i'd add to this that trebles are normally a mess before getting to the Mastering stage (not forgetting bass also, of course). if the mix contains some harshness from one or more instruments - undetected resonances, wrongly applied EQ etc, then simply touching the top-end in order to try and make a mix sound airy can turn it into a train wreck, Maag or no Maag. far too many people bring their mixes to Mastering with excessive trebles [for a multitude of reasons] and it leaves the engineer with nowhere to go except reduction/roll-offs. i insist on stems.......if the problem is only in one stem, say, it can be treated without having to compromise on the other material. you don't want to be treating sibilance in a stereo file if everything else is ok, for example, because it will hit the cymbals [if present]. but in the forum, if newbies are mixing, newbies are mastering, so all the inherent issues get exacerbated; nobody can Master in a bedroom on a pair of 2-ways, but it doesn't stop um trying. the first problem being the fact that they will have missed problems in the mixing process because of the issues inherent in their listening environment, and these will also be present in the master. actually, because of the inherent limitations in any one pair of monitors, it's better having 2 or 3 pairs of monitors for mixing....switching shocks the ears, for one thing. a crap mix can sound great after 20 seconds, because our brains adjust to it. flicking to a different monitor is perfect for [potentially] avoiding such perils. i think many problems which continually plague people's mixes consistently over time, are partly for this reason. those who haven't had the luxury of working under this sort of environment (multiple monitors) won't understand the benefits, nor the benefits of correct acoustic treatment of a room. you gotta experience it to appreciate it. and unless we experience the benefits, we are far less likely to embrace change.....assuming the budgetary resources are willing, of course. and if they aren't, progress in our mixing skills will be limited - we will get so far then simply end up going around in circles repeating the same mistakes because the fundamental issues haven't been adequately addressed (previous discussion in a Pauli thread refers, as much as it probably does to this thread also). by all means see how a mix translates over other playback devices, but it's not a panacea for critical listening environmental issues. when we dial-in a parameter, we must hear it's consequences immediately in order to assess it's appropriateness and work the element in with the mix as a whole. but if our judgement is impaired for reasons i keep harping on about, the mix will be a reflection of our personal limitations; be they financial, academic ability, Terms of Reference......... or woteva.

+5 Side note, not really related to this production, but worth thinking about: A lot of the times it's an arrangement issue more so than a mix issue IMO which really sucks... the slice and dice associated with addressing things like that is a real drag. If the majority of the fundamentals are occurring within the same octave, the production will become effectively unmixable. When you have to highpass and/or severely attenuate the fundamentals across most of the instruments in the mix, you're gonna cut the balls off the mix as a whole and wind up with too much high mid. But then if you try to pan your way out of it, you wind up with too much non-directional frequency content on the sides... which is generally bad both artistically and scientifically, unless you have a specific reason for doing so.

When you think about it, low shelving the bottom half of the spectrum isn't much different than boosting the top half after you volume match.

One more little bit... electric guitars by and large don't produce any musical harmonics above 5000 kHz... just noise... and the ratio of analog noise to harmonics starts getting unwieldy around 4000. The potential ugliness gets a lot worse if the signal is overdriven pretty hard, too, because the distortion is adding harmonics to the noise as well as the good stuff. The takeaway is that you can get away with lowpassing electric guitars most of the time, but a gentle lowpass, 6dB per octave, is usually best, since steeper curves usually create a sharp resonance at the corner frequency and that's just going to make things worse.

You can clear out a lot of the fatiguing crap in the treble by attenuating or removing it from electric guitars... acoustic guitars are another matter altogether and the two of the same make/model acoustic guitars can sound quite different in the highs depending on string tension, technique, how often the instrument is played, how old the strings are... it's mind boggling. But electric guitars are much more predictable in the highs-- you don't need em. Save that stuff for the vocal and cymbals. Might sound a little dull after the guitars have been sizzling your ears for a few minutes, but take a break, come back and you'll see what I mean.

hahahahhahah......oooooooh yeahhhhhh.

i've since mixed this. the prior-to applied compression wasn't correct on the vocal during tracking (OR SUBSEQUENT PROCESSING PRIOR TO IT BEING PRESENTED IN THE LIBRARY?!!!!) and Matt's processing has, it seems, worsened the situation.

the fatigue is coming off the cymbals mainly, but i didn't spend much time hanging around listening, for reasons stated. in the raw tracking, the drums are good however....

....but especially note:

the vocal tracking already contains level automation - somebody forgot to disengage it prior to uploading the multi!!!!!!!!!!!!! so, if we apply compression in order to address imbalances, it will simply add more distortion on what is already present. so any recommendation regarding dynamic processing (Pauli's earlier reference refers) needs to be taken with extreme caution, therefore. the opening lines are around a typical SL of -20LUFS, give or take, while at the end it's -14LUFS. i'm using values here for the benefit of the community because they are objective and i think it's important to use objectivity to get the message across in an otherwise potentially subjective discussion, which loudness can be. further compression could turn the vocal into a dogs dinner........and the Tee's will bite, even more than they do in the raw track! i can't remember the intimate details of what i did with it now because it seems like it was 100 years ago....but i didn't compress on the vocal track at all, nor did i parallel it.

apart from my irritation at the lack of care in supplying the multi and it's inherent attributes, the material works well. but i think it would help the forum if Mike Senior insisted that all automation/processing is removed before supply. it makes the process of mixing a complete crapshoot otherwise and a total waste of time in my opinion; Skelpolu's Entwine was in my opinion, a complete disaster, by way of example. there are way too many others!!

[Lethan]

Straight to the point.
I like it. It's nicely done mix. Balance sound good to me.
Nice separation and clarity. Snare could have more meat, sounds thin and lite. I would also pull back a vocal a bit.
Very nice work!.
Lethan.

[azwayne]

Excellent conversation here!

When I worked on this mix, one of the things I did was lightly go through and compress the vocal tracks but then followed it up with automation specifically to bring out the really soft syllables and try to even the vocal out. In a pop song, you can get away with a word or two being swallowed but in a song like this where the vocal wants to be much more out front, it sounds better if everything can be heard.

I will also echo the sentiment about the cymbals. That was the one aspect of this recording I was not at all happy with when I worked on it but at the time lacked replacement resources (drumagog or something similar) to do enhancement to clean them up and think it would still take a fair bit of monkeying to do so transparantly, given the tune.