Our Love is Here to Stay iShouldBsleeping

[iShouldBsleeping]

First of all I need to say this was one of the most enjoyable and beautiful songs I've ever had the pleasure of mixing. I got chills many times during this project! Thanks to Mike Senior and Spektakulatius for making this available.

One thing I have to say is I am guilty of changing the sound a little bit.. I know Mike S. noted that the band was happy with the general tone/feel of the song before it was mixed, and if I was doing this for a client I would not veer from their vision, but I just lost myself in the music and had to put my touch on it.

Unfortunately my mixing environment isn't ideal.. untreated room, low quality monitors and headphones, but I'm still happy with the final product given what I have to work with.

I look forward to your feedback and comments, and please feel free to speak whatever's on your mind, I will not be offended at all. Thanks, and I look forward to listening to all of your mixes!

Chris

**Edit
After to listening to all of your mixes I'm able to see that I cut out way too much of the snare and it's ambience! Woops. Also My kick isn't present enough. All these different mixes are great help!

***Edit
So I tried to bring the snare back out more but I've done so much with this track I was only able to get a little bit back without changing the fundamentals of my mix. I also brought the kick back a little.

[Olli H]

Sounds natural and balanced to me

Some very minor issues game to my mind:

It feels to me that vox may have a small issue in lower mids here and there. As if you have some plugin to add lower harmonics, and it maybe adds them too much when she’s singing low notes, but just nice in other notes. Just guessing.

Vox feels slightly as if it’s in a too small room. Small (inaudible) delay, some early reflections or small air-boost may help to that problem.

In headphones the stereo effect in guitar bothers me a bit. All the other instruments seem to be in natural space, so it jumps out a as belonging to another mixing strategy. In different context I might consider it just perfect trick.

Sax is lacking a body. You may have too strong eq curves with it.

But I think those were just vvery small problems. I wouldn’t have mentioned them otherwise, but as you asked for them

As I read some of your comments, you seem to have ear and vision for details. I strongly engourage you to get yourself a best possible MIXING headphones. Of course a well treated room with good monitors is a best starting point, but too often a too big step that’s left undone. But best quality mixing headphones is not a big step but it makes a huge difference.

I have also those ATH-M50 headphones, but Im not using them for mixing. They are superb for tracking purposes but not for mixing. They sound very very good, but doesn’t provide you with flat response. Personally I use HD600 for mixing purposes.

[AndyGallas]

The balance is fine. The Sax is quite thin and nasal, sounds a little like it's playing in different room. The guitar is hard to locate in the stereo spectrum, I'd prefer more of a stage like stereo field of the instruments.

Nonetheless, the vibe and balance is there for me!

[iShouldBsleeping]

Sounds natural and balanced to me

Some very minor issues game to my mind:

It feels to me that vox may have a small issue in lower mids here and there. As if you have some plugin to add lower harmonics, and it maybe adds them too much when she’s singing low notes, but just nice in other notes. Just guessing.

Vox feels slightly as if it’s in a too small room. Small (inaudible) delay, some early reflections or small air-boost may help to that problem.

In headphones the stereo effect in guitar bothers me a bit. All the other instruments seem to be in natural space, so it jumps out a as belonging to another mixing strategy. In different context I might consider it just perfect trick.

Sax is lacking a body. You may have too strong eq curves with it.

But I think those were just vvery small problems. I wouldn’t have mentioned them otherwise, but as you asked for them

As I read some of your comments, you seem to have ear and vision for details. I strongly engourage you to get yourself a best possible MIXING headphones. Of course a well treated room with good monitors is a best starting point, but too often a too big step that’s left undone. But best quality mixing headphones is not a big step but it makes a huge difference.

I have also those ATH-M50 headphones, but Im not using them for mixing. They are superb for tracking purposes but not for mixing. They sound very very good, but doesn’t provide you with flat response. Personally I use HD600 for mixing purposes.

You also have a good ear for detail. The guitars gave me hell. I originally wanted it hard panned left but I was not able to figure out how to balance the mix after doing that, so I did the equivalent of doubling them and hard panning to each side. As you may be able to tell I've never mixed acoustic jazz before!

For the vox, yeah I think I do have a harmonic plugin with probably too much of the low end added. I can easily take that down. As far as the reverb, I thought I had a nice wide reverb but I think what may have happened in at the end of the mix I had just learned a new M/S technique which I applied to the entire mix, and I think it may have separated the center from the sides too much, which may be causing the lack of cohesion.

The sax, yeah after everything was said and done, and I heard the other mixes I was able to see that the sax lost its character. I think I used some harmonic processing to bring out the high frequencies but it seems to have robbed the low end. This can probably fixed easily as well.

Thank you for the detailed feedback, it is very helpful to hear objective opinions. As far as the headphones, yeah I know these are more for tracking but out in Hawaii the music stores have a very thin selection of headphones.. and if I'm going to be spending a lot of money I want to hear them before I buy so I'm not inclined to order online. I may need to though since I use them so much.

Thanks again for the feedback!

The balance is fine. The Sax is quite thin and nasal, sounds a little like it's playing in different room. The guitar is hard to locate in the stereo spectrum, I'd prefer more of a stage like stereo field of the instruments.

Nonetheless, the vibe and balance is there for me!

Thank you for your critique. As said above I may have applied too much high frequency harmonic processing to the sax, changing its character too much. And with the guitars, yes they gave me the most problems. I need to learn how to hard pan instruments without feeling like the mix is unbalanced.

Thanks for the comments!

[Olli H]

I need to learn how to hard pan instruments without feeling like the mix is unbalanced.

Hard panning is very difficult and not so natural when there's not so many instruments, as with this case. But it's much more easier and works fine when you have plenty of tracks to choose from.

[iShouldBsleeping]

Hard panning is very difficult and not so natural when there's not so many instruments, as with this case. But it's much more easier and works fine when you have plenty of tracks to choose from.

I agree. Not only was there very few instruments in this one, the ones that are there aren't really extreme stereo field friendly.. don't really want to hard pan a piano in this kind of song and the sax is a focal point so you don't want it off to the side.. snare was all the high frequency information so hard panning that is distracting. Was a tough one!

[AndyGallas]

I need to learn how to hard pan instruments without feeling like the mix is unbalanced.

I'm not sure about hard panning in this case. But when doing so I think one needs some sort of crosstalk or bleed to prevent the guitar from sounding separated. Either with a not so obvious ambiance or other effect or – uhmmm, by not hard panning. Bringing down the level helps also.

Cheers,
Andy

[thedon]

I like the balance of your mix Just adding to Andy And Olli's comments,with the sax , i have been experimenting using a soft multi band compressor to control the peaks in just the 200-400 hz area to keep it full without rolling off too much bottom end ,like any instruments there are some sweet spots like the breath of the sax that can be subtly enhanced by many methods like parametric ,dynamic eq and compression .

[acl]

Overall nice mix, it gave me a very relaxed feeling.

Here´s what my auditory cortex perceived in detail:
- the voice sounds very nice, full and present
- overall the low end is very prominet, probably because of your acoustic environment. The low frequencies of the piano pedal are audible.
- guitar´s space seems like to not suite very well
- I´m missing the drums, but this maybe makes your mix feel so relaxed

Good Job anyway!

[loweche6]

I agree with the stereo image comment by Andy, also the sentiments about your sax. Your balance is very nice, but I think you may have over eq'ed your piano a tad too much as well. It does have a nice feel, overall.

Nice mix!

Draper