James May - Hold On You

[juanjose1967]

Here's my mix. It seems to be a very popular song to mix these days

Comments will be welcomed as usual

[Olli H]

I've heard some masterpieces from you lately, so maybe that's the reason I was expecting more from this mix.

vox great, but otherwise I think you need to do some balancing.

I think snare creates illusion of too small space. Somehow it don’t match the space of vox which is just fine.

Overall sound feels a bit too dry, as if you have forgotten to open rev-buss.

Also low-register is not optimal. As if its blocking the low mids. Maybe you forgot to do the HD600 checking. How about turning up guitars a bit. Now the vox is quite alone in the middle with low-end accompaniment

[juanjose1967]

When I was finished with the mix, I was noticing something that I didn't like but I couldn't distinguish what it was. After what you've found out, I think that the best thing to do is mix it again from the very beginning. Thank you for your comments!!

[juanjose1967]

Here's my second mix. I hope this time it's better than the first one

[Olli H]

I like the balances much more now.

I wonder if the snare bottom mic is too loud. Was there a such? Or did you replace the snare? Now there's now change from snare sidestick sound to normal snare sound around 0:45.

[juanjose1967]

No, I replaced the snare with a sample. I've learned a new technique about drum replacement with melodyne. Until now, I've been using a drum trigger but there were no dynamics at all, and now I can have the original dynamics as well.

Snares are driving me crazy!!! I don't know when I will start mixing them alright!!

[Olli H]

Snares are driving me crazy!!! I don't know when I will start mixing them alright!!

Remeber that all my comments are always subjective and are bound to change on a daily basis. So don’t take my comments too seriously, someone else may think that your drum sound is just perfect now.

Hopefully someday my Melodyne starts to work in my Reaper. Melodyne and BeatDetective are the only things that I miss from my ProTools days.

[The_Metallurgist]

yo JJ,

it's pretty easy to suffer from the Habituation Effect when messing around with snares...it's the treble in particular which can throw our senses, especially when trying to dial in EQ while looping - it numbs the senses and leads to EQ errors. don't stress, eh?....stress is a blockage, leads to frustration, then it's "Hello vicious circle"..........

..........a technique i've been working on a lot more lately, is to listen to the sound, determine what's wrong with it, stop play, dial in the EQ parameters which my memory snap-shot thinks is necessary, then play again. fine tune to taste on playback. it's a magic way to force-develop listening skills as well.

FWIW, i threw the snare sample in the bin and went with the OH's with some hectic voodoo on the BD, to try an overcome the issues with the "heavy" automation. what doesn't help here is the fact the producer has automated everything, and printed the automation!!! it means we can't do anything well, other than cry! most mixes posted up to the MDL are contaminated this way. perhaps one day producers will work out how to switch it off before printing (once they've worked out that it needs to be switched off!), but i'm not holding my breath. it feels like an epidemic is going on out there these days. M.S. mentions in his MDL preamble that the multi's aren't processed? i wish.

so, we can't gate, expand, compress, effectively side-chain or work any of the dynamics in such projects, unless the automation effects can be "undone" in advance of actually mixing. i'd also add, that we can't effectively apply EQ either? when automation results in a low amplitude, treble sounds totally different to when the track is running hotter in the automation. and of course another factor it throws up, is the psychoacoustic signals about an instrument's illusion regarding the depth domain, just to further complicate matters.

note his vocal has been pitch corrected leading to an unnatural vocal, which i personally find immensely distracting, and there's also indications that some EQ'ing has occurred with it since recording?

accumulatively, all this conspires to work against the very process of mixing (and it clearly gets in the way of people trying to develop mixing skills....remember, apprentices working in a pro studio in the old days had access to decent recordings!). if the fundamentals of the materials aren't right because of previous interference after recording has taken place (and assuming the recording was good.....!), it suggests our efforts at mixing will be compromised before we even load it into the DAW.

we can't fix it in the mix dude. go easy on yourself; i think you are perhaps trying to "uncompromise" a compromised project...?

while i'm here and talking of compromises, i will flag up another issue in the arrangement. during the production process prior to recording, little to no attention was given to the stereo panorama and how the instruments would be placed such that their spectral contributions could be balanced accordingly? nothing balances an acoustic guitar spectrally here. any panning, other than center, will tend to unbalance the mix spectrally. and nothing balances the electric, nor the slide gtrs. importantly, such imbalances will tend to result in listening fatigue, particularly when using headphones for entertainment.

laters,,

[flyrecords]

reemplazaste todo por un snare y suena el snare en donde deberia sonar el rimshot, creo que te falta un trabajito de edicion juan....

[takka360]

The snare is a write off really that comes with the multitracks its a shame really