Neon Hornet mix critique

[tomtomtom1230]

A friend of mine was looking through some material on this site and pointed me towards this site. He sent me these files to play with since he knows I want my mixing to improve so here it is.

I sat down for around 60-80 mins just listening, making an adjustment and listening again.

The only trouble I've had with this track is controlling the muddiness between the bass and drums but I feel like the bass and drums should definitely be a driving force in this song. Can't really test it through any/many speakers so it's basically a headphone mix.

I would love some honest advice given if you have time Thanks folks.

Also, hello everybody. I'm new here!

EDIT: I've no fancy plugins or anything, just ran it through the bog standard stuff in Pro Tools 11. Still finding my way around it and getting my head around the art of the perfect compression for songs. I may have overdone it a little in this song.

Ran the whole mix through a limiter on the master LR bus to bring the volume up a little after mixing. Unsure if the limiting was a little harsh but please include this in your critique.


EDIT: attempt #2 I tried different drum processing to really try to get a big roomy, pushy feel to the drums and bass through new monitors that I'm still unsure of. I would love some feedback on the 2nd attempt! Many thanks.

[tomtomtom1230]

Also, after listening to other's attempts, I think I'm missing a vocal take that repeats a line during the last guitar solo.

[Dangerous]

For the most part, I think you have a fairly solid mix. It's alway's going to be difficult when you've only got headphones to work with. The bottom end does sound a little heavy but I'm listening to it myself with headphones so my judgement won't be entirely accurate. You may want to try using some reference tracks to help with your overall tone and levels. DLR's mix down of this track is a good start.
Don't worry about those fancy plugins. Not required. Just learn how use what you've got.
Dave.

[pauli]

Don't overcomplicate separating the kick and bass, that's the key. The kick will have a fundamental that doesn't change, so giving the bass a little dip in that frequency is sensible. More important are the dynamic relationships between the two. If the bass has an unstable low end, you may be in trouble because that usually requires one or two special mixing techniques to resolve. Usually though, the bass will respond well to firm, slow compression, and a little bit of peak compression on the kick will help sometimes. I find doing this quickly will help you feel when the groove is established, and you can finesse the sonics later. Most important is the groove, though.

[Houndface]

Solid mix TomTom. The limiting sounds fine. In the opening bass line you can hear some low end rumble when he goes to the low note, I did a low cut to about 70hz on mine and it allowed me to beef the kick a little more creating a better balance. I also experimented with removing some 500hz from the bass, this can reduce mud and may bring your toms out a little more and maybe add a little 3k or so on tom2 for a little stick attack and definition. I found this song to be a really good learning tool. It's a tough balance for kick/toms/bass not to mention the guitar stuff! Fine job!

[tomtomtom1230]

Thanks for all your comments. I would agree with them all and they are fully taken aboard. I will give this another stab soon since I have ordered some Yamaha HS50's and a Saffire Pro40 with my xmas money. I'm just waiting on my Firewire PCI card I'm not too sure my room is fit for the job yet but at least I can begin cross-referencing mixes between headphones and monitors.

[pauli]

Every little bit helps, and every improvement you make to your monitoring will make an obvious difference. Rock what you got, though... Practice is equally important

[tomtomtom1230]

OK, got everything set up and first impressions of the monitors is that they're very 'mid-forward' (for lack of a better term) and because I have a square room I'm getting all kinds of standing waves or whatever. I will have to get some bass traps in the new year - at least, from my limited knowledge I believe they should help??? Not sure if I'm mixing too dark because the upper mids are very heavy - we'll see.

Specifically, I've wanted to work on drum processing and 'hand crafting' a great atmosphere that the drums sit is REALLY hard. What I felt like I lacked in my first attempt was any impact from the toms and snare. They kinda just got lost a bit.

I'm not sure how it'll translate with the new speakers yet we'll call this experiment number one perhaps?

See the second track in OP for the latest attempt.

Many thanks again for any advice given on either take

EDIT: Also, I found a neat little reverse effect thing in Pro Tools Audiosuite

[jerze]

Hello Tom, I think those new monitors will help a lot while still using the headphones for referencing. The big thing is listening to a lot music on them which will help gauge things.

AS for the mixes, I think for using head phone on the 1st mix it's not bad .The bass ,low tom and kic need some work as others mentioned already they gave me troubles also . I do think tho the 2nd mix is clearer than the 1st .I'm curious on how much you changed your EQing on the different instruments with the new monitors?

The one thing that is interesting is how you chose the panning of the guitars and the solo at the end in both mix's. These aren't my normal listing speakers but I think you are losing space and the groove by not spreading the main guitars out Lt and Rt. As for the solo at the end, for me in this song it just sounds kind of weird panning the solo Lt to RT when the guitars need to be pushing the end and the solo just down the middle. The drums seem a little wide to me on the second mix ,but you did say you were experimenting.

[tomtomtom1230]

AS for the mixes, I think for using head phone on the 1st mix it's not bad .The bass ,low tom and kic need some work as others mentioned already they gave me troubles also . I do think tho the 2nd mix is clearer than the 1st .I'm curious on how much you changed your EQing on the different instruments with the new monitors?

When referencing through the monitors, I felt like I had to try to make some instruments feel more 'forward'. Namely, I felt the drums needed to be right up in the listener's face to create a big impact with this song and to really drive the groove forward. Whilst the EQ didn't change all that drastically, I did change my compression settings (in particular the attack and release controls) by a substantial amount to create the aforementioned effect. This lead to the compressors allowing more of the transients through and as a result, a lot more of the high-mid to high frequencies. I upped the plate reverb for the snare and created new aux tracks specifically for use as a drum compression bus firstly and then a reverb channel to try to accomplish a roomy drum sound (which I feel as though I've done only partially, I'm really struggling with it).

The one thing that is interesting is how you chose the panning of the guitars and the solo at the end in both mix's. These aren't my normal listing speakers but I think you are losing space and the groove by not spreading the main guitars out Lt and Rt. As for the solo at the end, for me in this song it just sounds kind of weird panning the solo Lt to RT when the guitars need to be pushing the end and the solo just down the middle. The drums seem a little wide to me on the second mix ,but you did say you were experimenting.

OK so I found that through the monitors, GTR1 and GTR2 (the rhythm and riff guitars played with a slide) sounded fine when hard panned left and right but when cross-referencing this mix through headphones it began to get uncomfortable (for lack of a better word). I think there is a tiny bit of room ambiance in the recording with the main guitar riff (panned central in my latest mix) whereas there is less/none in the other (panned about 30-40% left, can't remember exactly). I found my ears began to get very tired very quickly. When listening to other mixes where the guitars are hard panned left and right, there is a certain feeling of distraction or un-comfort that I can't quite put my finger on but I'm certain it's for the reasons I just spoke about

Regarding the final guitar solo where I pan from left to right and back again; This song (to me at least) sounds very 'one-levelled', dynamically speaking. There's no drop for a bridge or the 2nd verse (which I have tried to artificially create by subtracting the lead riff) and there's no huge crescendo - even considering the end-of-track solo. I felt like a little extra automation might help keep the listener engaged with the song, though I appreciate it's not to everybody's taste

Perhaps I'm guilty for overdoing the drums a little what can I say? I like my drums big and fat and I got carried away x) I was aiming for a thunderous (but not out of control) drum sound. I like to think I achieved that on some level.

Thank you for your feedback, it's much appreciated.

EDIT: Oh, I also ran this through a master bus where I applied an EQ that sucks out about 1.5dB from the whole mix at 400-700Hz just to help keep them toms under control a little better before running it through a limiter to bring the volume up for you guys.