Good Time Mix

[Chris Cochran]

So first time post on this site to get my feet wet. I hope you enjoy my experiment with doing a mix in the box and only headphones for a monitor source.

[takka360]

Kicks far to loud,the kick and snare dont sound like its on on the same kit the snare and sims sound very distant.
Also the guitars are very loud the one in the left pan is taking over the whole mix,the vocals are very low too.

[Dags]

Hi Chris and welcome!

Not a bad first attempt at all.
If I may make a couple of suggestions;
I'll support what Takka mentions above about the kick.
If you were to drop it down a little (keep the same EQ/dynamics you have on it as it sounds fine) then the energy balance will be more even and other elements in the mix will naturally seem louder by comparison.
The snare might need to come up in volume as at the moment it is well below the level of the kick and the toms.
If you could do a swap with the relative levels of kick and snare you'll be almost there, actually

The vocals could do with coming up against the other instruments as well.

The guitars are just dying to be heard up loud so I can see why you have them way up in the mix
The one which plays throughout (panned left) probably needs to be balanced out by something in the other channel - maybe by the organ if that is also playing throughout - until the spots when the right-panned guitar joins in.
Or a neat trick is to create an aux/buss panned to the alternate side, maybe with a very small sample delay on it and send the instrument to it then drop the level of the aux/buss by 6-9dB. You'll then have *something* happening in the other ear even though it doesn't dominate that channel and we're mostly hearing the original signal.
If you use a room/reverb to create a slightly wetter mix then some of the guitars will be splashed across into the other channel.
But that's just a processing suggestion and nothing wrong with the way you're going about the mix in having total separation.

Definitely have a go at adjusting the relative levels of the kick, snare and vocals, have a break, then take another listen and if you're happy please post the results as a V2.

Cheers!
Dags

[Chris Cochran]

Thanks for the constructive criticism Dags. Like mentioned in my first post this was an experiment but I should have given a little more detail as far as this little experiment is concerned.

The whole approach was to do a mix with a laptop, earbuds and a basic DAW. I figured lets try doing a mix with the listening platform of most consumers of music, it is a mobil download generation isn't it.

I did make a few adjustments using your suggestions Dags, but only using the gear I intended because of the experiment. The next thing I'm going to do is listen on a real set of monitors, I'm sure there will be a significant difference but thats why its fun to play with audio.