Lead Inc 'The Inner Circle'

[ThePriestMix]

After reading Mixing Secrets for the small studio and a couple years practice in HipHop. My first attempt at mixing Alt/Rock. I may have some practice mixes coming up with an Alternative Band, so any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks in advance guys.

[thedon]

Hi ,
Welcome to this Awesome site and good choice of song for your first post ,definitely one of my favourites.
Having a listen to your mix some things come to mind.
I like the upper snap of the snare ,Thinking more bottom end punch on the snare may sound great .
I have found the balance between the bass and kick is a good challenge ,the bass could come down especially 200hz and below as overpowering the kick and rolling off below 40hz on the bass and kick would give more headroom for this genre of music (I love full punchy deep bass especially Hip Hop) .
The vocals maybe a touch more fuller in the bottom end ,or maybe less compression.
The Panned guitars can hear a touch full in the low frequencies in the side channels somewhere around 200hz or 300 hz and below.
Making a mono track of the guitars or using one in the centre and rolling off some low frequencies of the panned may help keep the low frequency focus on the centre.
Hope this helps a little.

Well Done

Cheers

[ThePriestMix]

Hi ,
Welcome to this Awesome site and good choice of song for your first post ,definitely one of my favourites.
Having a listen to your mix some things come to mind.
I like the upper snap of the snare ,Thinking more bottom end punch on the snare may sound great .
I have found the balance between the bass and kick is a good challenge ,the bass could come down especially 200hz and below as overpowering the kick and rolling off below 40hz on the bass and kick would give more headroom for this genre of music (I love full punchy deep bass especially Hip Hop) .
The vocals maybe a touch more fuller in the bottom end ,or maybe less compression.
The Panned guitars can hear a touch full in the low frequencies in the side channels somewhere around 200hz or 300 hz and below.
Making a mono track of the guitars or using one in the centre and rolling off some low frequencies of the panned may help keep the low frequency focus on the centre.
Hope this helps a little.

Well Done

Cheers

Thanks Very much for taking the time out to critique my mix I appreciate it i will listen again and make some changes

[kapu]

Nice. Also, some things come to mind. Some subjective advice. There are 'a lot' of tracks especially for the guitars and bass, and if you're new to this type of production, it's good to plan 'on paper' your mix first. You can't make a 'guitar wall' from single guitar takes, even if they are multi-miced as here is the case. In my opinion. Start working in mono, choose one of the three recorded guitar parts to work on, and pick the guitar mic that sounds initially (and relatively) best to your ear. If it's just fine, but slightly sharp or dull, try to blend in the opposite sounding mic and so on. Then group these tracks and pan them together into a fixed position, and that group would then be your guitar sound 1 and so on. With this song, you can build a guitar wall near the end, where the guitarists are playing (almost) in unison. The third guitar playing the melodies and riff in the end can be left centered, and the first and second guitars panned hard left and right. Trash the DI tracks. Apply the same method for bass, you can make use of the DI track too with bass, and leave it centered.

With drums, start with first kick and snare top mic, and try to set their levels as even as possible, and ignore the bleeding cymbals and other sounds, as you can't get rid of them completely. Then start bringing up other possible other kick and snare mics to further enhance the sound. Use ears. If a bottom snare mic, for an example, makes the overall snare sound significantly worse, invert it's phase and try again. Pan overheads hard left and right, and set their levels so that they have roughly balanced sound kick and snare being centerish. Then group them and mono them, and take them down. Start bringing them up to 'support' kick and snare. If sound go worse, then invert overheads group phase and try again. Now, if you panned guitars LCR, pan overheads between LC and CR. Bring up tom mics just the amount needed, try to match their pan position with overheads. If you think tom mics are humming and bleeding too much, gate them, or better use edits and automation to take down the humming, but this takes a lot (15 minutes) of work. Finally, using the same method, bring in the possible cymbal mics, usually just a hint. I think with these tracks the drum phases were already ok. Finally, again, group the drums into a bus. Remember, in every step, aim for the best sound possible, not absolutely the best sound. You're working towards it, and now hopefully you've managed to get as much out of the initial tracks as possible without use of any processing (eqs, compression etc). You can't totally change the initial sound, but can make them work together in a best possible way that you think sounds good. This method is based on an idea, that the kick and snare should be the most important drums in this type of music.

Starting tweaking from the groups is probably the easiest way, as you can think and hear 'drums, bass, guitar 1, 2 and 3' instead of trying hear the individual channels, if you know what I mean. The drums probably sound a bit muddy, boxy, unclean or whatever the term is. Solo and mono the drum bus. Cut away some lower mids with broad bell eq and boost the highs with treble with gentle slope high shelf. Just a few dBs so, that it's again slightly better. Add some compression. Set ratio to 4, set release and attack as fast as possible and make sure there isn't any auto makeup gain or level selected. Take threshold down and squash the drum bus. Then bring the threshold up to a level, where you can hear the drums roughly at the same level as before compression, but the compressor is clearly making gain reduction. Use A/B comparison, if necessary. Then start to open up the attack until the transients are punching through again, but still affected by the compression. Start to open up the release until you get rid of the distortion and 'overpumping' caused by the compressor, or the amount of it is just right to your taste. Avoid overdoing, yet aim for audibly better results. Add saturation or limiting, or both, or if your compressor has them, engage them. Take down drum bus level and speaker level a lot, and then with a huge makeup gain boost make a drive against the saturation/limiting, so that the sound is horribly smashed once again. Bring back speaker volume to original level, and set the drum bus to listenable level. Then start taking down the compressor makeup gain until you no longer can hear the constant saturation/distortion/smashing done by the saturation and limiting stages. Usually this means, that here and there the saturation/limiting is chopping away a few dBs, ironing the drum bus nicely, at least in this type of music. Again, the results should be just slightly better. Then, applying the same method, you can start working with individual drums, but don't solo them out. For all snare mics, for an example, make a snare sub group 'inside' the drum bus, and 'repeat the process.' Again, shouldn't take more than a few dBs of processing at the eqs and comps. This will eventually bring up some bleed in kick and snare groups, and you probably want to add finally a gate for those close miced drum sub groups. In this case, you can use the trigger tracks as a sidechain input to trigger the gates of corresponding individual drum sub groups or channels. Just remember to mute the trigger tracks. When setting the gate, it's propably best to solo the sub group or channel, and start with fast as possible time values and high ratio, set threshold, and then open the hold and release so that the isn't choppy anymore. Then, lenchten the attack just a tiny tiny bit so that it doesn't sound clicky anymore, and finally bring up the floor/background level to a good level of around -12 or something to further reduce the choppiness; as low as possible but still fighting the choppiness. Avoid total hard gating, as in many cases it will be too obvious and 'sound bad'. At this point, single individual drum channels shouldn't require more than slight eq. Avoid low cut filtering individual channels from a multi-miced sources with a lot of phase correlation between channels, such as drums or acoustic guitars, as it probably messes the phase response of the total sum of these tracks, and make it 'sound bad'. Don't filter tracks 'just be sure,' but only if necessary, and there is clearly audible low frequency rumble. If necessary, start filtering from main drum bus, and try to set the filter point so that the resonance it causes boosts the fundamental frequency of the kick, and then possibly counter this at the kick sub group. I believe most of these tracks were filtered at the recording stage, as they have that ... 'quality' in them.

In a same systematic manner, start treating your stringed instrument groups and eventually individual channels in small gradual steps or 'iterative cycles' towards better sound. Same applies for the vocals. Generally, in this genre, the original guitar tracks usually have too much low end and the bass needs some upper middles or treble. Eventually you get to a point where you feel adding all sorts of effects and automation to further excite the mix, but don't go there unless you're truly happy with the dry sound. Try to work as much as possible in mono at a fixed level of your monitor speakers so, that when your main mix bus is averaging about -20 dBFS RMS, your ears are comfortable; not too loud or quiet. Finally, before rendering or bouncing the mix, bring up the main level with a limiter to around -10 dBFS RMSish during the loudest part of your mix, and counter this in monitor speaker level, and do the slightest minor tweaks, if necessary. Just wanted to provide some concrete hands-on advice, and this certainly is not the one and only way or truth to get things done. If you think it's completely wrong, then let it just slide out from the other ear. Anyways, this site surely is a valuable resource, at least for me, when learning to work with all types of genres.

[ThePriestMix]

Nice. Also, some things come to mind. Some subjective advice. There are 'a lot' of tracks especially for the guitars and bass, and if you're new to this type of production, it's good to plan 'on paper' your mix first. You can't make a 'guitar wall' from single guitar takes, even if they are multi-miced as here is the case. In my opinion. Start working in mono, choose one of the three recorded guitar parts to work on, and pick the guitar mic that sounds initially (and relatively) best to your ear. If it's just fine, but slightly sharp or dull, try to blend in the opposite sounding mic and so on. Then group these tracks and pan them together into a fixed position, and that group would then be your guitar sound 1 and so on. With this song, you can build a guitar wall near the end, where the guitarists are playing (almost) in unison. The third guitar playing the melodies and riff in the end can be left centered, and the first and second guitars panned hard left and right. Trash the DI tracks. Apply the same method for bass, you can make use of the DI track too with bass, and leave it centered.

With drums, start with first kick and snare top mic, and try to set their levels as even as possible, and ignore the bleeding cymbals and other sounds, as you can't get rid of them completely. Then start bringing up other possible other kick and snare mics to further enhance the sound. Use ears. If a bottom snare mic, for an example, makes the overall snare sound significantly worse, invert it's phase and try again. Pan overheads hard left and right, and set their levels so that they have roughly balanced sound kick and snare being centerish. Then group them and mono them, and take them down. Start bringing them up to 'support' kick and snare. If sound go worse, then invert overheads group phase and try again. Now, if you panned guitars LCR, pan overheads between LC and CR. Bring up tom mics just the amount needed, try to match their pan position with overheads. If you think tom mics are humming and bleeding too much, gate them, or better use edits and automation to take down the humming, but this takes a lot (15 minutes) of work. Finally, using the same method, bring in the possible cymbal mics, usually just a hint. I think with these tracks the drum phases were already ok. Finally, again, group the drums into a bus. Remember, in every step, aim for the best sound possible, not absolutely the best sound. You're working towards it, and now hopefully you've managed to get as much out of the initial tracks as possible without use of any processing (eqs, compression etc). You can't totally change the initial sound, but can make them work together in a best possible way that you think sounds good. This method is based on an idea, that the kick and snare should be the most important drums in this type of music.

Starting tweaking from the groups is probably the easiest way, as you can think and hear 'drums, bass, guitar 1, 2 and 3' instead of trying hear the individual channels, if you know what I mean. The drums probably sound a bit muddy, boxy, unclean or whatever the term is. Solo and mono the drum bus. Cut away some lower mids with broad bell eq and boost the highs with treble with gentle slope high shelf. Just a few dBs so, that it's again slightly better. Add some compression. Set ratio to 4, set release and attack as fast as possible and make sure there isn't any auto makeup gain or level selected. Take threshold down and squash the drum bus. Then bring the threshold up to a level, where you can hear the drums roughly at the same level as before compression, but the compressor is clearly making gain reduction. Use A/B comparison, if necessary. Then start to open up the attack until the transients are punching through again, but still affected by the compression. Start to open up the release until you get rid of the distortion and 'overpumping' caused by the compressor, or the amount of it is just right to your taste. Avoid overdoing, yet aim for audibly better results. Add saturation or limiting, or both, or if your compressor has them, engage them. Take down drum bus level and speaker level a lot, and then with a huge makeup gain boost make a drive against the saturation/limiting, so that the sound is horribly smashed once again. Bring back speaker volume to original level, and set the drum bus to listenable level. Then start taking down the compressor makeup gain until you no longer can hear the constant saturation/distortion/smashing done by the saturation and limiting stages. Usually this means, that here and there the saturation/limiting is chopping away a few dBs, ironing the drum bus nicely, at least in this type of music. Again, the results should be just slightly better. Then, applying the same method, you can start working with individual drums, but don't solo them out. For all snare mics, for an example, make a snare sub group 'inside' the drum bus, and 'repeat the process.' Again, shouldn't take more than a few dBs of processing at the eqs and comps. This will eventually bring up some bleed in kick and snare groups, and you probably want to add finally a gate for those close miced drum sub groups. In this case, you can use the trigger tracks as a sidechain input to trigger the gates of corresponding individual drum sub groups or channels. Just remember to mute the trigger tracks. When setting the gate, it's propably best to solo the sub group or channel, and start with fast as possible time values and high ratio, set threshold, and then open the hold and release so that the isn't choppy anymore. Then, lenchten the attack just a tiny tiny bit so that it doesn't sound clicky anymore, and finally bring up the floor/background level to a good level of around -12 or something to further reduce the choppiness; as low as possible but still fighting the choppiness. Avoid total hard gating, as in many cases it will be too obvious and 'sound bad'. At this point, single individual drum channels shouldn't require more than slight eq. Avoid low cut filtering individual channels from a multi-miced sources with a lot of phase correlation between channels, such as drums or acoustic guitars, as it probably messes the phase response of the total sum of these tracks, and make it 'sound bad'. Don't filter tracks 'just be sure,' but only if necessary, and there is clearly audible low frequency rumble. If necessary, start filtering from main drum bus, and try to set the filter point so that the resonance it causes boosts the fundamental frequency of the kick, and then possibly counter this at the kick sub group. I believe most of these tracks were filtered at the recording stage, as they have that ... 'quality' in them.

In a same systematic manner, start treating your stringed instrument groups and eventually individual channels in small gradual steps or 'iterative cycles' towards better sound. Same applies for the vocals. Generally, in this genre, the original guitar tracks usually have too much low end and the bass needs some upper middles or treble. Eventually you get to a point where you feel adding all sorts of effects and automation to further excite the mix, but don't go there unless you're truly happy with the dry sound. Try to work as much as possible in mono at a fixed level of your monitor speakers so, that when your main mix bus is averaging about -20 dBFS RMS, your ears are comfortable; not too loud or quiet. Finally, before rendering or bouncing the mix, bring up the main level with a limiter to around -10 dBFS RMSish during the loudest part of your mix, and counter this in monitor speaker level, and do the slightest minor tweaks, if necessary. Just wanted to provide some concrete hands-on advice, and this certainly is not the one and only way or truth to get things done. If you think it's completely wrong, then let it just slide out from the other ear. Anyways, this site surely is a valuable resource, at least for me, when learning to work with all types of genres.

Thanks for taking the time out to critique my mix and give a comprehensive workflow. Greatly appreciated.