05-11-2016, 11:40 AM
My first thoughts after loading everything up and taking a listen was that while the tracks sounded good, with a great performance, there were a few issues with the arrangement.
I kinda got what they were trying to do with the intro (I think), but it didn't really work for me, so with a bit of judicious editing, I came up with something more traditional, which IMHO works better.
The other big thing I noticed was the ending, after the second break. This song is all about the driving groove, and while the energy is there after the second break, it's lost with the feedback guitar break, before everything picks up again. I was loathe to cut the song, since it was already a bit on the short side, but I took that part of the song out, and I think the ending is a lot stronger now; it's balls to floor out of the second break, all the way through to the end of the song. Again, a more traditional thing, but I think it suits this song more. A solo would fill the song out nicely, either before or after the second break, perhaps...?
Finally, even with the breaks, the song felt like it had a similar kind of sound all the way through, so I really wanted to find a way to bring some variety to the mix. While it has a full rhythm section and electric guitar, it still felt kinda like an acoustic kind of a song at it's heart, so I really wanted to bring out the contrast between the quieter parts of the song, where the acoustic guitars dominate, and the other parts of the song that rock out hard. Other people have slammed their mixes pretty hard, and they sound good if you're after that kind of feel, but I was looking for something a bit more subtle.
I usually dislike mixes that put the snare front and centre, but this is one of those songs where it's appropriate, and since the recorded tracks really didn't cut it for me, I blended in some samples (and ditched the SnareDown track completely
).
I've been experimenting with Melda Production's MAutoAlign, and it made a massive difference to the tracks here. It time-shifted the tracks by (what seems to me) a lot, but the sound was significantly better, so I guess it's all good.
There were an impressive number of backing vox tracks, but I found they muddied things up quite a bit, so I ditched a few of them, which helped a lot. No R+B here
Interestingly, nearly everything I've mentioned so far has been about non-technical stuff. I guess this was just one of those songs, and the technical side of the mix was pretty much par for the course for me; it was mostly about carving out space in the EQ spectrum for each part. Keyboards always seem to have a lot of useless crud at the bottom end, so I high-passed the Rhodes at ~400 Hz. I also added a bit of mid-side EQ, to push it out to the sides by cutting the middle at ~550 Hz, and boosting the high-end on the sides.
I wanted a longer tail on the banjo hits, so I automated in some extra reverb, although I'm not sure if it made a big difference. I also had to add some extra EQ and volume automation on the guitars during those bits, to control the resonance.
All in all, a really fun track to mix. You always know when you've nailed a mix when your head keeps bobbing up and down, even though you've heard it a million times And it was a pleasure to mix a short song; I've been doing some 10- or 12-minute monstrosities recently, which are a bit of a drag to review each time 
I kinda got what they were trying to do with the intro (I think), but it didn't really work for me, so with a bit of judicious editing, I came up with something more traditional, which IMHO works better.
The other big thing I noticed was the ending, after the second break. This song is all about the driving groove, and while the energy is there after the second break, it's lost with the feedback guitar break, before everything picks up again. I was loathe to cut the song, since it was already a bit on the short side, but I took that part of the song out, and I think the ending is a lot stronger now; it's balls to floor out of the second break, all the way through to the end of the song. Again, a more traditional thing, but I think it suits this song more. A solo would fill the song out nicely, either before or after the second break, perhaps...?
Finally, even with the breaks, the song felt like it had a similar kind of sound all the way through, so I really wanted to find a way to bring some variety to the mix. While it has a full rhythm section and electric guitar, it still felt kinda like an acoustic kind of a song at it's heart, so I really wanted to bring out the contrast between the quieter parts of the song, where the acoustic guitars dominate, and the other parts of the song that rock out hard. Other people have slammed their mixes pretty hard, and they sound good if you're after that kind of feel, but I was looking for something a bit more subtle.
I usually dislike mixes that put the snare front and centre, but this is one of those songs where it's appropriate, and since the recorded tracks really didn't cut it for me, I blended in some samples (and ditched the SnareDown track completely
).I've been experimenting with Melda Production's MAutoAlign, and it made a massive difference to the tracks here. It time-shifted the tracks by (what seems to me) a lot, but the sound was significantly better, so I guess it's all good.
There were an impressive number of backing vox tracks, but I found they muddied things up quite a bit, so I ditched a few of them, which helped a lot. No R+B here
Interestingly, nearly everything I've mentioned so far has been about non-technical stuff. I guess this was just one of those songs, and the technical side of the mix was pretty much par for the course for me; it was mostly about carving out space in the EQ spectrum for each part. Keyboards always seem to have a lot of useless crud at the bottom end, so I high-passed the Rhodes at ~400 Hz. I also added a bit of mid-side EQ, to push it out to the sides by cutting the middle at ~550 Hz, and boosting the high-end on the sides.
I wanted a longer tail on the banjo hits, so I automated in some extra reverb, although I'm not sure if it made a big difference. I also had to add some extra EQ and volume automation on the guitars during those bits, to control the resonance.
All in all, a really fun track to mix. You always know when you've nailed a mix when your head keeps bobbing up and down, even though you've heard it a million times
And it was a pleasure to mix a short song; I've been doing some 10- or 12-minute monstrosities recently, which are a bit of a drag to review each time