My attempt at this one

[Drummer1]

I'd love to hear what you think. Thanks!

[ThePhonk]

Hi Drummer1,

thanks for sharing your mix! I like it very much, overall. I think you found a sweet spot between the polished and the seedy end of the spectrum. I hear the fiddle and the guitar and the drums clearly and rather colorfully and shiny and sufficiently plausibly positioned, but without noticing that these qualities were deliberately mixed in. All sounds very effortless to me.

The vocal, however, went awry in my ears. It seems to squash the rest of the mix. It think it has too much lows, and the delay or reverb or whatever is the wrong one and too much of it. And I find it really weird how the vocal's bluntness contrasts with the finesse of the rest of the mix. You must have done that on purpose. But what purpose could that be?

I also hear the bass as slightly uneven, but it doesn't impair the pleasure much. And, as I said, a pleasure it is, overall!

Marc

[Drummer1]

Hi Drummer1,

thanks for sharing your mix! I like it very much, overall. I think you found a sweet spot between the polished and the seedy end of the spectrum. I hear the fiddle and the guitar and the drums clearly and rather colorfully and shiny and sufficiently plausibly positioned, but without noticing that these qualities were deliberately mixed in. All sounds very effortless to me.

The vocal, however, went awry in my ears. It seems to squash the rest of the mix. It think it has too much lows, and the delay or reverb or whatever is the wrong one and too much of it. And I find it really weird how the vocal's bluntness contrasts with the finesse of the rest of the mix. You must have done that on purpose. But what purpose could that be?

I also hear the bass as slightly uneven, but it doesn't impair the pleasure much. And, as I said, a pleasure it is, overall!

Marc

Thanks very much for your comments, Marc - they were really helpful! My goal was to present what I thought was a really good vocal performance as the center piece and not let anything get in its way, but to still try to do the instruments justice. After listening again, Perhaps there is too much contrast between the two. Would just a tad less tail on the vocal delay have handled this better? I admit the bass just gave me fits. I learned a lot working on it and think I might be better able to deal with it next time.

Cheers!

Chris

[Kaivalya]

Hi Drummer1,

Love the tone of your mix. However, as it has already been pointed out the vocal placement ruined an otherwise good mix. I think the printed reverb was enough to make the vocal fit if you used a short reverb on l the other instruments. What you needed was the right amount of compression to make the vocal sound upfront. Try maybe a very fast attack 3ms and a medium release 160ms with 2-3:1 ratio and 6-8db of gain reduction on loudest parts. Also may be getting the guitar and fiddle a little wider might help. But i think the placement works because they are a little deeper on the reverb placement plane in relation to the vocals. delay of say about 110ms might do the trick as well with a controlled send level. Rest is all gain riding i think. I couldnt get my mix to sound in the same tonal range as yours. And also all that I have said might not be 100% right so a little experimentation will help. Let me know if this helps .

best
nitin

[Drummer1]

Hi Drummer1,

Love the tone of your mix. However, as it has already been pointed out the vocal placement ruined an otherwise good mix. I think the printed reverb was enough to make the vocal fit if you used a short reverb on l the other instruments. What you needed was the right amount of compression to make the vocal sound upfront. Try maybe a very fast attack 3ms and a medium release 160ms with 2-3:1 ratio and 6-8db of gain reduction on loudest parts. Also may be getting the guitar and fiddle a little wider might help. But i think the placement works because they are a little deeper on the reverb placement plane in relation to the vocals. delay of say about 110ms might do the trick as well with a controlled send level. Rest is all gain riding i think. I couldnt get my mix to sound in the same tonal range as yours. And also all that I have said might not be 100% right so a little experimentation will help. Let me know if this helps .

best
nitin

Thanks so much for taking the time to check this out and give a thoughtful and helpful critique! I'm going to go back and try your suggestions soon, and see if I can learn a thing or two. Thanks again!

[Drummer1]

Thanks very much for your suggestions. I went back and made a few changes, and to my ears this is so much better. Going into this, I had decided not to use compression at all on the vocal performance, because I though it was so nice I wouldn't help it. I used your suggestion as a starting point and tweaked a bit. I also tweaked the eq on the vocals a bit. I can see now how what seems to be just the right compression and eq really does make a difference. Further, I removed the delay from the vocal, and can clearly see how and why that was the wrong treatment. I think I learned quite a bit from you both. I'd love to hear what you think of this mix!

Chris