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Color Me Red - RVMusic Mix
#1
Hi guys,

Was a fun song to mix. Didn't spend a lot of time on this one, tried to not lose objectivity while mixing it quickly.


.m4a    Color Me Red - RVMusic.m4a --  (Download: 7.59 MB)


.mp3    Color me red - RVMusic - mix 2.mp3 --  (Download: 7.52 MB)


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#2
(09-11-2016, 08:33 PM)RVMusic Wrote: Hi guys,

Was a fun song to mix. Didn't spend a lot of time on this one, tried to not lose objectivity while mixing it quickly.

The balance is fantastic between the individual elements of the song. The problem is with the overall tone. There is a large amount of low-mid frequency mud and no "sparkle" (high frequency energy) above 5k-6k. It very well may be your room or monitoring causing you to make these EQ decisions. Listen on a decent set of headphones if you can't sort out the room issues.

The balance of the instruments tells me you are on the right path and you have an ear for music. Good luck.
~~ Here to learn and help ~~

Marty
Mixer/Engineer/Producer
Austin, Texas, USA
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#3
(10-11-2016, 06:26 PM)Marty Wrote:
(09-11-2016, 08:33 PM)RVMusic Wrote: Hi guys,

Was a fun song to mix. Didn't spend a lot of time on this one, tried to not lose objectivity while mixing it quickly.

The balance is fantastic between the individual elements of the song. The problem is with the overall tone. There is a large amount of low-mid frequency mud and no "sparkle" (high frequency energy) above 5k-6k. It very well may be your room or monitoring causing you to make these EQ decisions. Listen on a decent set of headphones if you can't sort out the room issues.

The balance of the instruments tells me you are on the right path and you have an ear for music. Good luck.

Hey Marty, thanks for listening! Yes, indeed overall EQ maybe skewed, because I lent my good headphones that I usually mix on to a friend, and mixed this mostly on Apple EarPods, which I probably should have mentioned right away. EarPods have no low end that you can hear effectively and overhyped top end, which made me think I have enough of highs. I will make some adjustments tonight at home on my monitors (hopefully).
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#4
Listened to the version 2 mix and, wow -- super-forward-sounding rhythm section, this! Like the wiry bass quality you've brought out in particular, as it really seems to drive the track rhythmically. The voice also has an assertive quality that fits well with the rhythm-sound you've chosen. I do have some reservations about the overall tonality, though, which seems rather hollow, as if you've over-scooped the low mids on too many tracks. (Perhaps in response to the previous poster's comments?) The low end also seems rather light, and I reckon you could bring more of those low frequencies out of the bass guitar to even out and extend the frequency bandwidth as a whole.

Although the snare is clearly designed to drive this track, I think you've maybe overbrightened it, as it pushes too far in front of the vocal for me, and quickly gets a bit fatiguing too -- I found myself turning your mix down as a result, which probably isn't a good thing! Smile The toms feel too forward as well when they play, although this is as much a pure level issue as it is to do with their also quite forward HF character.

The guitars are balanced quite low in the mix overall in your version, which in principle I have nothing against, but in the case of this particular track the guitars are responsible for most of the arrangement variation, so it reduces the sense of 'light and shade' musically doing that, in my opinion, so I'd maybe reconsider that a little.

One other area you might want to work further on is effects, in particular the kinds of general-purpose delay and reverb effects that help blend things together so they sound like a real ensemble. The toms are a case in point here, because they sound like samples rather than part of the kit, and the snare also suffers from this to a lesser extent. The vocal sounds rather too much like an overdub for me too, despite the rather nice characterful effect tail you've chosen, and in general I think you could get a more cohesive and full-sounding result if you investigated more what tempo-delays and reverbs can do here. I'd certainly use some kind of a short ambience reverb to help tie the overdubs together and blend the drum close mics with the overheads, for instance.

Thanks for posting, though -- my head's definitely nodding to the beat on this one!
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#5
Hi

There is one big problem in my opinion.
The drums are too big in comparison with everything else... the rest of the instrumentation sounds so tiny.
The drums have to come down so the song is better balanced.
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#6
(19-11-2016, 06:45 PM)Mike Senior Wrote: Thanks for posting, though -- my head's definitely nodding to the beat on this one!

Mike, your feedback inspired me to do a fresh mix of this song!! I know you will not be reviewing this one, but I just wanted to see what I could do on my own with this mix revision 3.

Let me explain. I used a template for mix 1-2 that I downloaded from another engineer, where he already had EQ and compression settings on the tracks. All I did was insert the audio from Color Me Red into those tracks and tweaked the settings a little bit....... BIG MISTAKE! I know I can do better and this 3rd mix proves it, because I used my own brain and my own ears to judge where processing needs to be and where it doesn't. Big difference. Not to say that template was bad... but it did not work at all for this song. Lesson learned.

If you can find time to listen to this 3rd mix version after the contest deadline, I would most certainly appreciate it!!

PLEASE USE THIS MIX (mix 3) FOR ENTRY INTO THE CONTEST.

Love this community.


.mp3    Colour me red - RVMusic - mix 3.mp3 --  (Download: 7.73 MB)


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#7
(19-11-2016, 09:26 PM)Shul Wrote: Hi

There is one big problem in my opinion.
The drums are too big in comparison with everything else... the rest of the instrumentation sounds so tiny.
The drums have to come down so the song is better balanced.

Thank you for your comments, Shul. I have since uploaded a new mix (version 3), completely redone from scratch. I will try my best to find time to listen to your mix as well.
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