Zeno - Signs

[juanjose1967]

This is not my first mix here, but I feel like if it really was. This song has given me all kinds of headaches (in terms of mixing of course!) and I'm not satisfied at all with the result.

Anyway, any hints about how to make it sound better will be highly appreciated.

PS: do you hear the snare's strange noise after the first verse too? I've been tempted to add a snare sample instead but if I did, I would never find out if there's really something wrong or it's just my imagination...

[Dags]

Greetings!

Let me put on my faberge jeans and strap on a mullet wig as I listen to this song SO very '80s!
I hadn't listened to this track before now.

I'm not hearing anything strange with the snare that I can easily perceive. The claps disappear at that point so they might have been either masking the actual sound of the snare or confusing your ears a little?

The mix as you have it isn't too bad. The kick could do with a bit more 'oomph' and the bass a little cut or multiband compression control in the 100 - 300Hz range to remove the boominess which will hopefully let you raise the whole level of the bass to bring in the really low frequencies and get some clarity in the upper range.
The lower tom drum could come up in level as well - most noticeable at 2:06.

I think that it's the bottom end of things that needs to be looked at to fix a lot of what is missing in the mix, actually. I just pushed up an 80Hz shelf on my desk's channels a little bit and the balance was much better.
Not suggesting that you actually put an 80Hz shelf across the mix. Each bass-contributing instrument will probably need to be adjusted individually

Have another listen when your ears have rested and sometimes the solutions just become much more apparent

But as I said, it's not too bad as you have it. Just a little tweak here and there is all that's required.
Good work JuanJose!

Dags

[juanjose1967]

Thank you so much, Dags!! I will try your suggestions.

Maybe you won't believe it, but when I was mixing this song, I was having the feeling that nothing of the things I've been learning was working alright. So I started to feel quite unsure about the final result.

I even asked my wife about the mix and her only words were: "I don't like this style of music at all". So she wasn't any help!!!

And about the 80's sound... maybe that's because I was a teenager in the 80's