Carlos Gonzalez: A Place For Us - Joshua Cove Mix

[Joshua Cove]

Hey yall! This is my second mix to upload on the site. This one was definitely interesting and made me push what I was comfortable doing but I think it came out great in the end.

Once I realized how many phasing issues there were in the original drum files, I tossed them out except for what was necessary and then sample replaced. I kept one of the room tracks to keep the original vibe and then used a room reverb to fill in the gaps. On some of the aux loops/percussion there was some need of some fine processing but for the most part, a lot of them took some simple eq to poke through.

Everything else was just EQ and Compression from there...for the most part.

As always rate and comment. Let me know what you hate and like so I can work on getting better and such. Thanks!

[Shul]

Hello

this is a hard mix. I completely destroyed mine with too much reverb.. you seem to have handle it better.
Howerver there is one big problem with your mix and thats the lack of centered instrumentation.. for the most part it feels like there is a hole in the center and most of the instruments and vocals are panned left and right. In headphones it might sound good but In speakers doesn't. I'd suggest you try to put something consistent in the center so that your mix doesn't feel that separated.

I would say that's a step in the right direction. I heard mine and wow it sucks... I have to get back and remix it again to fix many things I NOW see wrong after more experience gained.

keep it up.

[Joshua Cove]

Hello

this is a hard mix. I completely destroyed mine with too much reverb.. you seem to have handle it better.
However there is one big problem with your mix and thats the lack of centered instrumentation.. for the most part it feels like there is a hole in the center and most of the instruments and vocals are panned left and right. In headphones it might sound good but In speakers doesn't. I'd suggest you try to put something consistent in the center so that your mix doesn't feel that separated.

I would say that's a step in the right direction. I heard mine and wow it sucks... I have to get back and remix it again to fix many things I NOW see wrong after more experience gained.

keep it up.

Thanks for the critique! I can definitely see where it can sound a little unnatural. I like to, as much as possible, keep only Kick, Snare, Bass, Vocal and any other lead parts in the center only. Everything else goes to the sides to avoid clashing with the vocals. How I handle my master buss is probably the culprit: breaking it up into 3 parts: Submix, Mix Parallel, and my MixBuss.

I send all audio tracks to the submix and apply my overall mix processing - usually some light EQ with a gentle but colorful EQ and then either FG-Red or FG-Grey light compression from Slate to glue stuff together.

Where all the spatial stuff goes down is in my MixParallel: I run a Vertigo VSM-3 Distortion to effect only the low mids on the sides and everything up the middle. This gives the mix a wider feel without introducing a lot of phase problems but giving audible distortion thus I put it on my Mix Parallel. Other plugins include some more colorful and aggressive EQ to add the stuff I want to poke out and some pumping compression to give the track some punch.

Then finally, on my MixBuss, I put Ozone 7 to add the final touches where I use the spatial processor to push the low mids another 20% wider. It's another plugin that adds delicious width without phasing...unless you go to far obviously.

I personally love all the widening because, to me at least, it gives the mix so much more space to breathe. Also from referencing top of the crop mixes, to my ears, there's so much space in the middle to hear all the nuances of the vocal, the snare, the reverb on the snare, etc. Perhaps it's something for the mastering engineers to deal with and I'm getting a little overzealous

I think to start with, the massive tom groove could be panned in more than just Left and Right. The same treatment could go with the two drum machine loops.

I only write this novel to see what your opinions are and again what I could do better. Thanks again and I'll definitely work on getting a more defined center!!

[Shul]

I use Ozone 4 sometimes.. go easy on that widening Lol