'Through My Eyes' Chorus only mix (I'm a real amateur!)

[Cobbers]

OK..Still lots to do but ideas so far? (Basic Cubase 5 out of the box. No extra plugins). (1st post on site)

[sano]

Hi there Cobbers You've done not too bad a job on the balance between the instruments, though I would like to hear the drums a bit louder. Your mix sounds bass light to me and there seems to be a lot of hi mid frequencies in your mix, especially the vocals, around 1k to 3k which I think need pulled back. Hope this helps a little !

[bmullen]

Yes. It is bass light. You could bring up the kick and the bass quite a bit more for balance.

[Cobbers]

Thanks for comments - will try all those things although Bass is fairly loud in my headphones. I know I reduced it towards the end is it was overpowering other things. My mission here was to make the vocals interesting..as I think Mike Senior put it..Fairy Dust. Some mixes seem to have very powerful vocals...I'm struggling to achieve that.

[takka360]

There is no bass in the mix,overpowering your headphones?

[Cobbers]

OK well here's another try. Kick and Snare up in the mix as suggested. Vocals cut 1k to 3k as Sano suggested - oops..I had boosted here to make it stand out. The Bass I think comes over more in this version..but it is there Takka360. I've been more subtle at the mastering stage this time. Will try different headphones during the week. Mine are Samson Studio Reference Headphones CH70. With these taking the bass higher ruins the song. We may need to disagree on that one. Would value any more comments on the main others. There seemed to be a lot of guitar parts in this one which I have mainly left in the background..or just cut out. Practice is the key so I'll have ago at some other songs. Thanks for all comments.

[Cobbers]

OK well here's another try. Kick and Snare up in the mix as suggested. Vocals cut 1k to 3k as Sano suggested - oops..I had boosted here to make it stand out. The Bass I think comes over more in this version..but it is there Takka360. I've been more subtle at the mastering stage this time. Will try different headphones during the week. Mine are Samson Studio Reference Headphones CH70. With these taking the bass higher ruins the song. We may need to disagree on that one. Would value any more comments on the main others. There seemed to be a lot of guitar parts in this one which I have mainly left in the background..or just cut out.
Reverb put on rim shot and phone eq delay created for some words near end. Practice is the key so I'll have ago at some other songs.
Thanks for all comments.

[takka360]

You are doing some very strange things with your eq here.
Just low cut the acoustics a tad and the keys have a play with the vox
but i think you are playing with things that dont need much playing with
You could mix this track without any eq at all and it would sound ok ish.
Use eq for a reason not for the sake of using it

[Dags]

Hiya Cobbers and welcome!

I don't think that it's the bass volume that is causing the problem as I can hear it quite well even in your first mix, but some notes have not been played with a lot of power so they are disappearing. Compressing the bass channel and adding makeup gain to match the level of gain reduction will start to make the notes sound more even. Maybe also try reducing the 'boom' range of the bass a little. Somewhere in the 160-300Hz (or thereabouts) range there will be several areas of nasty 'boom'. When these are reduced, the playing will, again, sound more evenly played and the overall level of bass can be brought up so more detail in the mid range area can be heard. The first and second notes being played in the repeating chorus cycle are the main offenders I'm hearing.

>.
Some mixes seem to have very powerful vocals...I'm struggling to achieve that.
>.
You have the vocal quite effected in this mix, so it sounds like the microphone is placed further away from the singer so we're hearing a lot of the room and we're not focusing on him as much as we should. (It's OK - most of us have also gone through that stage in our early mixes when we drench everything in reverb....heck, I released an album with it LOL)
Back off the send to the reverb for the vocal channel - or if you have a reverb plugin dropped directly on the vocal channel then play with the wet/dry mix to let more of the dry signal through - and you'll hear Jay's voice more forward in the mix, as if he's closer to you, with the effect sound of the room coming in under the vocal as a more subtle presence.

Just a pro-tip, if you have used a reverb directly on the vocal channel, try using it as an aux plugin effect instead. That way you are getting the fully 'dry' signal getting sent to the master buss all the time. Use an aux send on the vocal channel to send some of the vocal to the effect's channel, and add as much 'wet' sound as you require.

I'm not sure how much you already know about utilising aux channels/busses so you might be completely bumfuzzled by what I am trying to explain. Let me know and I'll PM you with some links to useful web pages you can check out.
...or you could buy Mike Senior's helpful book called "Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio" (like how I did that little plug there?)

Dags

[Cobbers]

Hi Dags - many thanks for the detail in your reply, this is very helpful. You are spot on with the bass..160-300Hz is where I had boosted in response to earlier comments. Now I have listened to the mixes on Studio Speakers the result is totally different! I'll try the Aux send when I tackle another song. I should be OK with this but links would be very useful anyway, thanks in advance. Mixing Secrets...on the Wish List now. Cheers. I think my brain will stop if I mix this one any more so this is my last upload. Reverb mostly gone now and vocals have come forward. The Delay on the vocal was a copy,past and shift and pan...but I've reduced the gap so it's not soo obvious. Many thanks again for your time.