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Debut post - Still Flyin mix + master
#1
Hello! Smile
New guy here.

Had a great time mixing this, love the genre and the recording was really good.
hopefully I'll have time to do another mix soon.

So what I found most challenging with this mix the way i approached it was maintaining dynamics while still getting that heavy "in yourface" wall of sound. I think mainly because I didn't have a good enough plan for how I was gonna round it up, and probably focused to much on creating my own sound while trying to maintain the integrity of the song. But with that said, I've only done 2 other metal mixes before so I'm still quite happy with the outcome.

Also, mastering mp3 is apparently really hard haha. if anyone got any tips where I can read up on that i'd be grateful.

Feedback is of course welcome Smile



.mp3    The Apprehended - Still Flyin.mp3 --  (Download: 10.48 MB)


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#2
Hi Calliii,

To start off, apologies but I'm not technically minded and so I find it difficult to give advice about what to do to change things in your mix. I work entirely by ear myself and so what I can do is give you feedback from the perspective of an end listener.

I like the idea behind the effects you've used throughout this song on vocals and drums. It demonstrates that you have some good ideas for production :-) I think that you may find them working better in the mix with a bit of restraint though. Sometimes too obvious is a bad thing as it jumps out from everything else too much.

Mix wise, you mention wanting that "in your face" sound. I think that what is holding you back from this is that everything is just too wet. Sounds to me like too much reverb used throughout and most especially on the vocals. This genre really doesn't usually employ a lot of reverb even on vocals. The impact of everything is dulled by it. I also feel that having less ambience overall in your mix will make your effects mentioned above stand out better in a good way rather than get lost in with all the other ambience and you can then reduce their effect to make them fit better while still having them audible.

For balance, I feel that the bass is overlapping the guitars too much and this can be heard particularly in the final chorus where I feel I can hear the bass strongly to the detriment of the guitars which are getting lost. I also feel that overall it feels like the mix isn't "rounded" and "glued" enough. It often feels like all the different parts of the mix are separate of each other and not tightly bound. I think that this might be to a lack of mids in the overall sound and the bass guitar normally has a lot to do with that but as I said earlier, not being technically minded, I couldn't tell you for sure.

Vocals sound narrow and nasally. You can probably cut some of the offensive nasal sound out quite easily if you track it down without harming the overall vocal sound.

I think that your toms fills jump out a bit too much which is just a volume thing. I think that the lead guitar tone you've chosen sounds a bit thin for the rest of the mix. Also, did you remove the synth string section from the intro? I can't seem to hear it.

I agree with what you said about the way you approached this song and it is advice that you should take from yourself :-)
Focus on the mix first and then worry about the production effects and stuff after as you'll be able to see everything more clearly with a good foundation and be able to build on it properly.

Take everything with a pinch of salt. We all have different tastes and preferences after all. If you take only one thing away from this message, I'd push you to consider how much reverb you use.

Hope there was something helpful in there.

Cheers
-Vinay

PS. Regards mastering for mp3, the only thing you should really be doing is making sure your master limiter is working in true peak and then making sure that this final peak value still leaves enough headroom for noise added on mp3 conversion. I usually start with -0.5dB as a true peak limit and then test an mp3 conversion. If it clips, I lower the max true peak and try again. I repeat this until mp3 conversion does not result in clipping. Different material reacts differently when being converted which is why there is no 1 single value that works. Safest bet is to be using -1.0dB or even less as true peak.
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