Jamie Kent: 'All-American Mutt' kapu mix

[kapu]

Nice vibe in the source tracks. The acoustic guitar could have been better. ^_^

[Mixinthecloud]

You got a whole lot out of the acoustic. Not an easy task. Great sounds and great feel. Well done.

[kapu]

You got a whole lot [...]

Thanks! I also think the eq of acoustic turned out ok. Sounds more audible than it actually is. ^_^

[Mixinthecloud]

You got a whole lot [...]

Thanks! I also think the eq of acoustic turned out ok. Sounds more audible than it actually is. ^_^

I just heard something in your mix I kind of heard in one of mine and that is the bass in the chorus in your mix is spot on, but in the verse, it gets a bit overbearing because of the repeated harmonics of the figure. I thought about automating volumes between the verses and the choruses but opted to try and meld them with tone. Did you do any volume automation of the bass?

[HbGuitar]

Hey Kapu,

The thing that strikes me is that the vocals could do with a bit of a push imo as i feel i want to turn the track up...but when i do, i get more rumble than vocal so maybe worth double checking that 100-500hz area in the source tracks.

cheers, Simon

[kapu]

I just heard something in your [...]

Technically there's no automation, but the verse and chorus bass parts are on separate tracks with more low cut on verse. Apparently there wasn't enough as HbGuitar guitar pointed out. I tweaked them and updated file. ^_^

[kapu]

Hey Kapu, [...]

Thanks! I think it could have been the rumble from bass in verses. Tried to fix and updated file. ^_^

[Mixinthecloud]

I just heard something in your [...]

Technically there's no automation, but the verse and chorus bass parts are on separate tracks with more low cut on verse. Apparently there wasn't enough as HbGuitar guitar pointed out. I tweaked them and updated file. ^_^

Cool. Good solution. Would love to hear the vocal tuned up just a tad. It feels just a touch behind its best intelligibility. The lyrics of this song are vital. Sounds like you made a lot of changes including squashing it more. Not a fan. Nothing hurts but you are losing the pulse of the song/melody/lyric which is what makes this song so unique and a chart maker. Let it breathe, brother.
Do you ever consider leaving your different versions up?

[kapu]

Cool. Good [...]

Well, I had a phase when I thought I liked more dynamic sound, but that never really 'did it for me', and to be honest for me it was more of an illusion conjured by blindly trusting authoritarian figures. For me the breathe is distorting parallel compression which brings up all the mess and noise. I leave versions when I consider I've made bigger changes, but my updates are generally just 'dB here and Hz there' type of tweaking. For the record on the latest Colton Benjamin thread I put two version. ^_^

[dcp10200]

Cool. Good [...]

Well, I had a phase when I thought I liked more dynamic sound, but that never really 'did it for me', and to be honest for me it was more of an illusion conjured by blindly trusting authoritarian figures. For me the breathe is distorting parallel compression which brings up all the mess and noise. I leave versions when I consider I've made bigger changes, but my updates are generally just 'dB here and Hz there' type of tweaking. For the record on the latest Colton Benjamin thread I put two version. ^_^

I'm going to agree with Adam here, listening to your mix for the intro up to the first verse it sounds punchy, albeit it has an AM Radio distortion and muddiness to it, after the first chorus however is where the mix loses it's impact. I like a bit of push to my mixes as well, this kind of song however needs to "simmer" more during the verses and be more open sounding rather than constantly sounding pushed.

I found that a -3 dB scoop at 250, -2.5 dB scoop at 400 , and a Pul Tec style cut at 300 was enough to open up those verse sections and keep it clear through out the track. Parallel compression is a possibility for the drums here but I wouldn't recommend it because of the more sparce nature of these multis, it's super easy to overdo and a lot of times just adds mud to tracks like this (it's an overrated technique because every "Mixing tricks"/"Producer" channel and forum on the internet seems to think its the best thing ever and needs to be done on every mix).

I can't really say much more, overall I like the mix, that acoustic sounds great, it just needs less obvious compression, something just to keep the peaks down rather than add aggression and power.

Cheers and hope this helps,
Doug