Please critique my mix!

[richaxes]

Hi guys!

This is my first public multi-track mix, so please, be gentle, but let me know what I could improve on.
My studio setup is nothing, and I'm not even mixing on monitors since I don't have any. I mixed this on my Sennheiser HD598 headphones.

I had a couple of considerations with this one:

• I decided to keep the electric guitar low in the mix because I think it works better as a background staple for filling the midrange spectrum, but I automated the volume for the leads to let them live when they need to
  
• I emphasized the vocals since I consider this to be a very vocal driven track, so they're upfront and punchy, maybe even a tad too much for general liking, but I love the power
  
• I just noticed I left the volume for Acoustic 2 a little below what I wanted, so that's just something I did in a hurry
  

Please, let me know what you guys think. Cheers!

[richaxes]

Okay, so I went ahead and actually did a version 2 with minor corrections (vocals turned a tad down, bass a little more stable and glued, acoustic 2 corrected a little and some other minor tweaks). Please check this one and disregard the first one. Cheers!

[richaxes]

May I present to you the latest version.. with my own guitar solos instead of the original ones yes, the leads are intentionally mixed so dark for a vibe I was going for. Hope you guys enjoy!

[sthauge]

May I present to you the latest version.. with my own guitar solos instead of the original ones yes, the leads are intentionally mixed so dark for a vibe I was going for. Hope you guys enjoy!

Hi, you asked for comments. Remember my comments are my views and music is a mater of taste, so other will have different opinions. Here we go:

Panning: Most of the instruments are panned to the center or somewhere near the center. This does the track narrow and the "air" around the instruments or space between the instruments are nearly none existent.
Try to imaging that you are on a concert - are the lead guitar, the acoustic guitar, the singer, the bas guitar player etc standing in a straight line after each other or are they spread around on the stage? Try to place them around and make space for each individual instrument and singer to come thru.

Compression: remember that compression can kill your mix. To my taste, the kick is compressed to death. It sure sound heavy, but there is little life in it, though I see that many prefer it this way. The danger is also that you got a lot of "mud" in the mix. I like to refer to Alan Parsons(sound engineer, Pink Floyd - dark side of the moon) on compression: "When you compress something that's already been compressed it loses everything, it loses its life". There are some high freq in the mix that you should look into. It might be there because of compression. There's a rule of thumb that you should always consider using a deesser after compression.

Last, your twist to play the lead guitar yourselves is a nice one. You play a little bit out of tune some places, so that could be straightened up a bit. Else, I think the third lead is the best one, nice start.

I've also posted my mix on this as well, so you can compare if you like. It's not perfect in any way, but it can give you a clue to what I mean with my comments above.

Happy holidays and happy mixing :-)