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You And Me And The Radio, rock style
#1
Hi all, this is my first mix I post here based on the free multitrack download library. Cool I want to thank everyone behind making this possible for free!

I'm inspired by mix engineers such as Manny Marroquin, Chris Lord-Alge, Justin Niebank, Chuck Ainlay. Cool

The mix was done on Steinberg Cubase 7.0.4 on Windows 7 x64 running into PrismSound Orpheus.

A little about my thinking process and how I approached this mix.

I believe that in order to get the best out of a mix you need to "jump at it" when you're in that inspiring mixing mood regarding a particular song. At that point you have all these ideas in your head about what you want to do with it and the mix should be jumped at realising all those ideas without any constraints attached in between the mixer, the song and those ideas. So I focused on trying to make it sounding as "good" as possible as early as possible. When that's done I start to mix. Wink

My take on the production was that it was more a rock style production rather than a pop style production, therefore my mixing was heavily rock based. With these mixes I usually mix the sound a little like Chris Lord-Alge and build the mix a little like Manny Marroquin, a lot of focus went into feeding energy into the mix over time and ensuring it had enough power at its peak. Overall, much focus on energy.

On 00:00 -> 00:51 Intro, Verse 1. I focused on establishing the groove, keeping the first chorus in mind when doing so. This is again a technique Manny Marroquin does a lot - mixing a part with the next one in mind.

00:52 -> 01:19 Chorus 1. I didn't add that much energy early on, I just focused on adding enough in order to lock the listener to the mix. When it goes into the first chorus I didn't want this energy explosion. Instead I focused on establishing the emotion of the chorus. A lot of focus went into making it soft enough, when it comes to this point in the song I want the listener to close his/her eyes and just feel the music, syncing up with the groove, the rock vibe and the song.

01:20 -> 01:34 Bridge 1. Keeping it soft. Focused on maintaining the music set in chorus 1.

01:35 -> 02:05 Verse 2. A little energy boost from bridge 1, I tried to add just a little more energy to capture the listener much enough for wanting to keep listening.

02:06 -> 02:32 Chorus 2. I'm adding more energy to the song now. This is the part that should sink into people's memory when they think about the song and this particular mix, I look at it as the song's "signature". The groove is really important here. And that it doesn't have too little or too much energy at this point.

02:33 -> 02:52 Bridge 2. Again focus on softness. Just keeping it "smooth" here, not too loud.

02:53 -> 03:45 Verse 3. A lot of focus on building the "main" energy now.

03:07 -> 03:45 Chorus 3. Here the energy release comes. Big Grin I release the drums and rhythm guitars completely, I wanted to create a "wall" of rock sound from those. Almost all focus went into establishing "rock bite".

03:46 -> 04:29 End part 1. All focus goes on building tension to part 2.

04:30 -> End, End part 2. Tension released by the organ. Wink

You And Me And The Radio, rock style

Thanks for listening, please send comments, ideas, thoughts... Smile

EDIT: I am going to master this mix, I was a bit quick posting it, I know that on many speaker systems it comes across as mid heavy, on most a bit thin in the high end and on some a bit bass heavy as well, overall a bit too high mix weight. I'll post a mastered version of it here to fix those issues... Wink

EDIT2: During mastering I found and fixed mainly 2 issues - the mix lacked 4dB from 2kHz to 20kHz causing the vocals to be muddy and dull, the mix also lacked 2dB between 130Hz and 200Hz and had 2 - 4dB too much signal under 130Hz causing the low end to be muddy. Both of these issues in turn produced a too high mix weight. This mix actually turned into a mess, I messed it up in the middle of the process by becoming distracted by latency and CPU bottleneck issues in my system. Also found a -0.3dB input level diff between the Orpheus control panel mixer and Cubase! All these fixes should be applied in the mix, not in the master. Anyway, I think I'll jump to mixing another song instead of going back to mixing this one, this was a good learning experience though...

Here is the master:

You And Me And The Radio, rock style, master

Thanks all for your comments, you nailed both issues! Wink
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#2
the voice sounds weird and muddy and dull.

Please comment on others mixes, this site is all about feedback.
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#3
The kick is miles too loud also
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#4
(01-08-2013, 06:11 PM)jeremias666 Wrote: the voice sounds weird and muddy and dull.

Yes, at some point during the mixing process I forgot to check for translation. During mastering I found that the mix lacked 4dB from 2kHz to 20 kHz. This caused the vocals to be muddy and dull. Tongue

Please review my original post where I have a mastered version correcting this issue.

Thanks for your comment!
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#5
(01-08-2013, 07:18 PM)takka360 Wrote: The kick is miles too loud also

Yes, at some point during the mixing process I forgot to check for translation. During mastering I found that the mix lacked 2dB between 130Hz and 200Hz and had 2 - 4dB too much signal under 130Hz. It might still be somewhat loud, but the low end should at least be somewhat less muddy... Tongue

Please review my original post where I have a mastered version correcting this issue.

Thanks for your comment!
Reply