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Drag Me Down Rough Mix
#1
Welp, it's been awhile since I've posted on here, life happened and some fairly big things have happened (including recording and mixing 2 EPs for one of my friend's bands, and mixing them live at a local club) and it's mostly relegated me to lurker status for the past months, so with things starting to even out a bit here's my rough mix of Drag me Down.

I took some liberties with the arrangement by taking out the electric rhythms when the acoustic is playing, dropped the bass during the first half of the first verse before the drums enter, and some other small tweaks. Really just refining what's there already. and mix wise I just balanced out all the tracks with the faders, added some verb to the vocals and drums, and did some minor eq moves. Still need to do some automation runs to really glue it together but over the next couple days I should have something more refined.

Unmastered this track has an integrated Loudness of around 25 LUFS, for purposes of listening in a real world situation however I employed a plugin called Stream Master which raises the audio to a ballpark Integrated loudness recommended for various streaming services, for this mix I chose the "Apple Music" standard to bring the mix up 9.48 dB, and according to Loudness Penalty by Meter Plugs, on most platforms the mix would be turned up 1-2 dB with normalization.

Thanks for listening guys and I hope to have some revisions out in the next few days.

Cheers,
Doug

Updates: Mix 2: In mix 2 I've mostly just done some automation moves, and really just tried to work with the rough mix and even out the balance through out the song.

Bass: The bass during the verses was outshining the Piano and starting to get in the way for the vocals so I turned up the piano a touch and moved the bass down 2 dB during the verses. Same story with the bridge section and the build before the final chorus, during the build I gave the bass a sight crescendo with in the automation to add some interest there, otherwise the bass is pretty much the same tone wise.

Guitars: I forgot that I muted the Electric guitar 1 track for almost the whole song so I fixed that and left it out during the first verse but brought it back when the chorus hit and kept it in for the whole song. The rhythm guitars needed some help during the choruses to make them pop,so I grabbed Waves L1 to even them out a touch and brought them up 1.5 dB during the first and last chorus, during the first half of the second chorus I dipped them a dB and brought up the acoustic up to change things up. The acoustic eq was revised a bit to give it some more low end and to make them less harsh. I added some compression the leads during the chorus and intro to even them out and bring them up in the mix, they also got some dotted 1/4 note delay to liven them up a touch.

Drums: The only change to the drums was a crescendo added to the kick during the bridge.

Vocals: I ended up doing some compression on the backup vocals to keep them more even during the choruses and automated the low harmony down during the choruses because they were starting to overshadow the lead vocal. The lead vocal had some drops in them during the first verse and needed to be touched up during the chorus with some automation. Again mostly subtle moves here.

End Result: With those moves I managed to gain a couple of dB on the overall loudness without any gain reduction on the 2 buss, going by Loudness Penalty's figures the track would only have its loudness increased on Spotify and Pandora, the loudness remains untouched on Youtube, Tidal, and Itunes/Apple Music with Soundcheck (he numbers for iTunes are approximate with Loudness Penalty however). Overall this is more the direction I'm aiming for with the track.

Mix 3: This one is more or less a refined mix 2, the rhythm guitars needed to be dropped a dB or two so they didn't interfere with the lead guitars too much, the Piano got a touch of compression to give it some more sustain,in the second half of the chorus the acoustic guitar is muted and the intro guitar comes in, the acoustic is muted during the final chorus and the intro guitar takes over, I re positioned the telephone vocals to the end of the track so they didn't get cluttered up so much with the rest of the mix, removed the kick 2 track because it really wasn't doing for my overall kick tone (it was almost all the way turned down because it was a touch too extreme for this track), and finally I removed the low harmony from the first verse to open up the vocal a bit, so when the low harmony comes in during the chorus it's a little more dramatic. I'm mostly happy with this mix and I think I'll upload one more version with a touch of buss comp and some tone shaping eq on it just to polish it up a touch



.mp3    Drag Me Down Rough mix (Processed).mp3 --  (Download: 7.66 MB)


.mp3    Drag Me Down Mix 2.mp3 --  (Download: 7.66 MB)


.mp3    Drag Me Down Mix 3.mp3 --  (Download: 7.66 MB)


Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer

Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
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#2
Hey man good to hear you back here!

I'm not convinced by that cut on those rhythm guitars just to let the acoustic shine more. I feel the mix looses impact.
I really like your rhythm gtrs tone and your bass tone. they work pretty good together.
Vocal is on point on the eq in my opinion.

Awesome rough mix. I'm sure your final will be killer Smile
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#3
(15-12-2018, 11:36 PM)Shul Wrote: Hey man good to hear you back here!

I'm not convinced by that cut on those rhythm guitars just to let the acoustic shine more. I feel the mix looses impact.
I really like your rhythm gtrs tone and your bass tone. they work pretty good together.
Vocal is on point on the eq in my opinion.

Awesome rough mix. I'm sure your final will be killer Smile

Thanks Shul!

Vocal wise I didn't really do anything too crazy, pretty much just a cut at 600 Hz, a high pass at 200 Hz with a gentle slope, some leveling with Waves Vocal Rider, and compression with CLA 76 in Blue Stripe mode for some grit and brightness. The backups are unprocessed but the lead vocals have a 1/4 note delay, mono tape echo, and a plate verb with the pre delay set to 156 ms to add some air around them. These were some decently recorded vocals (barring the really obvious pitch correction Big Grin) and really didn't need a lot of Eq to fit in aside from some general housekeeping type moves and something around them to hide the tuning.

For me the biggest challenge was trying to make that acoustic rhythm make sense in the track, I really wish that the part was double tracked or was different from what the heavy guitars, I tried some Auto Double Tracking and that seemed to help with the spaciousness of them and make the sound bigger but after having to clear up a lot of low end content in the part and some fairly heavy compression, it just ended up just being a redundant part. I think if the lone acoustic on the first half of the second chorus works but muting it when the electric comes in makes it awkward. I like it on the build before the final chorus as it brings down the intensity of that part and give it a nice contrast to the final chorus, next mix down though I'm going to keep the acoustics in the final chorus .

The rhythm guitars are the stock sounds with a high pass at 100 Hz, a 5 dB cut at 316 Hz to clear up some space in the low end, a 3.75 dB dip at 751 Hz to clear up some honkyness in the mids, a Joey Sturgis cut at 4k (do I even need a reason to justify that Big Grin) and a low pass at 11k to clean up some top end fizz. Really the stock tone was what the track needed out of the gate, I've been forcing myself lately to only reamp if the tone is just not working with the track or if the artist tells me to reamp the part, a lot of this comes from being subbed to Nail the Mix for a few months (Febuary - April) and working with tracks that have a signature guitar tone and learning to work with real amps more and not reamping for "reasons".

Bass wise I only used the DI track with TSE B.O.D and Waves CLA bass to lock in the tone, after that I high passed the bass to 80 Hz, cut some 250 out, cut 1.8k to keep it from messing with the guitars, and added some compression with CLA 3a ala Paul Leavitt to colour the tone, and Waves L1 to keep things level.

I've started some work on the second mix now, it shouldn't be too hard to make this sound pretty good, not really into the whole "Post Hardcore" thing but this really reminds me of Doomed by Bring Me The Horizon so maybe referencing that will help.

Cheers and thanks for the points,
Doug

Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer

Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
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#4
Mix 2 is now live
Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer

Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
Reply
#5
Hi dcp10200

First of all,good mix ,easy to listen which is good.But i just want to hear more lead guitar on the chrouses.Vocals are also pretty and general balance is good.

Cheers
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#6
(18-12-2018, 06:03 PM)berkaykorkmaz Wrote: Hi dcp10200

First of all,good mix ,easy to listen which is good.But i just want to hear more lead guitar on the chrouses.Vocals are also pretty and general balance is good.

Cheers

Thanks for the critiques, I ended up dialing back the rhythm guitars so the leads could sing out a bit more and making some other changes to the chorus to rein it in some

Cheers,
Doug
Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer

Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
Reply
#7
Mix 2 is better than 3 in my opinion. The balance in mix2 flows better than on 3.
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