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Drag Me Down - My Mix & Master
#1
Warning: Master might be loud! Turn down the volume.

I am an audio student with about 2-3 years of mixing experience, but I sometimes come onto cambridge to see what others think of my mixing.

I was rather surprised by how good some of the mixes for this song were on the forum. The song has a lot of tracks, so I honestly thought that plenty of people would have difficulty. Then again, sometimes songs with more tracks are easier to mix, but I was still shocked.

I found it harder than normal to compete with the official mix as well as the best mixes on the forum. I wanted to get a heavy metalcore-type sound out of the song, but I don't feel like I did that. I tried to keep things powerful/full.

Kick, snare, and toms were sample replaced.

I used an amp sim on the guitar DIs then scrapped the rest of the guitars.

Some of the synths were given a bit of distortion to lift off some of the hiss/ting and add more fullness.


Tell me what you think! (don't hold back) Smile


EDIT: I finally got around to revisit my mix. I feel like I made a good overall improvement. I still kept my guitar sounds over the stock ones, but I worked on reducing the bus compression as well as working on the low end. I also got to use my good speakers this time around. I plan on this mix being my final one.


.mp3    AdamBuckley_DragMeDown MASTER.mp3 --  (Download: 7.64 MB)


.mp3    AdamBuckley_DragMeDown r1 final.mp3 --  (Download: 7.51 MB)


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#2
I'm curious Did you use any band for a reference track at all?
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#3
Here are my observations.

*overall balances are good but there is a wall of foggy sound in front of your mix. I'm not sure if it's mostly the reverb.
*im hearing some low end there that should have been highpassed.
*the toms have long tails of sound and it's a Lil problematic for the overall mix.
*snare sound is pretty dope.
*bass is a Lil too loud in comparison with everything else. Could be that really low energy that I'm perceiving that's making me think it's loud.
*you are overcompressing the master bus. There is a decrease in volume when the drums kick in after the verse.
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#4
(24-12-2018, 01:11 AM)Shul Wrote: Here are my observations.

*overall balances are good but there is a wall of foggy sound in front of your mix. I'm not sure if it's mostly the reverb.
*im hearing some low end there that should have been highpassed.
*the toms have long tails of sound and it's a Lil problematic for the overall mix.
*snare sound is pretty dope.
*bass is a Lil too loud in comparison with everything else. Could be that really low energy that I'm perceiving that's making me think it's loud.
*you are overcompressing the master bus. There is a decrease in volume when the drums kick in after the verse.

Hey, I appreciate it. I didn't really use a reference for the track; I kinda just went in blind and tried to figure out what I could come up with in about 1-2 hours. I'm surprised you thought there was too much bass/low-end since I honestly thought I didn't have enough. I kinda noticed a lot of people's mixes were too scooped, and I really like the mid-rich sound, which is probably where the 'foggyness' comes from. You aren't the first to tell me that I overcompress; I usually use like 2-3 compressors on the mix bus then hit it with a hard limiter (I'm pretty obsessive about loudness), but I'll use less compressors and limiting from now on. Anyways, I appreciate the feedback and for not holding back like I said. I might try to look into these changes eventually.

Last thing: as for the high pass filter, I mixed using only laptop speakers and headphones. I haven't gotten the chance to use my speakers yet since I'm away from home.
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#5
Don't obsess over loudness in the mixing stage! When mixing your concern should be the overall tone of the mix and the overall balance of the instruments, when your music is released onto Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and Youtube it will be volume normalized anyway, the louder your mix the more these streaming services will turn it down with volume normalization (the exact opposite of your goal!) Overall I'd say the balance of your mix is fine, but due to the hyper compression going on it's losing most of the impact (compressors will also mess with the low end of your mix as well if they're set too aggressively).

Your mixing environment is definitely playing tricks on you here, the reverb tails on your snare are very muddy sounding and clouding up your mix (the compression is exaggerating that as well), the distorted synths are more full now which is fine, but because they're fuller sounding, they're starting to compete with the low end of the rhythm guitars, the 200-400 Hz region of the bass, and the reverb on the snare. This also has a side effect of making what was supposed to be a delicate and more sparse verse just as dense and heavy as the chorus, it's like if a boxer were to punch someone hard and then keep rubbing his/her fist on the opponent's face instead of pulling back and going for a couple of quick jabs, all the impact and contrast is gone and there's no reason to listen to the rest of the song. If you're working in a monitoring situation that isn't ideal or you're unfamiliar with, reference tracks are a must, not so much for "copying" the mix of another song in the genre but to give you an idea of how other tracks sound through the system you're mixing on, plus it gives you an idea of how you're mix will sound in context with other songs when it's put into a playlist with other tracks (just be sure to level match that reference track to your mix so it doesn't fool your ears and make you think "Louder is better").

What I would do in this situation is start from scratch, remove all your processing, and switch back to the stock rhythm guitar tones, and just work with the faders. Get your mix sounding balanced before you start hitting things with Eqs, Comps, Saturation, ect. and work from there. These tracks are pretty decent sounding on their own and really just need minor tweaking here and there (I found myself doing more cuts than boosts and only compressed some tracks like the snare, bass, and vocals just to dirty them up a touch). Once that's over with, that's when you can focus on effects and the more creative stuff like guitar effects and reverbs (the last 5% of your mix). On here it's fine to mess with effects and other things because the artist isn't generally going to hear your mix or release it as an official version of the song, but when you're auditioning mixes for a potential client you're better off focusing on the balance and the overall tone of the mix, especially if you're not the producer and you didn't take part in the recording of the track, they'll be far more impressed with a well balanced basic mix than they will be a super experimental version of their song.

Overall I think you can do much better, and that you really need to listen to the mix on something other than laptop speakers and headphones, the ultimate test will be in a car stereo, especially if that car has a sub. Keep cracking on and if you want an idea of what most streaming services will do to your mix visit https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/ and let it analyze your mix.

Cheers and hope this helps,
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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#6
I agree. What I do is I listen to my mix even on the phone speaker which is typically mono.. And I pay attention to the balance.. If it soudns crappy then the mix in reality is total diarrhea lol so I try to listen to a couple of different headphones. Computer speakers,. Phone speakers. PA speakers etc.. Uf ir decent sounding in all of them then I know I'm in the right place with the balances.
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#7
(24-12-2018, 08:19 AM)dcp10200 Wrote: Don't obsess over loudness in the mixing stage! When mixing your concern should be the overall tone of the mix and the overall balance of the instruments, when your music is released onto Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and Youtube it will be volume normalized anyway, the louder your mix the more these streaming services will turn it down with volume normalization (the exact opposite of your goal!) Overall I'd say the balance of your mix is fine, but due to the hyper compression going on it's losing most of the impact (compressors will also mess with the low end of your mix as well if they're set too aggressively).

Your mixing environment is definitely playing tricks on you here, the reverb tails on your snare are very muddy sounding and clouding up your mix (the compression is exaggerating that as well), the distorted synths are more full now which is fine, but because they're fuller sounding, they're starting to compete with the low end of the rhythm guitars, the 200-400 Hz region of the bass, and the reverb on the snare. This also has a side effect of making what was supposed to be a delicate and more sparse verse just as dense and heavy as the chorus, it's like if a boxer were to punch someone hard and then keep rubbing his/her fist on the opponent's face instead of pulling back and going for a couple of quick jabs, all the impact and contrast is gone and there's no reason to listen to the rest of the song. If you're working in a monitoring situation that isn't ideal or you're unfamiliar with, reference tracks are a must, not so much for "copying" the mix of another song in the genre but to give you an idea of how other tracks sound through the system you're mixing on, plus it gives you an idea of how you're mix will sound in context with other songs when it's put into a playlist with other tracks (just be sure to level match that reference track to your mix so it doesn't fool your ears and make you think "Louder is better").

What I would do in this situation is start from scratch, remove all your processing, and switch back to the stock rhythm guitar tones, and just work with the faders. Get your mix sounding balanced before you start hitting things with Eqs, Comps, Saturation, ect. and work from there. These tracks are pretty decent sounding on their own and really just need minor tweaking here and there (I found myself doing more cuts than boosts and only compressed some tracks like the snare, bass, and vocals just to dirty them up a touch). Once that's over with, that's when you can focus on effects and the more creative stuff like guitar effects and reverbs (the last 5% of your mix). On here it's fine to mess with effects and other things because the artist isn't generally going to hear your mix or release it as an official version of the song, but when you're auditioning mixes for a potential client you're better off focusing on the balance and the overall tone of the mix, especially if you're not the producer and you didn't take part in the recording of the track, they'll be far more impressed with a well balanced basic mix than they will be a super experimental version of their song.

Overall I think you can do much better, and that you really need to listen to the mix on something other than laptop speakers and headphones, the ultimate test will be in a car stereo, especially if that car has a sub. Keep cracking on and if you want an idea of what most streaming services will do to your mix visit https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/ and let it analyze your mix.

Cheers and hope this helps,
Doug

Thanks for the help, Doug. This all probably boils down to the fact that I'm using cheap headphones without references and squashed it too much. I usually don't spend much time on mixes since I'm a busy man, but I might try this mix again when I'm back home and have my good speakers. Also, I'll definitely be sure to check out that website.
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#8
I finally got around to revisit my mix. I feel like I made a good overall improvement. I still kept my guitar sounds over the stock ones, but I worked on reducing the bus compression as well as working on the low end. I also got to use my good speakers this time around. I plan on this mix being my final one.


.mp3    AdamBuckley_DragMeDown r1 final.mp3 --  (Download: 7.51 MB)


Reply