Carol Dant - I am the desert

[Fab354]

This is my mix, I appreciate comments and suggestions

[wunderbier]

I like the guitar tone when it comes in the intro. I like the tone and control of the low end as well. Did you automate the vocals or gate/de-ess with plugins? Well done either way. I think you got a nice balance of the synth pads.

The guitar solo feels too quiet and dry. Kick and snare get swallowed at times. It sounds like you tripped a slow limiter or compressor at 1:32 and 2:20. Vocals would benefit from some autotune and syncing.

I'm new to mixing, but not to music, and listened on Sony MDR-7506s.

Edit: I personally find the bass stereo image to be a little busy.

[Fab354]

I like the guitar tone when it comes in the intro. I like the tone and control of the low end as well. Did you automate the vocals or gate/de-ess with plugins? Well done either way. I think you got a nice balance of the synth pads.

The guitar solo feels too quiet and dry. Kick and snare get swallowed at times. It sounds like you tripped a slow limiter or compressor at 1:32 and 2:20. Vocals would benefit from some autotune and syncing.

I'm new to mixing, but not to music, and listened on Sony MDR-7506s.

Edit: I personally find the bass stereo image to be a little busy.

Hi Wunderbier, thanks for your comment:
I haven't used the de-esser: I've done a little automation or simply faded out the parts where I found the sibiliants harsh.

I haven't boosted the guitar solo indeed: it is at the same volume as the rythm guitar, for my taste it's fine.

Drums as well have the same settings of compression from start to finish, but yes, there is probably frequency masking in some points that make them feel less clearly than in others parts: I also am new to mixing and, in my cheap monitoring system drums are maybe too hot.

Same thing for the stereo image: It is not simple to get it clear as it should be, especially in the low frequencies.

[wunderbier]

Drums as well have the same settings of compression from start to finish, but yes, there is probably frequency masking in some points that make them feel less clearly than in others parts: I also am new to mixing and, in my cheap monitoring system drums are maybe too hot.

Same thing for the stereo image: It is not simple to get it clear as it should be, especially in the low frequencies.

Could be about the drums. I decided to use a drum replacer early on and have about a 50/50 mix of original and my own samples, along with parallel compression and saturation, and sidechaining a dynamic EQ on the bass bus. There's just so much going on in the low end that I felt it necessary to aggressively carve out a place for the drums.

I guess I just wonder if it's necessary to make the low end stereo. The bass tracks all came as mono and it didn't occur to me to change that.