Kat Wright: 'By My Side' - Arturo Sallas Mix

[Arturo.Sallas]

Hello Guys.

This is the first time I post something in this forum I hope to hear some comments about my mix and I wanted to ask a few questions to the ones who already mixed this multitrack. 

Do you guys do mastering to the final mix? I did just a quick limiting to -1.5 dBfs but it's barely hitting any peaks, it was mainly to adjust the level of the final mix.

How do you guys approached the instrument bleeding into the main singer's microphone? I tried many different ways, but I felt the one I got the best results was a sidechain multiband compression feeding the Overheads and the horns into the sidechain to compress the spectrum of those instruments.

Cheers from Mexico City!

[Mixinthecloud]

Hello Guys.

This is the first time I post something in this forum I hope to hear some comments about my mix and I wanted to ask a few questions to the ones who already mixed this multitrack. 

Do you guys do mastering to the final mix? I did just a quick limiting to -1.5 dBfs but it's barely hitting any peaks, it was mainly to adjust the level of the final mix.

How do you guys approached the instrument bleeding into the main singer's microphone? I tried many different ways, but I felt the one I got the best results was a sidechain multiband compression feeding the Overheads and the horns into the sidechain to compress the spectrum of those instruments.

Cheers from Mexico City!

Arturo,
You had asked about approaches to the bleed in the Kat's vocal mic.  It seems there are several schools of thought on this. One is to leave it alone and mix with the bleed as a defining characteristic of the song, two, to chop up her vocal to eliminate bleed as mush as possible or three to automate between her lines to try and gain some cleanliness.  Your approach is also as viable as any. All of these approaches have their good and bad points. I chose to chop up her vocal to eliminate as much bleed as possible but the downside of that is the alteration you get with the snare mostly when her voice kicks in.  Some creative clip edits for beginning and ends of phrases helps, plus EQ'ing the snare to sound as much like the snare with bleed when there is no bleed helps hide the transitions some.  Not a perfect solution but there really is no perfect solution to this. Check out my Master 2 mix for the chopped approach.

[NewtonThomas]

"How do you guys approached the instrument bleeding into the main singer's microphone?"

For me this was so awful that I dumped the multi-tracks off of my computer and moved on.

[GP-Mix]

Hello Guys.

This is the first time I post something in this forum I hope to hear some comments about my mix and I wanted to ask a few questions to the ones who already mixed this multitrack. 

Do you guys do mastering to the final mix? I did just a quick limiting to -1.5 dBfs but it's barely hitting any peaks, it was mainly to adjust the level of the final mix.

How do you guys approached the instrument bleeding into the main singer's microphone? I tried many different ways, but I felt the one I got the best results was a sidechain multiband compression feeding the Overheads and the horns into the sidechain to compress the spectrum of those instruments.

Cheers from Mexico City!

hi arturo,
first, i like your mix and everything i say is only in view of my taste!
for me your overall mix sounds a bit too mono. it has a lack of depth width and it sounds a bit boxy and a bit clarity of all instruments is missing.
also in my taste , a bit too much compression on the tracks, it sounds a bit dead, it loosed a bit of breathing and dynamic that typical comes along with a live performance.
on the vocals: i would give them a bit more warmness in the lower mids, and the the snare is a bit too loud.
to the mic bleedings: don't eliminate all the bleedings, only where it makes sense.  use them to your advantage for building the stereo picture when you pan them.
otherwise it begins to sound lifeless.
but at the end of the day the important thing is, if you like your mix most then you did everything right!

Greetings from Germany, and Happy Mixing!