The Brew What I Want

[MopeyChameleon]

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This is my mix for The Brew, What I Want. I did this in about one week using Sonar X1 for my DAW. I used only plug-ins that came with Sonar.

The intro I did a reverse reverb type thing on the guitar riff. I think this really makes the rest of the band come in with a bigger punch by contrast. I also compressed it a bit and put a high and low pass filter to give it a telephone speaker effect.

The rest of the guitar tracks I used, blended them together into two groups and panned them hard right and left. I didn't do any E.Q. to them, their tone sounded alright to my ears. I did do some compression at the buss level.

The bass I used all three tracks. I blended in just a small amount of the D.I. track and used predominantly the amps. I merely used a small amount of E.Q. and compression at the bus level.

For the drums, I used pretty much what was given. I did replace the kick drum with the samples in Sonar X1, session drummer 2. I found this to add much more punch to them. I also created a kick send track to boost the 3-4k range. I did a pretty decent amount of compression to the drums at the buss level to hopefully make it one cohesive sound. I also grouped the snare tracks together and sent them to a separate buss before going to the drum buss, then to the master buss. I did this to E.Q. and compress the snare by itself to blend the top and bottom mics, then send it with the rest of the kit.

I compressed the keys at the buss level, no real E.Q. but I'm honestly not sure what I would do to E.Q. them. I've never really messed with key tracks before. Panned them 60% left and right.

As for the vocals I removed the group vocals completely. I found them to be just downright annoying. I cut the main vocal into two separate tracks, a verse and chorus track. The chorus I limited and compressed really hard, did some e.q. The verse not so much, but the same idea. Some reverb, it actually might be too much now that I listen to it again.

That's about it, let me know what you think. Thanks![/font]

[cjbee]

Cool intro!

The one thing that stuck out to me though is kind of how boxy the guitar sounds. I can't be sure if that's the result of combining all of the guitar tracks provided, perhaps introducing some phasiness (?) or not being aggressive enough in cleaning up the low-mids, but I found that just picking one of the close-mic tracks + the lone room mic lent itself to a cleaner sound (not to mention easier to process and manage).

Also -- I can barely hear the snare! Especially so when the rest of the band picks up. Maybe I'm just biased because I'm a drummer, but I feel it could come up a bit to add that much more power and impact to the track.

The keyboard tracks were also a little dull...if I recall, I made a pretty substantial cut (-4db) at around 330hz and shelved it gradually starting at around 3k, just to highlight some of the shimmer and to help it poke out a bit. The keys in this song carry quite a bit of the rhythmic weight, so I felt they needed to be able to compete with the guitar and almost be on level ground with it. That's how I approached it, maybe it could help you for the next time!

I posted my version of the mix in the forums -- check it out if you get a moment!

[MopeyChameleon]

Thanks for the pointers! This is one of my first few mixes.

All your advice was extremely helpful. I totally forgot to check the phase on the guitar!
I think I fixed that issue now, I also cut out some low-mids and boosted the mids on the guitar buss.

Followed your advice with the keys and brought up the snare by 3dB. I cut some low mids out of the lead vocal, around 105 hz, as well as the 3-4k by 1db. I think it really helps the kick and snare sit better with the vocals.

Let me know what you think of the new mix, thanks again.