16-03-2021, 03:13 AM (This post was last modified: 05-10-2022, 03:02 PM by andreybenassi.)
Hello guys, I work as mixing engineer, would be great to know your toughts. Don't be rude, just let's talk about mixing and music!
I don't usually mix metal songs, but this band is soo good that I'll spend some time mixing their material, so good to have nice song like that to study another genres.
I mixed this song mainly with my headphones HD600 and just monitoring sometimes, I'm trying to get good mixing with headphones, I'm not sure about my lowend but would be nice to know if it's hitting good enough in your systems!
In this song I did a trick I've learned with a metal enginner don't know who, but here it is:
The low end is tricky in metal, I splited the kick in three channels, it hits mono when is a quarter note, and when its eighth and sixteeth, I splited in two, one hit a bit to the left, and one hit a bit to the right, and lower the pitch a bit one side so it gives that tune difference when recording double bass drums. It's nice, give some depth and natural feel!
16-03-2021, 11:27 AM (This post was last modified: 16-03-2021, 11:53 AM by Blitzzz.)
Really good mix. There are some small musical details missing that deserve a place in the spotlight (mainly tom/snare fills) and the synchronously played doublebass / guitar / bass part in the chorus doesn't really kick as hard as it should. But those things are easily fixed.
Your mix reminds me of In Flames and other Scandinavian metal bands, and I have heard a lot of mixes on this forum trying the same thing and failing miserably. This is one of the few mixes where it actually worked out well.
It seems like the 1st chorus is a bit louder than the verse. Is there an increase in volume or did you just spread out the guitars a bit more?
I´m also curious of your mix of Hammer Down, which adds a lot more elements to the mix (synths, crazy solos, even crazier drumming) and is probably the best song we have ever written together. Also, you have Dirk Verbeuren from Megadeth / Soilwork playing the drums on that song, bringing it to another level.
(16-03-2021, 11:27 AM)Blitzzz Wrote: Really good mix. There are some small musical details missing that deserve a place in the spotlight (mainly tom/snare fills) and the synchronously played doublebass / guitar / bass part in the chorus doesn't really kick as hard as it should. But those things are easily fixed.
Your mix reminds me of In Flames and other Scandinavian metal bands, and I have heard a lot of mixes on this forum trying the same thing and failing miserably. This is one of the few mixes where it actually worked out well.
It seems like the 1st chorus is a bit louder than the verse. Is there an increase in volume or did you just spread out the guitars a bit more?
I´m also curious of your mix of Hammer Down, which adds a lot more elements to the mix (synths, crazy solos, even crazier drumming) and is probably the best song we have ever written together. Also, you have Dirk Verbeuren from Megadeth / Soilwork playing the drums on that song, bringing it to another level.
That's a really nice feedback! Are you from the band?
I did automation trought the song to make it pop a bit more, it's nice that you hear but maybe I could do it more smootly?
Thanks for the feedback, I think today I will do some small ajustments with that things you mentioned in mind, for surely will sound better!
Cheers!
You can contact me for professional jobs, editing, mixing & mastering, mixing classes! Would be a pleasure to work with you! [email protected]
(16-03-2021, 11:27 AM)Blitzzz Wrote: Really good mix.
Greetings, axeman.
I invite you, and forum participants/lurkers etc, to take a trip down the rabbit hole and put a multiband compressor on this, with only one band activated in solo, and of course with parameters at neutral/inactive.
Set the lower band to about 80Hz (this keeps the fundamentals out the way....that's another exercise!) and it's upper to 250Hz and tell me what you hear over a single speaker.
I'd also invite you to do the same with Hammer Down on the 1.1 mixmaster you kindly included in your heads up.
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24-03-2021, 05:01 PM (This post was last modified: 24-03-2021, 05:01 PM by supep.)
Buff, I hate you hahahahaha
This incredible song sounds really really good. The unique thing that maybe I could change, is automate the air on kick when the songs stops and plays with the bass. Maybe a bit less on 8Khz aprox sounds less "metal".
Just now I'm starting to work on this song and your mix can be a good candidate to use as a reference
I'm really interested to know how you implemented the trick on kick. Can you put light on this, please???
Cheers!
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(24-03-2021, 05:01 PM)supep Wrote: Buff, I hate you hahahahaha
This incredible song sounds really really good. The unique thing that maybe I could change, is automate the air on kick when the songs stops and plays with the bass. Maybe a bit less on 8Khz aprox sounds less "metal".
Just now I'm starting to work on this song and your mix can be a good candidate to use as a reference
I'm really interested to know how you implemented the trick on kick. Can you put light on this, please???
Cheers!
Thanks my friend!!!
I'm thinking to not go back to the mix at this point, but I'm really appreciate your feedback. Automation like that in that style I think it's a really gaming changing tool, you absolutely right about the kick part! I would change it!
The kick trick I don't know how much clear I can expain, looks like it's complicated, but it's not.
I used my library of drum samples in this mix, but it have just one kick sampled and not two different kicks sounding almost the same, that actually happen when people play with 2 bass drums.
The thing is to make "fake drums" sound like real drums, but it's nice to talk about that generally engineers do sample metal drums because it gives some consistency that's almost impossible with real drums with no samples.
The kick trick is that you will use just one sample, but you would separate them as two, when the drums plays it fast, you need to split it in two channels one channel per note, 16th note like 8 notes for each side.
When you separate it, you need to make some ajustments to make it sound different and realistic double bass drums, it actually is:
1 - Pan the two, a bit to the sides, like 8, 10%, one to the left one to the right.
2 - You detune one a bit, soo it sounds different.
3 - You add some small room reverb to add some stereo enhancement, space... But be careful, low end can be messed up if you give the reverb to much lenght or too much low end in it, it's just to feel up the space and make it realistic.
It's nice to experiment!
You can contact me for professional jobs, editing, mixing & mastering, mixing classes! Would be a pleasure to work with you! [email protected]
The easiest way would be to make the change at the source, not in the mix. If you use Superior Drummers 3, Trigger or SSD 5, just choose 2 kickdrums on your drum setup and eventually make changes to the midi file so both kicks will be triggered. I think that's the easiest way to get a more "realistic" doublebass drum sound without fiddling with reverb and other settings or moving the kick slighlty off center. I think I went against the idea of having a double bass kickdrum setup in the original mix because Superior Drummer automatically chooses slightly different kick samples for each hit. Also, the midi velocity for the kick isn't the same throughout the song, but varies on each hit (from what I remember) so every kick hit should already sound slightly different.
So I disagree with the assumption that this mix sounds good because of a "trick". It sounds good because the basics are all in place (overall balance) and there are plenty of tasteful mixing decisions that are in line with everything I expect from this genre.
I actually don't have Cubase on my PC anymore because I needed a break from recording/mixing. Therefore I can't check this out, but I´m curious now. What is happening that I can't hear with my setup atm? =)
Monk
(16-03-2021, 11:27 AM)Blitzzz Wrote: Really good mix.
Greetings, axeman.
I invite you, and forum participants/lurkers etc, to take a trip down the rabbit hole and put a multiband compressor on this, with only one band activated in solo, and of course with parameters at neutral/inactive.
Set the lower band to about 80Hz (this keeps the fundamentals out the way....that's another exercise!) and it's upper to 250Hz and tell me what you hear over a single speaker.
I'd also invite you to do the same with Hammer Down on the 1.1 mixmaster you kindly included in your heads up.
