Will Evans and Monk in the crew

[Monk]

As it says on the tin.....

[ERJEE]

Hi!
Interesting panning, I'm not sure if it contributes to the impact of the song.
I think the groove of this song is key and should make you move and dance I think you can improve your mix significantly by focussing and blending the drum and bass guitar first!
Cheers!

[Monk]

Hi!
Interesting panning, I'm not sure if it contributes to the impact of the song.
I think the groove of this song is key and should make you move and dance I think you can improve your mix significantly by focussing and blending the drum and bass guitar first!
Cheers!

Thank you for the 2 sentences of feedback. I assume you suffer from a short attention span so on that basis I appreciate your overwhelming generosity in getting this far.

You see, this particular panning isn't interesting!! It was, after all, the rage in the 50's, 60's, 70's and to some extent, even into the 80's because of studio technical constraints. Some engineers/bands/clients will choose this approach today to give a sense of time and historic authenticity. And yes, that's what I've done here.

Correct me if I am wrong but during these decades, I'm pretty sure people danced

I can understand how an inexperienced listener unaccustomed with panning of a bygone era might find it odd, unconventional, interesting, distracting, whatever, especially over headphones or buds with their silly highly exaggerated 180 degree sound stage and channel isolation. Play mine over decent speakers that can move a lot of air and then see how it shakes! Note that back then, nobody used headphones, and very few people had the joy of stereophonic gear....and if they did, this sort of mix would have been the norm and quite natural. So there you are, a free history lesson

Oddly, your mix is damn near fully mono, as are all the others I've auditioned. Can I suggest you experiment with the stereo domain now and again?

Dynamics have an essential role in generating emotional response. Transients can do that, so too contrasts between loud and soft. However, millennials and zoomers can be habitual consumers of genres and music that have neither of these attributes. Loudness at the cost of audio quality, as yours is, merely generates the sort of emotional response a band could do without. You won't find a more dynamic presentation of this song anywhere else than here in my mix. Nor one as stereophonic! I'm the winner! lol Did this slip your attention?

When I loudness normalise yours to remove the psychoacoustic advantage you are seeking to exploit from the perception that “Loud is better” (do you know how to loudness normalise?), revealed a dynamically retarded mix with a resultant lifelessness and lack of energy. That is, I found it “emotionally” lacking. And the harshness from the artifacts of pushing past the point of trade-off also had me shying away, rather than engaging. That's a good reason to click the skip button and look for something that isn't unpleasant nor offensive for my unimpaired ears, if ever there was one.

Did you, by any chance, read my feedback in mixinthecloud's thread about the problem of dynamics he had between the sparse introduction and when the band kicked in? He's not the only one who had this issue of course, many have this exact same problem. Novices over-compress because it's hard for them to define the point of trade-off, often because of low grade playback devices which inhibits self development but also habitually listening to hypercompressed distorted sound. Headphones and buds don't help one iota! I see that rather than address this in your own mix, you instead chose to take the easy way out and delete the intro? What you should have done perhaps, is to have learned something by studying the shortcomings because there's a good learning opportunity otherwise lost. The brain is quick to adapt, a mere matter of seconds is all it takes. The sparse intro with it's unimpaired dynamic (master buss processing, for example, won't have kicked in) is suddenly shocked by the lifeless un-dynamic material which follows immediately after. He missed it, others have missed it too in their own mixes where there's over compression.

The frequency response of yours feels excessively hyped in the upper mids and treble, which is often the outcome of someone showing early signs of Noise Induced Hearing Loss. If I were you, I'd lose the headphones, or buds or both, and change some habits before you end up having to use a hearing aid. Actually, hyped, distorted audio is a kind of hearing aid. Without the hype to help counter attenuation caused from ear damage, brains would struggle more. But exposing the ear to hyped frequencies has long term consequences folk need to be aware of – it hastens deafness and research suggests deafness can further lead to dementia. Double whammy......all for FREE! Those who can't hear well today, can't mix tomorrow. Actually, they can't mix effectively today either. It also affects their ability to give constructive feedback. Many, or most, just don't realise they are losing their hearing until it's too late. Some of them will be reading this.....blissfully unaware.

You have an ambiance clash between the neophytic illusion of the sax performing in an aircraft hanger, and the other elements.

The bass guitar doesn't translate to my limited bandwidth test speaker. The inference is that a consumer listening on such a device wont hear the bass guitar very well either, if at all. Hypothetically, if a band member or an agent of a record company was greeted with similar findings, they might present you with an “interesting” emotional response?

I do hope I haven't fatigued you - tried to keep the reply as short as possible.

[phil_basement]

wow. Great mix on my monitor. Really.
(not sure how it will sound on headphones, but I don't care )
You make me wish to try to mix this one.