Japan Song

[pauli]

I like this song a lot, but it wasn't very easy to mix...

Guitars 2 and 5 hang on the same chord when guitars 1 and 4 change... which would have been ok, but both 2 and 5 also have polyphonic tuning issues, which sound like they might be related to the player's technique, gripping the neck hard enough to the point where the strings stretch a little.... Guitar 2 was worse in this regard so it's muted much of the time. Or am I crazy? Maybe there's just some resonant overtone or something that's tweaking me out? I dunno, SOMETHING in there is dissonant in an unpleasing way...

There's some funny stuff going on with the tuning in the cellos, too, but they're internally consistent so pitch shifting helped a bit... and a couple of them hold a note over from one chord to the other and that too creates an unbalancing dissonance. I tried but I'm not really sure how to fix things like that without compromising some other element of the balance.

[FytaKyte]

Hey Pauli - thanks for the critique of my mix...

Nice punchy mix you have here - I like the way the snare cuts through powerfully. I like the sound of the drums in general - nice work!

The overall balances in the mix sit well, although I feel the bass guitar in general is a bit underdone (more about that later).

I'm hearing some uneven-ness in the lead vocal levels at times - eg. the phrase around 28 secs - the words "the seas" are a fair bit lower in volume compared to the words "RISE UP" which immediately follow them. Possibly some extra automation/compression might help with that, or possibly it could be just a matter of adjusting the attack/release settings on the compressor. I generally find using 2 or even 3 compressors in series (each working fairly conservatively) is better than using just one to control dynamic vocals. Ultimately, when the vocals are not controlled adequately, the overall level tends to be too high in the mix in general. This is the impression I got when listening to the mix - the vocals just didn't "nest" well & integrate as good as they could have. Attendant to that could be their dryness. Sometimes, using subtle delays can work better for creating space around a vocal while still retaining an up-front vocal sound.

Another thing I noticed with the vocals was a sense of "boxy-ness" - it sounds like they could do with a cut somewhere around the 300-500hz range to remove some of that unappealing sonic character. It is especially noticeable during the vocal doubles in the chorus, because that prominent frequency sums together with the 2 parts and really builds up.

I'm hearing a bit of a buildup of muddiness in the mix in general - in the low mids around the 200 - 300hz mark. I think most of it is coming from the bass, but it would be worth investigating how much the guitars are affecting it too. The prominence of those frequencies in the bass is really limiting your ability to bring up the bass to a healthy level, because turning it up as it is will just muddy up the mix too much. I would definitely suggest referencing a commercial mix of a similar genre to get a better idea of where the bass needs to sit, volume-wise. I always find it's surprising just how prominent the bass needs to be to get in the same ballpark.

I'd also suggest that you could probably apply some mix buss compression to great effect on your mix. This would achieve 2 things: Firstly, "glue" the whole mix together & tighten it up; And secondly, buss compression tends to really make you aware of any muddiness or boxiness that might creep in from different elements.

Nice work overall, though!

[pauli]

Hey guy. In general, I agree with your judgements on this one. The nature of the raw recordings made it very difficult to get the sound I wanted under the time frames my life (and wife lol) put on working through the mixes, so things like micro automation and fader rides don't get the attention they deserve.

It's interesting that you're hearing the vocals as dry because they have more reverb than almost everything else (the guitars have none at all) to try and blend them with the room recording. I probably pulled too much high end out of the return, and that'd probably also account for the vocal boxiness.

The bass issue, I've discovered, is a result of a last minute decision to bring the room mics up quite a bit. That's probably also why the vocals seem too dry, too Thanks for checking it out, I'll have to take another look and attend to these issues!