Joe's Bar - roy Mix

[Roy]

I gave it a try.

1st Mix - Mx02d - First attempt.
2nd Mix - Mx03d - Another quick try from scratch. Sloppier, I think. It has issues but I'm posting it anyway.
3rd Mix - Mx04b - I was bored and did another from scratch. Cleaner? Dryer? The bass guitar might be too out front.
4th Mix - Mx07b - I wanted to try making a mix that worked in both mono and stereo. It's a pretty quick mix on a Saturday morning and could definitely use work and tweaking. That said, since the exercise was just getting it to sound good (sound ok) in mono but also with hard panning in stereo I think it works. Also since it's fairly rough feel free to comment or not and see if it sounds ok in mono on your end.
5th Mix - Mx08a - Trying some stuff. Not a significant mix


Thoughts?

[Jambon-beurre]

Hey roy,

Did you use multiband comp?

The high are a bit too squashed I’d say

[Roy]

Hey roy,

Did you use multiband comp?

The high are a bit too squashed I’d say

Not that I recall. Maybe I did something wrong in "mastering". I'll check it out when I get the chance.

[Roy]

Added new versions to OP.

[mikej]

Hi!

Quick listen:

Mx02d: A laid back kind of a mix (as opposed to upfront). This one does really groove along nicely like a well set bus compressor. Which kind of beats anything else that I might say about it.

Mx04b: More upfront and therefore lacks a lot of the swing of Mx02d. Bass might be too upfront. Main thing with the bass though is that not all the notes are even - some poke out more than others, that might be room dependent of course I should have checked on headphones too.... Bass might need a limiter and touch of bottom end taking off.

Mx03d: Bit too warm for me. Probably just lacking a bit of 4k overall. Guitars and vocals maybe a bit buried in that warmth. Saying that I did listen to a commercial mix yesterday that I thought was kind of mixed this way.

Mx04b is probably closer to my style, but I find I do really like the groove of Mx02d.

Cheers!

[SonicTramp]

I think V3 is a bit dark, agree w/you, mostly bc of the bass/kick. Great work on dr kit. if anything, maybe the bottom snare is a bit loud, too much crack to me, still awesome tho. Yeah, man, the organ cuts thru quite nicely. I'd tuck that EIG1's tail end a bit; it may help controlling the lower mid alongside with bass/kick. And yeah, a bit dry, takes away the openness of the mix.

[Roy]

Postmortem

Thanks for listening guys. Part of my thinking in doing these various mixes was trying to start from scratch and see how I do things differently each pass. [what an ugly sentence] Still in the same template and still leaning on some usual techniques. Each mix has a different mix bus compressor. So, Mike, on mix 2d it's an SSL (VCA) compressor using the standard settings of 4:1 ratio/10ms attack/and auto release. 3db of reduction at most It's exactly like some other mixer's settings but I can't recall who at the moment. That's doing most of the work. Though there are some sub mix comps too but I don't think they're that audible. Looking at the mix now I also had an L1 limiter before the SSL comp. My thinking was to tame some of the snare hits before the compressor so the SSL is working at an average level more than taming peaks. I don't remember what I did in "mastering" as I changed the setup for each version.

I only mention this so people can learn from my mistakes.

I like mix 4 the best, myself. For the record, on this (that?) mix I used a "Focusrite" setting on a plug in an I don't know where I got these settings from. But it's another VCA type compressor 1.5:1, 5ms/100ms. Not radically different than the SSL. The main difference is that I could high pass the sidechain so the kick didn't trigger the compression and no L1 into it.

None of this matters, Just saying what I did.

I personally, don't mind bass notes sticking out but I do find the bass tricky on this one. It's relatively easy enough to get it to sit well but anytime I try to add any interest to it the finger noises and pickup slaps stand out.

I used a bunch of samples on the kick. Partially because what's there is weird and wanting something different from the sound that isn't there. I never made it work right though.

I can't get the 2nd 'stab' guitar to work. I just don't like the tone. I need to go back and reference the original mix again.

I do find it interesting that it seems to be 'warm' or 'dark'. I think i fought with the 2-4 khz area and I did add some top end on the mix bus and the master. And I'm not saying people are wrong. Maybe I'm just sensitive to that region or monitoring too loud or whatever. It's just good to know. [Edit: I blame the mastering engineer]

I had even more mixes. I did 5th mix taking into account these notes but...meh, we've heard enough on my interpretation on this song. And really, they all come out fairly similar.

I dunno. I just woke up and need more coffee and check out some other people's mixes.

Ta

Hi!

Quick listen:

Mx02d: A laid back kind of a mix (as opposed to upfront).  This one does really groove along nicely like a well set bus compressor.  Which kind of beats anything else that I might say about it.

Mx04b: More upfront and therefore lacks a lot of the swing of Mx02d.  Bass might be too upfront.  Main thing with the bass though is that not all the notes are even  - some poke out more than others, that might be room dependent of course I should have checked on headphones too....  Bass might need a limiter and touch of bottom end taking off.

Mx03d: Bit too warm for me.  Probably just lacking a bit of 4k overall. Guitars and vocals maybe a bit buried in that warmth.  Saying that I did listen to a commercial mix yesterday that I thought was kind of mixed this way. 

Mx04b is probably closer to my style, but I find I do really like the groove of Mx02d.

Cheers!

I think V3 is a bit dark, agree w/you, mostly bc of the bass/kick. Great work on dr kit. if anything, maybe the bottom snare is a bit loud, too much crack to me, still awesome tho. Yeah, man, the organ cuts thru quite nicely. I'd tuck that EIG1's tail end a bit; it may help controlling the lower mid alongside with bass/kick. And yeah, a bit dry, takes away the openness of the mix.

[Jambon-beurre]

Try to rebalance each bus, the mix would be more open and less fatiguing, you kind of started doing it in 04b, reducing the Hi-hat stabbing.

[Quathamer]

Hey bro,

Pretty good mix, and I'm liking the slap on the vox. Also the control that you have over that 2k issue in the vocal is really good.

The guitars are really clean, but perhaps a little uninteresting.

The drums seem to lack a bit of that low end dynamics as well. There's plenty of dynamics in the high end, that's for sure.

It's a tricky issue that is really common with digital samples, and digitally recorded drums in general. Boosting the highs on on digitally recorded drums just makes them really clicky and spitty. I found boosting highs into a DeEsser helps with this.

[Roy]

Hey, thanks for listening. In a slight defense I was going for a 'clean' guitar sound on some of the tracks, in a 70s way. I can see how that would be uninteresting. I did have different effects on different tracks on different mixes but maybe I was a bit shy with them. Same with the low end on the drums. I've generally had too many effects or too much low end and I tried to work on that and maybe went too far in the other direction. Noted.

Thanks again.