I'm Alright, First Mix

[Ajleddx17]

First attempt at mixing someone else's recordings and absolutely loved it. This song is so damn catchy its unbelievable! Would love to hear feedback on this mix

[Bereket]

I don't understand why people run just to make loud mix. your wacko guitar is so small comparing to the wide spread mix it looks like it is played in 70's century horn speaker plus please try the instruments to talk each other it is not always wide and big is the best mix. to me the mix is great but it needs depth and again make the piano and the wacko guitar to talk each other with the bass guitar. have you noticed how big it is when the song starts with the bass? where on earth that big sound goes the moment the guitar come up? my point is don't try to make the mix like chris lord alge or your favourite mixer. put your feeling in the mix not about making it loud i will use the volume knob to turn the music up don't worry. Good luck

[Ajleddx17]

Thanks for the reply mate what exactly do you mean by the "wacko" guitar? that kinda confused me, but i'll definitely take those tips into consideration for any future mixes i do

[azwayne]

I will agree with the loudness comment above. For the purposes of this sort of exercise, try to hold your mix down to, say, between -3.5 and -5.0 dB on your meter until you're done and then perhaps push it up to 0.0 to -1.0 with your master fader when you do your mixdown (export). I'm going to guess that what happened is a result of using headphones to mix, yes? Beware of overdoing the bass in headphones. It is very easy to do. If you do use phones, my recommendation is to set your volume control to where you want it and then leave it alone. Play something you're familiar with first and then when you go to mix, try to match (not exceed) that intensity. As far as overall volume and average level, let the mastering engineer worry about making it "competitive" and putting the spit shine on it. That's what they do best. You just worry about making it sound good and make sure they have room to work.

It's hard to comment further because the volume problem makes it difficult to do critical listening but I'll do my best. Fortunately I have a pair of headphones which are probably a reasonable match for yours and drop much of the bass on the floor.

At ~1:00 when the lead and the accoustic get together, be careful to not allow one to overpower the other. Judicious use of compressors can help here as long as you don't squash the life out of the part. When your lead comes in, like at ~1:50, it is probably 3-5 dB louder than it should be and kinda makes you want to rip the headphones off.

All in all, what it sounds like are mistakes that are simply the result of inexperience and an untrained ear. No big news there. That's what this site is all about, remember, getting that practice. Most people here are relatively new and that includes myself, though as an on-again off-again musician, I already had a good sense for some of the details here. So, if I may, let me start out with a few basic tips to get you rolling...

1) Beware of headphones, especially lower end consumer models. They're designed for listening, not mixing, and usually, by design, do not have the flat response you need in order to hear the correct balance an audio engineer needs to hear. If you can't afford a good set, try to get an understanding of what yours are doing. Are they boosting the bass off the charts? Are they emphasizing the midrange? Or are they dropping the bass considerably while sending the upper mid and highs through the ceiling? Headphones are designed with different purposes in mind and that impacts what frequency response curve they are built with. If you are conscious of what they do, you can learn to compensate but I will note up front that that is the hard way to go about it. You can also compensate by taking your mix to different listening environments such as your PC speakers, your car, ear buds with your ipod, etc and use them to help hint to you, "Oh, this needs adjustment here."

2) The central player in any pop/rock tune is the vocals. If you can't hear the lead and make it out clearly, you've failed. (Regardless of whether or not the person's singing style makes it possible for you to actually *understand* them.) It's a harsh declaration, but true. Picture yourself as an artist getting a mix back of your latest most awesome tune that you're really enthusiastic about and not being able to hear your singing because it's getting burried by the lead guitar and the cymbals. Are you gonna be happy? The vocals do not need to be substantially up front or in-your-face, but they shouldn't have to compete with the rest of the band either.

3) Most instruments do not have a constant volume for various reasons. Learn to listen for this and pick out the important bits. Instruments vary in volume based on the technique of the player, the style of music, the mood of the player that day as well as how well the band is gelling in that session, the characteristics of the instrument they are playing and the specific instrument in their hands, and then whether or not they are playing a lead or "accent" part at a particular point in the music. Compressors can help you smooth out the random variances but lead and accent parts need to be controlled through fader movements and in a DAW, that probably means automation. A part that may be set to -15dB most of the time, may need to come up to -10dB for 5 seconds to get a flourish in. The piano does some of that in this one. Listen for the tail of the bridge after the first verse for an example. (Roughly 0:55-1:10) Mostly it's chording but then it does that descending-in-octaves bit. It needs to be brought out ONLY for that little line but notice that it is NOT a solo line. It also needs to blend with the other instruments and that means finding a volume they can all agree on and THAT means bringing the piano up just enough to match the lead and then bringing it right back down when they're done.

I think that ought to be enough to soak up for now.

Hope this helps. Remember that the best teacher is experience. Get all you can and keep mixing!

[Ajleddx17]

Holy crap man, very very helpful with mixes i have done on my own songs i found that the mix was always a lot quieter than any other song i would reference, so i kind of went for the loudest and widest mix I could, which probably wasn't the best plan. As for mixing, I do use headphones as I currently don't have the funds or the space for any decent monitors, but I'll probably spend the next couple weeks working out what they're doing to the sound, and maybe come back and retry this song. Again, thanks for all the tips and I'll be sure to put them to use

[azwayne]

Oh, one other caution... be careful how loud you mix and I don't just say that for the sake of your ears. Your perception of "loudness" at various frequencies change with volume. The louder you go, the more the treble is going to come out and you'll tend to want to tamp it down more than you should. Go under the butter zone and you'll do just the oposite. A perceived volume of 85 dB is considered the zero mark these days (which is louder than I normally listen to stuff and above the OSHA "you need to take a break now and then" limit and, frankly, resting your ears every hour or so is a good thing to let you reset your perceptions.)

[Ajleddx17]

I do give my ears breaks when I'm mixing, and recently I've been messing with metal songs which is more my style, and really started gain staging all my mixes and working at lower volumes, so I think I'll come back to this mix later on, and redo it from scratch and see how it works

[jeffd42]

First thing - I had to reach for the volume control. You've used a pretty good transparent limiter there to get it that loud -- but its not necessary.

Balances seem pretty good to me. Perhaps some additional automation to bring out the specific hooks/fills -- there are a lot of them in this particular song.

Vocals sounded like the could use a little more air -- EQ, saturation or both perhaps.

But a pretty good mix -- if you bring the levels down 3db then other parts will have more room to shine.