Chris93 Tears In The Rain

[Chris93]

This was one of those mixes where you get it 90% of the way there in 10% of the time and spend the next 90% of time on 10% of the mix.

I'm fairly happy with it at this point, I'm just struggling to get more of the electrics into it without remixing the whole thing.

Chris

[pauli]

Hey Chris, I enjoyed listening to your mix. This is a real beast of a multi to mix with a lot of unexpected challenges.

There are some balance issues with this that need addressing in my opinion, but I have some tips that may help you, having worked on this multitrack for an absurd amount of time.

The main issue that's upsetting the balance and emotional content here is that that rhythm section is far too forward relative to the melody lines. To me it sounds like you mixed the rhythm section first, and then tried to squeeze the lead guitars in at the end. That may or may not be the case, but if it is, I think you'll find a complete remix will happen much faster if you mix in the most important sonics first. In this case, the rhythm section sounds quite good, but it's masking the nylon guitar frequently and it's completely eating the electrics alive.

Now there are two main reasons for this to my ears... for one, there's a ton of reverb/delay going on, and to my ears the lead instruments sound wetter than the rhythm section, which is also too loud (especially the drums). The best thing to do in my opinion is to use two main reverb sends that apply more or less to the entire mix... a short, ambient reverb, and a longer "space" reverb to give it size... and vary the send levels on each instrument. Less to the space reverb will bring an instrument forward, and vis versa. Roll off a bit more high end from the verbs and keep them to where they're just barely present, especially on the shorter reverb. To bring an instrument even further forward on a more psychological level, apply a delay send strictly to the instrument in question, keep the level low, the delay time at least 100 ms (depending on tempo) and roll off both the highs and the lows. This gives the impression of a very distant slapback echo and is great for both guitars and vocals.

And for two, there's some serious EQ tweaking that needs to happen to bring those lead guitars forward. You've got more treble in the rhythm section than the lead guitars, which is going to push them back right off the bat. The electric guitars, aside from being rather soaked in reverb/delay, are going to need more in the upper mids, and the rhythm section could do with quite a bit less (cumulatively). There's an odd comb filtering effect in the electric guitar raw tracks that sounds quite nice actually, but you'll notice it makes the upper mids very inconsistent and they sometimes very nearly disappear. Tonal reverb (be careful not to let it get too wet) can help here, as well as dynamic EQ, but the rhythm section needs cuts in that region at least as much as the electric guitar needs more. And before you do anything... try bringing the steel string acoustics down, because they're chewing up the high mids more than anything.

These are obviously just my opinions, so take them or leave them. Without completely remixing this, I think you can try some of these ideas by simply turning down all the faders, deleting the reverb sends/inserts, and then fading in the instruments in order of priority with your current settings, tweaking the EQ/compression as space becomes more scarce. I'd bring the steel string acoustics and tambourine into the mix close to the end, and then consider reverb.

Just my thoughts I enjoyed listening. I'll go listen to a few of your others when I get a little time. I liked your comments on my original mix... if you check out my "overhaul mix" that I posted maybe a week thereafter, you'll find I'd implemented many of your suggested fixes. Thanks for taking the time, looking forward to hearing more.

[Olli H]

You have a very nice tone and groove in your mix, but it feels like a drummers mix. For example at 0.30 there's clearly a solo guitar somewhere behind everything else. You should put more focus to lead instruments. If you fix that kind of things, you'll get wonderful mix out of this.

Where's the bass?

[Chris93]

Thanks for the comments, I'll definately have a look at some of the issues. I've currently got my drum group 4 dB lower and it still sounds like a mix. Unfortunately as soon as I try to change anything else the rest of it doesn't work. The electric guitars for example, I've used a bit of saturation (stolen from Luis Diazz ) and given them a lot more "cut" but when I try to bring them into the mix they just sound like they're not really supposed to be there. I've taken some high end off the steel strings as suggested and they still sound good, but the electrics are clashing horribly with the nylon.

It's my fault of course, I left them until last and I'd mixed everything else without leaving space for them.

I can't really change the FX without redoing everything, on this mix I inserted them all. I have turned them down a bit on lead instruments and up on more background stuff though.

I'll come back to this tomorrow and see if I can get the electrics to join in.

I do like drums and "groove", maybe a bit too much.

Chris

[pauli]

If it's helpful, I boosted the hell out of the electrics around 1000 to 3000 with a broad peak. Have you tried automating the Eq of the rhythm acoustics to accommodate whichever guitar is most important at any given time? I also put the electrics off to the side a bit when the nylon came in... Felt the nylon was more important and you don't have to sacrifice as much electric guitar tone that way.

Reverb automation is also a very good idea... Boost it during the more sparse sections to fill them out, and roll the back during the big sections/choruses to make room. It's easiest to do that when you're using a send, though.

Saturation is great and I love it, but it works by adding more harmonics to the signal, which can easily get out of hand if you're using a lot of it. You can also use this as a send effect, and eq the saturation channel. You can very surgically add harmonics without making things blurry in this way.

[Chris93]

Here's what I have now, I'm not going to start writing much automation unless I come back to this in the future. There's a bit towards the end I might do where the electric gets louder and could lose a bit of 3K.

The shaker's probably slightly too loud now that I listen back. I had it balanced against the high hat but that got turned down with the drum group.

Chris

[pauli]

Quick question before I give you my thoughts... from my perspective most mix engineers fall under two categories: those who prefer EQ as the first potential solution to balance problems and those who generally try compression first. Where is your leaning on that continuum? I lean very strongly toward EQ personally, which is silly as hell considering I'm quite a bit better at handling compression but my mixes these days, usually only about 10 to 20% of the tracks ever really wind up getting compressed individually. Just curious

Anyway!

It's all too easy to focus on the negatives when reviewing a mix on this board and I'm as guilty as anyone, maybe moreso... but in many ways I think this is a strong step forward. I'm not an expert, far from it, and I think there's still a lot can be done... but your effort here shows me you went back to your mix and listened for what Ollie and I were talking about and made efforts to improve it. And you did improve it. The reverb situation especially is much better. There are a few places where it's still a bit washy for me, but we're getting really close to subjective taste if I keep on about that... the most important thing is that it sounds more pleasant and it's not burying everything like it had been.

The clarity and separation are better, but I think there's still a bit of room for improvement (or just food for thought). I think the steels are still masking the nylon a bit too much, and maybe you took it a little too far with the boosts in the electrics. They're brighter but harsher, too.

The main thing that I'm hung up on now is that the mix sounds congested from about 200 to 1000/1100 (not scientific numbers, just an educated guess). Chief offender instrument-wise is again the steels, but my instincts are telling me that compression is involved in a huge way and it's probably causing some frequencies to "bunch up" and accumulate. It's hard to give specific advice in this situation because different compressors behave differently... but my gut tells me there's probably compression in varying amounts on most of the tracks individually, which can cause frequency balance problems between instruments that live in the same frequency ranges because of the slowing effect that compression can have on note decays. Basically, the note is taking longer to decay, so any other instruments strong in the same frequency region has less "room to breathe." Short frequency buildups that cause a very small ripple in the frequency balance are important for music to sound natural, but if too many notes are taking too long to decay in the mid-range, then you get much longer buildups that make much bigger ripples, which is going to hurt the "openness" of a mix. Reverb can also do this, and parallel compression can cause very serious problems too, but in this case, I'm thinking you've got a lot of compressors on individual instruments. In the mixing stage sometimes this goes unnoticed (because it's not an issue at that point) but then when compression is applied during mastering, it can severely exaggerate that issue. Happens to me ALL THE TIME, where I'll take a mix to mastering and find I can't compress things the way I'd like without taking it back to the mix and rethinking compressor insert settings. There are a dozen other things that can cause what I'm hearing (and some people prefer this sound, so it could even be your taste) so I'm not sure if it's compression or not, but that seems most likely to me because it's so easy to do, and most of your reverb problems you handled quite well in my opinion.

My general rule of thumb for compression in almost any scenario is that I want the VU meter to return to 0 dB of gain reduction at least once, if only for an instant, every few seconds. The reason for this is that your sound will be more natural and free of artifacts/tonal coloration. It will breathe better, so to speak. Give Eminem's track Monsters ft. Rihanna a listen... listen for her vocal where she says "the VOICES inside of my head" and you will hear the compressor very audibly kicking in hard and holding. It's a nice effect and I love it for pop vocals, and obviously it makes balancing a vocal a hell of a lot easier, too... but pop vocals don't mostly need a natural sound and she doesn't have 3 other singers with the same range to compete with, as is the case with the guitars. On this tune, I think altering your attack/release times to get more efficient compression will help. Yu may have to adjust your post compression EQ slightly but probably not much. And on the master bus... honestly, I think any compression you apply to the whole mix should be returning 0 dB of reduction quite often, ESPECIALLY if you're using a good deal of compression in the mix.

Anyway, I hope some of that helps in some way... just my opinions and I'm wrong as often as right. Your new mix is a step in the right direction IMHO.

[Olli H]

I think it's much better now. You're quite close now. Balances are much better now, and it's much more easier for listener to know what to listen. ALso now it's easier to analyze overall sound.

At the moment my main critical attention goes to the fact that overall sound feels little thin. It's difficult area as the guitars are quite there where they should be, but if you can find some magic solutions to the the problem of bass track, it will give you better chances to also to open up the hi-end of this sound. Or maybe it could be solved with one master EQ (some boost around 50-70 hz and 10-16 kHz (do you have pultec?)). I'm not sure if that works, but it just came to my mind.

About the twin guitar part starting at 2.02: now the guitars sound too same, so it's difficult to know what to listen. But if you can find a slightly different character for them, that part can have a conversational character.

Keep listening and commenting what others have done, and try to bring the same listener attitude to your own mixing situations.

[pauli]

... but if you can find some magic solutions to the the problem of bass track, it will give you better chances to also to open up the hi-end of this sound...

I was wondering if pulling the some of the mids in a few places (200-900ish) in the bass might give him some wiggle room. Much of the character of a bass guitar is in that region unfortunately, but pulling some of that out might allow him to introduce more midrange sonics in the steelies and drums. Sacrificing from the bass, which has some unfortunate challenges as Dave highlighted, might allow instruments with more dynamic properties in that region to shine... more body in the snare, toms, and steelies. But the contributions of those instruments also have a lot more rhythmic and dynamic movement, so maybe he could thicken sonics, yet open things up quite a bit as well?

That's a really good head-scratcher, Ollie! Makes me wanna take another look... you know how I love a guitar mix. \m/ (>_<) \m/

[Amphibian]

I like the levels. It's a bit too wet for my taste...