Zeno "Signs"

[Dave Cate]

I chose this track to mix for an undergrad mixing course. Definitely a fun track to work on—I'm a big fan of the wall-of-guitars approach.

[DanUpdegraff]

Really like this song and hearing your version. Your's is way better than my Frankenstein butcher job I laid to rest a few months ago. Your chorus vocals are hard to hear at times, especially in the finale. If you haven't already, try some heavy compression - at least 10db of reduction so they stay at a more consistent level. As another suggestion, try fading the reverb down on the lead vocal whenever she is singing, and bring it up when she stops. As-is, she sounds like she is standing way far back from the rest of the band. Good job though.

[Mike Senior]

Your mix tonality feels rather muffled I took out a couple of decibels at around 250Hz and added a 5dB shelf at 3.5kHz before I began to get more into the ballpark. With that out of the way, however, there's a lot to recommend the vision you've put forward here, especially in the choruses, which have a fullness and power that I like, but without overwhelming the vocals -- at least not until the final choruses! It would be worth checking over your vocal balances between sections, because the difference in the vocal levels between the second and third choruses is enormous.

With an epic rock texture like this it's really difficult to get a good trade-off between the impression of stadium-sized reverb, and a good clear texture where you can hear the details and the instruments are upfront. I think in this case you've done a lot of good work already in terms of automating your effects and giving the reverbs some character of their own so they don't blend things too much. However, I think you might get another increase in clarity if you use a gated-reverb patch for the chorus drums, rather than a full reverb tail -- you'll still get the size impression, but without as much of an increase in the level of low-level wash.

[DanUpdegraff]

Wow, that +5dB shelf at 3.5khz really made a difference to this mix, and such a simple thing to do. I'm adding it to my list of things to try from now on, rather than just using bell curves around 8khz and 16khz.