Through My Eyes

[pile63]

Real good song. Maybe a let the vocal a little low. Let me here from you.

[Lammy]

Hi pile,
please take this comments as hints for improvement.

There is some type of distortion or even clipping (for instance piano at 0:58 and 3:00-3:03), for which I'm not sure if it's an intended effect or an oversight.
My take is a general heavy compression that doesn't help in the global track definition. Following your comment: voice too low. Maybe, and I say maybe, there is a general problem of gain structure in the mix. A lot of track pushed up competing for loudness.
If this is the case I would try to dim everything else excluding voice rather than make voice louder. In addition I would try to control more the frequencies that induce muddiness in the mix (200-600Hz).
An additional hint could be to give some airy reverb to the snare rimshot.
Iust my opinion as a result of a couple of auditions.
cheers

[pauli]

Hey Pile63!

I think the some of the distortion Lammy is hearing may be a byproduct of your mp3 render, which based on what I'm hearing and the file size, was done at a very low bit rate. It's very hard to assess the high end of your mix unless you convert to mp3 at 320 kbps, where the fewest disortion artifacts will occur.

There's also a distracting amount of compression on the lead vocal, and the piano indeed sounds a little "crunchy" as though an excess of distortion were added. Distortion is a great mix tool for helping something cut through a busy mix, but for this genre it should probably be much subtler in application: in a ballad, you want to think smooth B) For my part, I prefer saturation style distortion for this because it has a smoother overall sonic signature... I actually used it on many elements of my own mix of this tune.

Based on what I'm hearing, it sounds like you're trying too hard to control something that's really pretty well controlled already... this track was put together with skill and discipline, and Mike added a few very restrained bits to help the texture a bit, so resist the temptation to go nuts on the processing, especially on the lead vocal. If you've got a beautiful vocal recording like this and you feel like you need audible compression and EQ to control it, my guess is that your efforts elsewhere are falling short but still, it's hard to assess when rendered at such a low bit rate.

Great start, keep going... and if your mix settings work in one section and not in another, that's no excuse to bludgeon the track with heavy compression! Try automating the volume and effects sends before you increase the processing