Blackworm Studios - "Semantics"

[elenaiwilliams]

Boy, was this one a tricky one! I had an older mix of this but I've chosen to remove it because I didn't even do mastering on that one and it was pretty bland.
My approach for this was to try to get it punchy and a little bit dirty but without loosing overall clarity.
I'm not sure that I used all the tracks but I can assure I did changes to many of them, that is, I didn't limit myself to just mixing, but I did some arrangements and changes to some sections. You could say I did as I would have done if I were producing the band in my studio, except I had to deal with pre-recorded tracks instead of working out the arrangements before recording.
I also added some keyboards, namely a gated synth and some strings. Just to give a bit more body to the song.
Apart from that, no other addition was made to the song, and as a personal challenge I strained from using any kind of drum replacement or triggers.
Enough talking though, here's the song:

[jeremias666]

Interesting mix.

I like some of the arrangements changes. I like the strings you added.

The gated synth i think it would work better lower in volume with a more thin sound with less low mids and more hi mids and hi.

The vox feels a little low and thin. Specially against the gated synth, because the synth sounds pretty upfront and the vocal more diistant.

You got a pretty good drum sound for not using samples. But i think this mix begs for samples the proccesing you used to make the snare and kick sound good makes the cymbals have a "grainy" quality.

[elenaiwilliams]

Interesting mix.

I like some of the arrangements changes. I like the strings you added.

The gated synth i think it would work better lower in volume with a more thin sound with less low mids and more hi mids and hi.

The vox feels a little low and thin. Specially against the gated synth, because the synth sounds pretty upfront and the vocal more diistant.

You got a pretty good drum sound for not using samples. But i think this mix begs for samples the proccesing you used to make the snare and kick sound good makes the cymbals have a "grainy" quality.

I was sure there was something bugging me about the gated synth, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. I'm going to try to make it thinner and a bit lower on the mix.