My name is Markus I am new to this forum, where I am hoping to improve my mixing skills. This is my first practice mix here. It's not the first song I ever mixed, but the first song that I mixed and haven't written and recorded myself. So it was quite a new experience for me.
I'm quite a new guy here as well, just did 4 or 5 mix (feel free to listen to them).
So here, I would say the main issue is the EQ and compression balance. I have the feeling that each instrument take some place to each other.
Did you used low cut on every track but bass and kick ? For compression, I would start with presets for each track, and adjust threshold to start with.
I feel drums too far from the rest. It's like they're behind my head.
Panning is good, and effects sounds good to me as well. Voice has a good presence, maybe a little more back vox could be nice.
26-09-2014, 05:50 PM (This post was last modified: 26-09-2014, 05:51 PM by orthogonalrecords.)
Thanks for your feedback, Mandubien
I will look into the balance once again and try to clarify that.
However, I am not a fan of low-cut's on every track. I know that Mike Senior propagates that but it has been impressively proven to me by a pro-mixing engineer that such a technique can readily lead to what people tend to call 'digital coldness'. Hence, I am trying to tackle these problems individually with low-shelves. But I have to admit that I haven't done that here so far - it may help, let's see.
What I don't understand is what you mean by the drums are 'like they're behind your head'? They may have too much room on them - but that should move them further away from your head to the front, doesn't it? I would be grateful if you could explain that point again.
I will listen to your songs asap - and then post another version of this one here.
(26-09-2014, 05:50 PM)orthogonalrecords Wrote: Thanks for your feedback, Mandubien
I will look into the balance once again and try to clarify that.
However, I am not a fan of low-cut's on every track. I know that Mike Senior propagates that but it has been impressively proven to me by a pro-mixing engineer that such a technique can readily lead to what people tend to call 'digital coldness'. Hence, I am trying to tackle these problems individually with low-shelves. But I have to admit that I haven't done that here so far - it may help, let's see.
What I don't understand is what you mean by the drums are 'like they're behind your head'? They may have too much room on them - but that should move them further away from your head to the front, doesn't it? I would be grateful if you could explain that point again.
I will listen to your songs asap - and then post another version of this one here.
Thanks again and best regards,
Markus
Well, I mean it's like all the instruments are front of me, but not drums, which I feel they're very far away from me. Like they're in a huge room, and we hear only reverb.
For low cuts, well yeah I use them a lot, it really helps to give room to the bass and kick. But I also use automation to cut it if necessary (if guitar is alone for a verse for exemple).
There's no golden rules anyway, just what your ears like
(30-09-2014, 10:17 PM)bmullen Wrote: Some of the studios with exceptional equipment and technicque don't have all the Low end estraneous sound we often have in these tracks.
You're refering to the low-cuts, don't you? Well, I'm gonna play around with low-shelves and low-cuts and create two seperate versions. I'll have to do that anyway to shed some light upon the differences.
By the way, I didn't want to sound offensive but rather point out that low-cuts on nearly all tracks may not be the patent remedy.
Welcome to the fun
I like your mix. And the eq isnt bad to my ears.
The drums could have a bit more volume, but I hear them fine.
The verb you use are a bit dull which isnt a bad thing at all, but do you lowcut your verbs ? if not that is a good place to start lowcutting. Often big amounts of lofrequency energy is created in reverb unit and if not locut it will eat valuable dB´s from your mix. The Abbey Road studios where many british bands recorded in the 60´s had a standard eq on reverb: locut 600 Hz Hicut 6khz.
For the locut talk in general the idea is to locut evrything, except kick and bas, givin them the space to fight over most things under 100Hz. Often you can lowcut vocals rather high, especially bv (background vocals)
I think your vocal could do with a bit less low or low mid (200ish) information and still be upfront.
The guitarsolo could use a bit more volume, but then again Im a guitarist
Welcome to the site and have fun !
Old ears, old gear, little boy inside love music and sounds and my wife, not necessarily in that order
Thanks for your reply and the warm welcome Voelund.
Yes, I always low- and high-cut my verbs. However, if I compare mine to the values you mentioned I may have gone too low with the low-cut (~100Hz on the drum-room) and also too low on the high-cut (~5 kHz) on this one. Thanks very much for the input.
I'm a guitarist too, which is why I may tend to mix the solos too low. I always expect them to be too loud for others if they suit my taste.
I will surely come back with another version of my mix once I have tried all the suggestions and sorted everything out.
Here's another version of my mix.
I tweaked the EQ on the reverb to make it sound a bit less dull, and also changed the levels of drums and guitar by a small amount.
However, the most obvious change here is that I used low-cuts on all tracks except bass drum and bass guitar. I will do another version tomorrow where I will exchange the low-cuts by low-shelves.
