Young Griffo - Pennies

[Robert]

It was a lot of fun mixing this one. Any comments are most appreciated.

[Artbass]

Hi,

interesting take on this one. There are some surprising moments in it. I just write down what I hear:

A very dominant bass, guitars are in the background (interesting decision!) and a bit harsh sounding. The snare sounds very much like paper, misses body/sustain. Vocals sound great (nice delay idea). Toms have a bit too much low frequencies. The outro offers a very clicky (is that a word?) drum and the modulation on the bass seems a bit too obvious to me.

Let me divide this into two groups:
a) Things that seem to be the core of your mix: dominant bass, backgroundish guitars, vocals
b) Things that seem to be improvable without altering your mix to much: guitar harshness, snare, toms, cklicky drums and modulated bass during outro

Having said this I am by no means an authority when it comes to mixing and I worked on this song myself, so maybe I am a bit biased.

[Robert]

Hi, Art

This is a bit of a work in progress and it's always good to read others comments so that corrections can be made. Thank you very much for chiming-in

One thing I've noticed here is the sound quality of the streams. They don't playback with the same degree of clarity as a downloaded version of a track played back on Windows Media Player for example. We also have the changes made during MP3 encoding which alters things quite a bit too. I notice that at the end of the song where we hear the snare break up as the reverb increases on it during fade-out. That break-up isn't heard on the 24 bit Main Mix. Having said that, the player here is good enough to tempt one to download a track for more critical listening - which is what I tend to do now.

Dominant bass..... YES.... guilty. Being a bass player myself, I agonised over that just before uploading. In my own listening environment, it doesn't "seem" to be that overpowering (dominant) - but I'm going to re-investigate this for the next mix.

The flanger on the bass is purely stylistic - but I'll re-visit that also.

I found the guitars and BV's way too dominant and grating on me on other mixes so I had to push them back a bit on my own mix.

That snare was tricky.... and pretty hard to get sitting in the mix so that it could poke through and work with the kick. I'll need to work on that one.

Thank you ever so much once again for taking the time to comment, Art It's very much appreciated.

I'd love Mike to pop by and offer some advice on this mix.

Robert.

Hi,

interesting take on this one. There are some surprising moments in it. I just write down what I hear:

A very dominant bass, guitars are in the background (interesting decision!) and a bit harsh sounding. The snare sounds very much like paper, misses body/sustain. Vocals sound great (nice delay idea). Toms have a bit too much low frequencies. The outro offers a very clicky (is that a word?) drum and the modulation on the bass seems a bit too obvious to me.

Let me divide this into two groups:
a) Things that seem to be the core of your mix: dominant bass, backgroundish guitars, vocals
b) Things that seem to be improvable without altering your mix to much: guitar harshness, snare, toms, cklicky drums and modulated bass during outro

Having said this I am by no means an authority when it comes to mixing and I worked on this song myself, so maybe I am a bit biased.

[Mike Senior]

I'd love Mike to pop by and offer some advice on this mix.

Righty ho!

Your vocals, kick, bass, and snare are making the guitars and cymbals sound distant and small to me. A bit more aggression on the compression front might help with the drums, but I'd also maybe give the overheads a bit less EQ, and chuck out any gates you've got going, to try and give the kit more internal complexity. It's sounding too much like a selection of instruments, rather than like a real kit. The snare is very 'single-point' in the time-domain too, in that if you smash out the transient with mix-limiting the drum balance suffers unduly. (Whether that matters to you will depend on where you and your clients stand on the mastering loudness issue.)

Overall the mix feels very narrow. Normally I'm complaining about mono compatibility issues with Young Griffo mixes, so it's nice to complain about the opposite for a change! I'd recommend something in at least the choruses to try to open things out, and I'd probably opt for a fake edited-together double-track out of choice, unless you can record your own double in.

[Robert]

Thanks for popping by, Mike. Very much appreciated.

I deliberately held back on re-visiting this mix until more feedback appeared - and re-tuning my listening environment (using ARC 2). I did this primarily due to the excellence of the Telefunken sessions tracks. It made me realise I had a bit of a problem in the room since moving things around. After re-tuning, I hear the difference in this mix and completely get what you're saying about the guitars and cymbals being "distant".

I was very conscious all the time about mono compatibility and it almost became an obsession in this mix.... Perhaps more of a CLA approach next time around ? LOL. Yes... you're right about the choruses. I need to fix that. Cursed with being a bass player too.... that needs to be kept in check. I'm glad Art noticed it so quickly.

Being very old-school, FOH engineering has made me very disciplined at preserving dynamics as much as possible and I tend to get very fatigued listening to (studio) material that's been compressed to hell.... it just makes me want to hit the stop button. Conversely, turning up the level of something less "loud" (and more dynamic) is easier on my ears and makes for a more enjoyable listening experience - over a FAR longer duration. Of course, when the tracks aren't recorded brilliantly, that really screws with the dynamics - but we're a fussy lot (we mix engineers) and always try to do the best with what we're given. But it's great when we can get the talent to do a re-track for us particularly for a lead vocal track which has so much limiting applied during recording that the end result is heavily "flat-topped" and dynamically unuseable. I really wish Kevin Reeves wouldn't do that. He has a great voice. :o)

Thanks ever so much for stopping by, Mike. I'll re-visit this one with fresher ears shortly :o)

Great book, btw. I've recommended it to so many people.