Here's my mix of this song. I didn't want the electric guitars to be more important than other instruments, and I also tried to push back the singer in choruses. I don't know if you agree with my decision, but it is also good to know that I did that on purpose.
But I like to hear comments and suggestions to make it sound better.
Hi Juanjose
I'm enjoying listening to your mix great effects .
I haven't even downloaded the multi tracks track's yet so take my comments with a grain of salt .
This it a good mix !
what I can hear on my monitors And headphones is some bass frequency build up with the bass and maybe the kick around 145-200hz a negative 7-8 db dip in that area should clean it up.The Lead and backing vocals in the chorus sound a touch harsh around the 2.5k-3.5 hz area approx about 5-8 db.
Great job with the overall balance
wow, juan. I'm impressed... this is a tough mix and barring a few observations I think you've done really well.
The positives jump out right away. Whatever you've done to the organ tracks, a chorus or something? it sounds fantastic. I'm pretty impressed how well you dealt with the chorus vocals, too. There's not much helping the harshness, but this is about the best I've heard. By and large the instruments are right where they belong, dynamically and spectrally, and your panning/stereo-width choices are doing that much more to enhance the balance.
The only obvious negative (aside from the ones I doubt anyone could really fix without a little retracking) is that the reverb situation is funky to my ears. There could be a few reasons for what I'm hearing, it may be that you're mainly using one reverb but it's responding unpredictably to the different tracks, or maybe there are mismatched reverbs, but whatever the case may be, there are a lot of contradictory ambiences happening at different times throughout the mix, and sometimes they're happening at the same time. Sometimes that can be a good thing, but in this case it's pretty distracting, and my guess is that you're using a lot of reverb for SFX, or tonal effects, or maybe there are some effecty delays that are implying a different spatial environment... it's hard to say for sure. When that happens to me on a track like this that doesn't really need a life-like ambience, I buss the outputs of every reverb send apart from the main one, and then "mix" the reverbs with EQ and adjusting the decay/predelay times as needed, periodically soloing it to get a better idea of what I'm doing.. Then I'll buss that group with the main reverb (if there is one) to make sure it's not causing any momentary conflict. That crazy ol me, anyway.
For my part though, this is pretty damn good.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
Hey, Pauli! thanks for your comments. Also coming from you, they are even more valuable to me!
I didn't do anything special to the rhodes and synths. Only EQ and compression.
Ahhh... a space recreation with reverbs is still a mystery to me!!! I got to say that in the past months I've been reading about reverbs and delays, and trying to figure out how to set them up so I could get the effect I was looking for. Most of the times I've failed, and only a few I've succeeded. But I admit that I still don't know how to get all the reverbs I use in a mix sound like if it was the same place.
My technique with reverbs is like the one I saw Fab Dupont use in one of his many videos: he has three reverbs: one called office where the early reflections play a major role so they can make instruments closer or farther; a plate reverb, and a room or hall reverb.
Some of my instruments have one or two of them (depending on the instrument) and in some rare ocassions, a track has the three of them.
Once in a while, I get an extra reverb or delay for a certain instrument because I don't like any of those three on them. For instance, with saxes or trumpets, I like a short delay on them. But that's basically my technique. But I have to try out yours... maybe it will help me hear things better and be more accurate next time I'll let you know when I try. It sounds interesting and not crazy at all ;-)
I sort of gave up mixing this before i got to the FX stage.....I loved the verses with vox/rhodes combo but the chorus vox were so harsh and distorted that i lost interest.
Listening to yours now with added FX inspires me to dive back in and (try) and finish off the mix.
Version 2 sounds great Juan
Fx is one thing i also to have to learn a lot more about too ,especially mixing and automating all effects together with the tracks that also have there own effects and ambiance.
Good job .
(14-01-2015, 07:17 PM)juanjose1967 Wrote: Hey, Pauli! thanks for your comments. Also coming from you, they are even more valuable to me!
I didn't do anything special to the rhodes and synths. Only EQ and compression.
Well, obviously your EQ and compression is flattering the tracks and emphasizing their most attractive characteristics in context. Wait a minute, isn't that the definition of mixing? Awesome, man.
(14-01-2015, 07:17 PM)juanjose1967 Wrote: Ahhh... a space recreation with reverbs is still a mystery to me!!! I got to say that in the past months I've been reading about reverbs and delays, and trying to figure out how to set them up so I could get the effect I was looking for. Most of the times I've failed, and only a few I've succeeded. But I admit that I still don't know how to get all the reverbs I use in a mix sound like if it was the same place.
Well, in electronic it doesn't have to be very realistic in terms of what a real room sounds like if you don't want. There's not much sense in making something truly life-like when it's synthesized, in my opinion. The main idea that makes sense to me is keeping the general tonality of the different reverbs somewhat related... you could set up a really effecty and not so natural space, but it should probably feel like all of the core tracks are occupying that same space, at least most of the time. Bloopity bloops and bleepity bleeps you can probably get away with whatever you want
(14-01-2015, 07:17 PM)juanjose1967 Wrote: My technique with reverbs is like the one I saw Fab Dupont use in one of his many videos: he has three reverbs: one called office where the early reflections play a major role so they can make instruments closer or farther; a plate reverb, and a room or hall reverb.
I use a similar technique a lot of times, but I'd be wary of following Fab's advice too closely.. I think he's more interested in selling Dangerous D boxes and Protools upgrades than he is in actually helping anyone learn..
With the multiple reverb send concept, it might be more helpful to rethink the purpose of the different ambiences. Plates aren't really an ambience... the hardware plates developed decades ago actually worked by using the audio signal to excite a resonant piece of metal (the plate), turning that into a separate signal using the same basic technology that's used in electric guitar pickups, and as such they have a peculiar tonal characteristic that doesn't really add much of a sense of space. They tend to have really dense reverb tails, so using the same plate on multiple instruments at the same time can clog up a mix reaaaalllly quickly, but they also respond pretty well to EQ. In my very humble non-expert opinion, plates should most of the time be applied to single instruments tailored to very specific purpose, usually either widening or altering the tone in some way. However, if you're trying to mix a bunch of really anemic, thin sounding instruments, I've found a really quiet plate can help with that sometimes.
Now for the early reflections and hall patches, I wouldn't use the ER for depth field.. a hall with a bit of predelay is probably better for that. Be careful it doesn't clutter things up too much, though... probably only the elements that you need to be a bit more distant should feed into it noticeably. The ER patch is going to be much more useful as a blend tool, to give everything a common acoustic element... if something is blending in a little too much, lower the send level until it isn't, and if something is poking out a bit more than you'd like, bring the send level up a tick.
Anyway, that's a pretty common approach... Mike did a really good piece on it in Sound on Sound called "using reverb like a pro" that'd be well worth a read if you haven't already.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
I'll let you know when I try. It sounds interesting and not crazy at all ;-)
