"dune rider" mix

[Benbass1991]

Hey guys, lemme know what you think!

[20000 Hz Under The Sea]

I really dig the way you treated your vox and especially the 2 rhodes layers at the end - nice!

[APZX]

Imma be honest here for a second. I really like the guitars in this version. The bass not so much. The vocal and drums were also very well done. But really what stood out to me was those guitars. Fantastic detail and a great overall feel.

[JohnSmith]

Nice mix, very 'oldy' style, like it !

I just regret that the bass is not or louder, or more defined. Same for the kick, i understand the tone it has, but its lack of power is a shame for the most "rock" parts of this song.
Guitars are nice even if i find them very "mono" on the intro.
This seems a hard song to mix as it has different parts which are completely different and the challenge to make it sound like an entire and glued song is tough ! You managed it pretty good. Just focus on details will improve your mix drastically !

Good job.

Xabi

[Benbass1991]

Imma be honest here for a second. I really like the guitars in this version. The bass not so much. The vocal and drums were also very well done. But really what stood out to me was those guitars. Fantastic detail and a great overall feel.

Hey man, thanks for the feed back . what about the bass didn't do it for you?

[APZX]

Hey man, thanks for the feed back . what about the bass didn't do it for you?

Well, there was bass and then there wasn't bass. Much like you pointed out my snare missing your bass seems oddly non-present. Could just be my monitors, hearing, what have you. But it just isn't all that present in the mix.

This is something that I feel kind of ties to just how tight you mixed the guitars. Not that there isn't bass, vocals, drums, or organ. The vocals have a nice tight sound if ever slightly over brightened IMO. The drum's cymbals sound a little to sustain heavy to compete with the guitars, where I feel something such as expansion to increase the attack and decrease sustain with EQ that gives some slight enhancement to attack and sustain would have been better suited. The Hammond is far too dull to compete with the guitars (the single biggest reason I added distortion to them in my mix, found leslie/chorus/flanger/phaser kind of took away from their clarity). The bass is in a very similar vein. The guitars are just so forward and tight that one would expect that the bass guitar be the same way. Whether it be from distortion mixed in low, bringing out the string, enhancing the attack, etc . . .. There just isn't any of that. It is just kind of a disappointment when you consider that while the guitars do have a lot of low end harmonics they don't get low enough to really give that cemented foundation. Just my thoughts and opinions.

[Benbass1991]

Hey man, thanks for the feed back . what about the bass didn't do it for you?

Well, there was bass and then there wasn't bass. Much like you pointed out my snare missing your bass seems oddly non-present. Could just be my monitors, hearing, what have you. But it just isn't all that present in the mix.

This is something that I feel kind of ties to just how tight you mixed the guitars. Not that there isn't bass, vocals, drums, or organ. The vocals have a nice tight sound if ever slightly over brightened IMO. The drum's cymbals sound a little to sustain heavy to compete with the guitars, where I feel something such as expansion to increase the attack and decrease sustain with EQ that gives some slight enhancement to attack and sustain would have been better suited. The Hammond is far too dull to compete with the guitars (the single biggest reason I added distortion to them in my mix, found leslie/chorus/flanger/phaser kind of took away from their clarity). The bass is in a very similar vein. The guitars are just so forward and tight that one would expect that the bass guitar be the same way. Whether it be from distortion mixed in low, bringing out the string, enhancing the attack, etc . . .. There just isn't any of that. It is just kind of a disappointment when you consider that while the guitars do have a lot of low end harmonics they don't get low enough to really give that cemented foundation. Just my thoughts and opinions.

Hey man, i listened back to the mix and did some referencing and you are totally right about the bass (really the low end in general) of the mix. It lacked a fatness that was needed to give the mix an additional layer of punch. I've attached a second mix, lemme know if you think it works! I appreciate the honest feedback!

[2barefeet]

Hey man, I dig the shimmering ping pong delays on the guitar racks. I felt the Chorus could have used some more umph though and the voxs too dry, but over all I think It sounds really warm, would be good for a vinyl reproduction I think.
Some more emphasis on punch might add more excitement.

Keep it up.

[Mike Senior]

[Just realised I was listening to the first version of the mix -- hope the comments are some use nonetheless!]

The backing balance seems pretty respectable in general, so good work on that, although I think you could give the kick more low end -- a shortcoming of the raw recording, I'm afraid. What kind of muppet recorded this?! I think you could also probably do more to help the snare sustain, because it's coming out as a bit of a 'blip' rather than a 'bosh'. I suspect that there may be some gating going on here, which may be part of the problem -- everything sounds a bit lacking in blend, where the kit should pretty much blend fairly naturally straight out of the box because of the way it was recorded.

The vocal when it arrives sounds a bit stuck on (it's got reverb, but not the kind of thing that's going to blend it with the backing) so that the illusion of a band performing together is weakened. The long-term dynamics are another area to reassess, I'd say. The choruses feel like a step down rather than a step up, which doesn't feel right to me. Some more obvious buss compression would probably be in keeping too, and it's the kind of thing you need to cater for at the mix, rather than at mastering, I think.