Piece Of Me - Really liked it !

[marcelsemelka]

Hi guys,
this is my third mix I posted on this board.
First mix was "Broken Man" by "Speaking Softly", second was "Devil's Words" by "Actions".
Feel free to check that out, too

I really like that song. Not my genre I would listen to the whole day, but those E-Guitars have some energy, man...
Did some basic things, low cut here and there, especially the vocals, that already have some effects on them, had some nasty low end stuff on them.

Guitars have been compressed and pushed to dominate the mix. I think, that sounds pretty good for this genre of music.

Accoustic Drums have been recorded pretty good, only the snare I mixed some of the sample based track into it.

All in all, the mix is pretty loud with only little dynamics (and that while I am a huge fan of dynamics), but for that genre of music I really like the outcome.

What I did in a list:
- Some basic EQs on the stems to clean up (Low/Hi Cuts etc.)
- Basic volume and panorama mixing (some automation on the stems (like intro spreading from mid to stereo, some guitar automation)
- Compressed E-Guitars and Bass
- Vocals already had effects (room) on them, only low cutted them for a clean up and stereo widned one of the stems

All done in Cubase in approx 3-4 hrs

I really would like to get some comments from you guys and/or (constructive) criticism.

Regards,
Marcel

[Blitzzz]

As always I listened to your mix on regular speakers and not on my monitors. Your mix was very bright which is generally not a bad thing. The low end could be beefier, the kick needs more oooomph. The snare sounds really, really weak compared with the rest of the instruments - turn down the bottom mic by 5db and bring the other snare mics up. The sound of the bottom mic is not very important for this song - use automation to bring it up in the bridge but turn it down in all other parts. The toms need to come up - I can barely hear them in the first chorus. Try to reduce the mids and bring them up by 2-3 db.

I don't know if you use parallel compression for the shells of the kit but it would be a cool way to give the whole drumkit more beef. Send the snare mics, kickdrum and toms to a seperate channel and use two compressors: one with a very short attack and medium release, and the other one with a medium attack and quick release. Now bypass one of them and bring the fader up until you can hear the parallel track in your mix. you should aim for 10 db compression on both compressors. now listen to both compressor settings (always bypass the other compressor) and use the setting that sounds better to you. Overall it should make your mix fatter and solve most of the problems with the snare, kick and toms.

[Stickman]

Hey Marcel,

great volume of your mix, but your guitars needs to be cleaned up in the lower mid section. They are very boomy and masking kick, a bit of snare and toms.

As Blitzzz says, try to use parallel compression to add punch to the drums. Vocals nice and clean!

So yeah, take a listen to my mix ;-)

Cheers, Eric