08-06-2012, 11:52 PM
Hi Ian, and welcome to the Discussion Zone! Been out of action a bit over the last couple of weeks, so I'm trying to catch up with some mix feedback now...
Nice warm-sounding bass/kick combination, as well as a pleasantly airy sound on the upper percussion. The subtle sense of ambience you've generated also appeals to my own personal taste -- dry, but with a sense of blend. Focusing on the vocals as you've done is a good idea with a performance as assured (and nicely recorded) as this one. For this reason, I think you probably don't need to push 3.5kHz quite as hard as you have -- it can get a bit fatiguing in general, not least because the vocal tone here has some inherent resonances around that region which pop out rather sharply, especially during the choruses. Check out the first syllable of the word 'volunteer', for instance, to get an idea of what I'm talking about -- and whether, indeed, it matters to your ears!
The downside of pushing the guitar and piano parts so far back in the mix, though, is that it seems as if the mix doesn't really have any body to it -- the vocal feels somehow stranded rather than just large and upfront, which is admittedly a difficult line to tread. I reckon you could turn those instruments up at least 3dB as long as you dipped out a few of the key vocal frequencies to minimise the masking penalties. The low levels of these backing parts (and the fiddles too) also seem to weaken the transition from the verse into the chorus, which relies a good deal on the way they fill out the texture.
Speaking of EQ, I'm not quite sure exactly why I feel this, but my suspicion is that you might be EQ'ing everything a bit too hard, and boosting rather more than you're cutting. It's a hunch, but there's something about the slight edginess of the mix sound overall that makes me wonder about that. In general, working with EQ cuts is better for getting a natural sound, in my experience. It might also be that you're EQ'ing a bit too much in solo, and not enough in context, because it's seems as if the guitar, snare, fiddles, and vocals are all competing for the 2-5kHz zone. This is always a tempting region to boost in solo, because it makes practically anything sound clearer and more forward in the mix, but if you try to enhance everything in that way you'll just end up with a more forward-sounding overal mix tonality, without actually having differentiated and clarified the instruments themselves.
Nice warm-sounding bass/kick combination, as well as a pleasantly airy sound on the upper percussion. The subtle sense of ambience you've generated also appeals to my own personal taste -- dry, but with a sense of blend. Focusing on the vocals as you've done is a good idea with a performance as assured (and nicely recorded) as this one. For this reason, I think you probably don't need to push 3.5kHz quite as hard as you have -- it can get a bit fatiguing in general, not least because the vocal tone here has some inherent resonances around that region which pop out rather sharply, especially during the choruses. Check out the first syllable of the word 'volunteer', for instance, to get an idea of what I'm talking about -- and whether, indeed, it matters to your ears!
The downside of pushing the guitar and piano parts so far back in the mix, though, is that it seems as if the mix doesn't really have any body to it -- the vocal feels somehow stranded rather than just large and upfront, which is admittedly a difficult line to tread. I reckon you could turn those instruments up at least 3dB as long as you dipped out a few of the key vocal frequencies to minimise the masking penalties. The low levels of these backing parts (and the fiddles too) also seem to weaken the transition from the verse into the chorus, which relies a good deal on the way they fill out the texture.
Speaking of EQ, I'm not quite sure exactly why I feel this, but my suspicion is that you might be EQ'ing everything a bit too hard, and boosting rather more than you're cutting. It's a hunch, but there's something about the slight edginess of the mix sound overall that makes me wonder about that. In general, working with EQ cuts is better for getting a natural sound, in my experience. It might also be that you're EQ'ing a bit too much in solo, and not enough in context, because it's seems as if the guitar, snare, fiddles, and vocals are all competing for the 2-5kHz zone. This is always a tempting region to boost in solo, because it makes practically anything sound clearer and more forward in the mix, but if you try to enhance everything in that way you'll just end up with a more forward-sounding overal mix tonality, without actually having differentiated and clarified the instruments themselves.