I’m not even sure what to say about this one. I’m calling it a “moody, slightly avant-garde pop song.” My computer can barely handle all the tracks and effects. I guess just let me know what you think about anything! I’m going to head in this direction for a while. Sort of branch out and work on my production skills. I had a ton of fun with this track. 
original version:
updated version based on comments:
How is your FX bussing structured? Have you tried raising the time on the pre-delay of the long verb to move it a little bit further away from the attack of the source?
The snare is overpowering the vocal. I recently got chewed out by an M.E. for this myself. “Is this a vocal track with a drumset in it? Or is it a snare drum track with a background vocal?” lol. I felt pretty silly but since then I’ve been a lot more conscious of when snares and kicks were disproportionally loud.
I think the vocal is too mellow. I would try pushing 5k or 8k. Then again, the problem might disappear after the snare gets pulled back.
That kick doesn’t have enough attack. It almost disappears when I switched the monitors into 2 way mode. There’s ways to keep that kick faint and back in the mix without it being so buried.
The ah’s at 1:04…I would see if I could texture those a little more to tonally set them apart from the lead vocal. Maybe by raising a hi-pass…you could try a lo-fi plugin. You could add mids at 1K then use a tape distortion…bunch of possibilities there. If you wanted to keep the tone more pure, you might be able to put a doubler and a subtle time based mod effect on them (if you want). Izotope trash might be a fun plugin to experiment with there.
At 2:41 that loop that comes in is pretty cool. I like what its doing for the song. I think panning it left made the whole thing feel lopsided though. It was like someone veering hard left in the car and never straightened the setting well back out. I would have added something on the right side to counterbalance it, or use Panther or Waves Center or maybe split that into a stereo track and use mid/side redistribution to spread it out evenly left to right.
I think the loop is also too heavy in the low mids. I would try using a single band vocal de-esser on that percussion loop and point it at super low. 300-800hz with a very fast attack and a semi fast release. That might help control it and glue it into the mix better.
It was weird at first, but I like the absence of highs here. I’m curious to see what some other people think. Everything sounds soft, gentle, and well controlled. At first I was gonna recommend hitting your 2 bus with a Pultech, Maag, Millenia, or Massive Passive style EQ if you have a plugin that emulates one of these. That or the Slate Air, or Slate Eiosis. Or an EMI/Chandler Curve Bender type plugin. Anything that can lift the top without hurting anything.
Aw! Cool transition effect at 1:04! 
…I keep noticing new things in this. I would consider transitioning that background loop out of the first chorus with a more gradual or perhaps FX enchanted fadeout.
The hi-hat like thing on the 2nd verse…Love the delay effect. Have you considered using a ping-pong type delay there? Or perhaps adding a second layer of delay (using pinging) underneath the first delay that’s timed and eq’d different
yeah, the delay or other fx on the vocal are a bit too heavy handed so the vocal is a tad distant for my tastes. As stated that could be helped by longer predelay so the vocal has a chance to get heard a bit before the delay kicks in. Or “sidechain” the vocal into the reverb or delay so that the reverb/delay is quieter when the vocal is actually singing and then it comes in stronger during the gaps
sometimes u also can use more than one reverb on a vocal. for instance u might have a shorter reverb that isnt mixed really loud and it stays on all the time just to give some amount of basic space or depth to the vocal and then u also have a longer/bigger reverb that is sidechained or manually turned up or down etc. You could just put the shorter verb directly on the vocal but maybe have the longer verb on a separate track and send the vocal over to it blended in to taste etc
Snare maybe a tad too loud while kick is maybe too quiet. Balancing kick and snare is one of those classic things that has to always be addressed since they can both sit around the same frequencies etc. Sometimes u have to take a spectrum analyzer like the great free one “SPAN” and find the main frequency for kick and bass. for me the kick fundamental frequency is usually lower like 60-80hz and the bass fundamental tends to be around 100ish. Then the kick can have some attack heard up around 3-4k which can help it be heard in the mix. So sometimes there are things that can be done like giving the kick a small boost at its main frequency, lets say 60hz, and then give the bass a small cut at 60hz. Then give the kick a small cut at 100hz while giving the bass a small boost at 100hz. There are a million vids about it online
Same for stuff like vocals and snare or vocals and other instruments etc
Songwise i was only going to comment that the chorus repeating without variation 4x was a little too repetitive but you changed it nicely on the out chorus so me personally Id do something similar on the first chorus…maybe just vary the 3rd or 4th repeat to something like just “weakness” or “im so weak” or “im weak” or whatever lol.
Cool song though!
just wanna say, production, mixing, engineering etc etc is HARD and then to put that on top of singing/writing/playing instruments is of course another order of magnitude harder. that being said, I think it is also the way to go for people working alone. At least that way you can put out decent sounding demos etc and eventually you can self produce stuff that sounds great and maybe just send it off for mastering and u end up with a pro sounding thing for not too much $$$
The way it has worked for me so far is that I just sort of let things flow naturally. For instance, take four of the overall areas I work on: singing, guitar (technical aspects like lead playing), songwriting, mixing. Okay, I WISH I had some sort of detailed schedule for spending x amount of time working on each area, but I dont. I take it as it comes.
So like I do my main singing warmups/exercises while driving to work 4x per week. 30 minute drive. So that gives me that background of consistency in my singing voice…thats my baseline on that.
Then for instance at the end of January I participated in a songwriting challenge where we wrote 5 songs in 5 days. So obviously I spent every second doing that during that week. other things fell to the back burner
Then at the start of February I had an unforeseen physical issue come up and I missed 2 weeks of work. I had just joined a site dedicated to mixing so basically all I did for those 2 weeks was mix songs and also catch up a lot of my guitar scales etc. But I didnt sing AT ALL! Being out of my “singing exercises while driving to work” didnt help my singing lol.
So now I am back to work and will fall back into a more “normal” routine. Since I havent really jammed much or written or recorded much in about 3 weeks, I feel the hunger for it and that is the way it normally works for me.
So whether my approach is ideal or it is a loser approach…i cant exactly say but it is what it is lol. Take it for what its worth. No ONE area improves quickly this way but they all continue to slowly get better over time.
Peace, JonJon
I like this Cristina. I’m not a big fan of pop in general but this is appealing and is different from your other work that I have heard.
It doesn’t seem avant-garde to me; a lot of pop artists are using effects and samples liberally, but that’s a subjective judgement on my part. Are you listening to pop; are you using a reference track?
You may want to tweak the effects as has been suggested but that’s a judgement call I think. My only nit would be the snare sound, I’d like to hear more meat (don’t know the right term!) on that, it’s kind of thin for my taste, but pop fans do like 'em loud I guess.
Vocals are just pure awesome. Is this the new mic?
Love all the effects on the vocals!!
Agree with the snare tone and pitch color not agreeing with the overall resonance of the song. Maybe try to play with the pitch of the snare or maybe pull it back a bit more.
Also is the vocal at 2:09 “my self esteem is ____ ?” saying what I think it is saying ? lol
1:12 background vocal improvisations needs more compression, probably everywhere they come in. The grace notes are surfacing out in a weird way.
superb song!
For me the snare sound is totally wrong for the song
Thank you for all the detailed comments! I will look into each of these in more in depth as I have time to get back to the mix. I think I need a little break from it to get a fresh perspective myself, but I’ll post an update in a few days.
“My self esteem is shit.” Yep! 
It’s also my wife’s favorite part! Haha.
It’s a bit of a mess. I typically will throw FX right on the track itself, but I had so many tracks of this project that I broke it up and used sends. But I felt like that limited me (out of laziness) to using a lot of the same effects on tracks where I usually would have customized them for each. I did struggle with a build up of reverb on all the layered vocals, even though I EQ’d it aggressively. I used a side-chained compression on the delay so that it would be very quiet whenever the vocal came in, so as not to clutter the track. Maybe I could try a similar thing with the reverb to tame it more. There is a pre-delay on the reverb, but a short one. I found dryer vocals in this song to sound really bad, which is why there’s so much reverb.
I think I had sort of a Tove Lo vibe in mind when I started working on this song. I really like her music. I wanted to use a reference track of hers while mixing but I just don’t have any mp3s. I used to have this site that worked well for a “youtube to mp3” type of thing, but it is gone now and I don’t trust any of the other ones so I’m kind of stuck! I guess I could buy it, haha never occurred to me because I always just stream stuff I want to listen to. I could also try getting it from the library…
It is the new mic! However it is a whole 'nother level of laziness when it came to the actual recording. I have a makeshift booth set up in the basement where I record my vocals, but this time I decided to just do it at my desk upstairs. It hurt the tone a bit because of the room sound, but was a lot more fun to do and took way less time. And I’m prioritizing fun lately.
Cool track! - really interesting production - great melodies…
The overall style is very Lana Del Ray-ish, particularly the ambient treatments and the rhythmic flow.
I’m just listening on cheap speakers at work, so I can’t tell a lot compared to what I pick up on my studio monitors. I’d like to have another listen when I get home - Nice work!
Ah. I figured that might have been it. There’s nothing wrong with putting the thing directly on a track if you’re sure it won’t compete with anything else down the road in the mix. If you have a high channel count I would get in the habit of importing your global busses and subgroup busses strait off the cuff as soon as you decide you’re done with the tracking phase.
A trick I use to make certain things sound verb heavy without using a lot of verb is to use feedback looping. That’s throwing delays on things then feeding the delay tails to verbs that are already instantiated. Helps clean up clutter.
Remember you can also use a lo-fi effect on verbs. This preserves the weight and density of a verb, but un-clutters space in the upper registers of the overall mix.
You have a wonderful voice. Your voice has a great range and you use that range for expression. You sing very emotionally connected to what you are singing. The accompaniment music is somewhat etheral, that’s quite nice.
It sounds like you are singing behind the drums, almost as if you’re hiding. Some of the other instruments seem too far forward also.
You have what I call a “real singers voice,” it’s beautiful. It seems too far behind the music.
Your voice is strong, you have outstanding range, your singing is expressive.
Please mix it so your standing center stage, way out front of your band.
Your voice reminds me of Paula Cole, she sang with Peter Gabriel and was incredible om the song, In Your Eyes, the version Secret World Live. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=evN6DIGPIJM
Sing it…loud!
Claude
I like this and you can feel the potential when it is finalized. The snare drum for me is wrong, too loud, too much verb. There almost feels like a lack of percussion, like the set needs to be more pop or tech sounding, more cymbals or higher pitchy soundy thingys (HPSTs) I think throwing some processing on all the vocals, this song is a really good song, very well done over all.
Oh I love some of her songs! I should try that as a reference track too, or maybe inspiration for my next song!
That was such a great video, thanks!
Love it! I was thinking Elizabeth Frazier from the Cocteau Twins circa Bluebeard. Try this one maybe?
– or maybe this one? –
Maybe pull the drums back and soften them? I don’t think the ones you are using work very well with this song. And maybe add some more warmth back in your vocal… Beautiful song!
@Jonathan gave some fantastic tips on reverb on another thread which I was just trying to sort out before I came here. I think you could totally use it on this tune. Let’s see if I can find it…
Here it is:
Just had a listen on studio speakers - Sounding good to me… I’m conflicted about the snare - Sometimes an interesting obnoxious snare sound is better than a boring “perfect” one… a case in point:
I think you have the opportunity to go the “road less travelled” with a song like your track here. I think a song like this one might provide some sonic inspiration:
One thing I would like to hear is some more low end in general and more punch from the kick drum. Tricky to bring out depending on your monitoring system/environment, but worth pursuing.
Write while listening,
nice atmosphere and vocal stuff. About the arrangement itself, amazed by the the deepness and the transitions, drums are cool, ad lib is fun. The song is short, just perfectly sized. Cristina, you’re growing, more and more.
I just have to give you some advices about the production itself. This is my (personal) vision :
You wrote you had a lot of fun writing/producing that song, I’d have bet you did. Overall amazing work one again, congrats Cristina !!!
Here’s another artist this reminds me of: Nicola Hitchcock from Mandalay
Good stuff! 
I just edited the original post with an updated track. Thanks again for all the suggestions. I know that most people didn’t like the snare, but even listening back with a critical ear I still liked it! I did turn down the volume a bit though, and made the vocals louder as well. I feel like it has a nice balance. Still not perfect, but this is the final mix for me and I’m ready to move onto the next song.
Nice improvement - The snare is sitting better now. There is more low end and punch in the mix too.
A couple of suggestions:
Darkening up the reverb by low passing it substantially would improve the clarity of the vocal. Clarity is not an issue here, but sometimes, if you want to keep the vocal lower in the mix for artistic reasons, darkening the reverb can help it maintain clarity at a lower level.
The bass synth is nice and loud now, but it’s uneven in volume. Since bass parts don’t generally need much in the way of dynamic range, both evening it’s volume in midi and with very assertive compression can help it to sit in the mix. Some eq might be in order too, as it is muddying up the 300hz range of the mix to my ear.
One production tactic that I think would work really well on this is the “lo-fi/band limited intro/verse transitioning into the big hi-fi chorus” thing. This can really add some contrast to a production.
I did a little playing around with the track to demonstrate what I mean - I added some really active percussion elements to the chorus to bring up the excitement level and move the song along. I think you already have some background percussion happening, but I think if you pushed it harder in the chorus section, it would add more movement and excitement, more light and shade. Something along these lines:
