Hey guys how are doin?
This is the first time i’ve finished mixing this song with all the elements in it.
My judgement of sound at this point is very bad as i have been mixing the whole day (and night)
How is it doing on your end? I hope you could help me out. Thanks in advance guys
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I think it all sounds well balanced. I do wish the low end had a bit more meat to it. I can’t think of a good way to describe it, but I feel like some nice clean bass tone blended in with the distorted bass would beef it up a lot.
It’s not super deficient as it is, but enough to make me feel like it’s missing something.
Actually, scratch that. I went and compared it to some reference tracks, and the low end seemed fine. But something is still making it feel less heavy than I feel like it should. Maybe too much upper mids on the guitars?
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Hi Boz thanks for the feedback. I did blend the bass with the distorted tone.
The truth is, I’m struggling to let the kick cut through better. Its battling with the bass and the guitar. Do you think that’s whats missing?
the kick resides on the 100hz range and not much on the lower ranges. If I only had waves maxxbass then it’d be solved. Still looking for other options though. Maybe I’ll try to replace the kick drums. thanks very much for the input
I think the only thing that’s missing here is that the mix a bit one dimensional, every instrument sounds fine, and there’s a lot of energy coming through.
Compared to this track by trivium, your track almost sounds like its in mono.
I’m nitpicking really, you’ve got some great sounds, just get them to be a bit more lively with a little more dynamics.
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Thanks @tachin1. I’m not a big fan of trivium and I havent heard many of their songs but this track is killin. Wow thanks for sharing this. I may have to do some more listening to trivium. About the song I posted, do you mean dynamics in the songwriting aspect of the song? or in the mix itself? thanks for the input bro.
I’m talking about the mix.
On second listen, I think that the only thing that’s missing is that it’s hard to hear the melodic component of the guitar riffs.
For example, on your track check out the riff at 1:16. The rhythmic component is tight and heavy and if you pay attention you can sort of make out the notes played by the guitar, by comparison check out the Trivium track at 1:29. Obviously not the same thing but the guitar melody is very obvious.
In the chorus at 0:53, where it’s dialed down a little bit keyboards are brought in to reinforce the melodic line played by the guitar.
I’d also try to get a wider sound from the drums to make more space for the guitars.
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Wow thanks for the in depth analysis. I really needed that. I will take a look at that guitar tone and make an updated mix.
Hi @tachin1 and @bozmillar. Here’s an updated mix. Thanks for helping me figure things out.
You are correct boz. there is too much 1k on the heavy guitars.
There’s also a problem frequency on 120hz on the guitars which fights with the kick.
Here’s the newer mix.
How’s it sounding?
Ok! i took a listen through (the most recent version) and here’s the first impressions… plus I’ll address a comment above. Note that these are my opinions and based on things that I do when I mix metal stuff (which is mostly what I work on). Everyone’s mileage may vary! Sorry if this is long-winded!
- Generally it sounds really cool!
- I think the verb on the vocals are making them sit back a bit too far. For vocals in this genre, I prefer less verb, some delay to give depth, compress the shit out of it and have it more “in your face” without sitting on top of the mix. In the chorus (or maybe pre-chorus?) there’s some gang vox and the verb sounds good for those, but the lead gets a bit lost with the same treatment.
- Guitars and bass tones are great, but I think they’re sharing a lot of frequency space. I’ll deal with all this in a second, as it could be related to the kick issue you mentioned as well.
- The mix generally sounds a bit “crunchy”, which I don’t mind, but it could also be indicative of compressing/limiting a bit too heavily on the 2-bus. That’s more of a subjective thing I think so take that with a grain o’ salt.
Ok so… guitars, bass and kick: I think I would have liked to hear a bit more separation between the guitar and bass tones. In this genre, you certainly want them to blend in a bit with each other, but in some parts I wasn’t sure which was which. I think that’s an EQ thing, and how the bass is being mixed. What I generally do (and I think is common in this genre) is split the bass in two, one with a clean low-end and one with the distorted mids and whatever high end info you allow in there. You may have done that, so I’ll save the long-winded explanation, unless you wanna know! High-pass the guitars to where they still have some balls, but it stops fighting with the bass for that frequency range. Sometimes I’ll find a mid-range frequency in the bass to boost as well that helps the bass poke out a little bit, because I love to hear that grind-y bass tone and love to hear it a bit separate from the guitars.
For the kick, I actually really like how the kick is sitting in your mix, I can feel it, and it’s not obnoxious, like some metalcore mixes can get. Maybe a little high end to help it poke through a bit. It’s hard to tell through the headphones I listened on if it was fighting much with the bass guitar. One trick (again, a pretty standard thing for a lotta people) is to put a multi-band compressor or dynamic EQ on the bass track (or just the low end track if you’ve split them) and side chain it to the kick track, so whenever the kick hits, it ducks the fundamental out of the bass track. Not heavily, but enough so that the kick punches through a bit more. I’ll also do this with the snare and guitars, as the 200ish hz of the snare gets quickly eaten up by distorted guitars… and this genre loves it’s gigantic snare sounds.
Alrighty, there’s some stuff to chew on, I’ll give it some more listens and see if anything else slaps me.
Thanks!
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wow thanks. this is golden. I really appreciate the in depth review and I am learning a lot. you are right about those fighting frequencies. The band used an 8 string guitar tuned to drop E. very low to the extremes for my taste and the the bass used was a 5 string tuned to B (which was logical). There is indeed a lot of work to be done in the mix especially in the master bus compression. All your hunches are correct. I really admire how you;ve deciphered every mistake I did with this mix. Very accurate. It actually makes me wonder how you’ve figured everything out. You are gifted with your ears and I really do admire that. I will tweak each and every suggestion that you have made because I am guilty of the mistakes I’ve done with the mix. Super thanks for the in depth review. I’ll work on it a lot more and remix it the proper way. thanks again. cheers.
Brian