Thanks for your listening. I did a Mix2 with better acoustics, better bottom, etc., I’ll update my initial post. Thanks again!
This is a great mix and I swear, I was totally going to do an anding like that myself so naturally, I think its awesome.
The wasy you used the guitar stabs is really cool and something I wish I had thought of myself, frankly, I’m a little jealous, TThe acoustic guitars are a bit too prominent in the begginging for my taste,
I think the vocals can stand to be even more compressed and a little less wide in the chorus, but that’s pretty much a taste thing as I can’t really find any obvious flaws.
This mix is going to “Keep me up at night” working on my own entry, great work!
tachin1: Thank you for the kind words! (Did you listen to my 1st mix or 2nd?) You should know that I still spend too much time on my mixes; I probably spent 2 full days on that. (Hard to tell since I did it an hour or two at a time…) I hear a lot of people saying they did their mix in 2, 4 or 6 hours; I’m not that fast yet. I get ideas as I’m doing other things. 
Anyway, let me know if you have specific questions, and thanks again for taking the time to listen and comment. Much appreciated!
Nice kick, I like prominence of the acoustics.
Very nice sounding mix, good overall balance, clear definition. Love the guitar part at 2:30. For me, this mix would need just some minor tweaks to sound perfect:
- acoustic guitars, I like their attack, it cuts trough the mix perfectly (almost too perfectly, (tuck them down 1 - 2dB and not throughout the song, somewhere it’s just the perfect level) but what I find is missing is the body, they are completely transformed into a rhythmic instrument, and it’s very hard to hear the harmony, the chord progressions, it has been scooped up too much. I know it is competing with the electric guitars for the most part, but trying to find a good balance with them is the most challenging part of this mix: too much midrange and you muddy the whole mix, too little and you lose the structure of the harmony. Also, I don’t know if you did any timing corrections, using Elastic audio, or anything similar (I don’t know what DAW you’re using) or just manually chopped the audio up and aligned it, but the guitars at some points slightly stray away from the beat (take a listen at say 1:13, acoustic guitar on the right). Now these are just minor tweaks, they won’t make or break a mix, but then again mixing is all about small tweaks that at the end accumulate to a great sounding mix.
- a personal taste: snare could be a fraction louder, I just like it more in your face, and also the closing guitar solo.
- these are just minor tweaks, but the one I would like to address the most is the feel of the song. To be a bit crude it just sounds a bit boring to listen to. Now, don’t worry this isn’t your fault at all, this is the material you’ve been given, and the song itself is rather flat and uninteresting. What you can do to make it more interesting is just ride the master fader a bit, give it more interest from one section of a song to another, for example transitions between verses and choruses are ok, but they could benefit of a slight volume increase to give it more of a larger sound (this is just an illusion, the louder is better myth, but it works). This especially goes for the instrumental part right after the second chorus, the song just remains flat and uninteresting, bump up the fader even more, make it jump out of the speakers and grab the listeners attention. You could even automate the master buss compressor (if you’re using one) so on the choruses it grabs the audio a bit harder, and gives it more punch, or even a stereo spreading plugin, say you keep the initial stereo spread for the verses and spread it up in the choruses. Throw in a shelf high EQ of just a fraction of a dB boost in the choruses… Heck why not combine all of the things mentioned and instantly you get a more interesting mix, that is moving not only in dynamics, but also frequency and sound field wise.
But as I said at the beginning: you did an amazing job!
Keep up the great work,
Zsolt
Thanks for the detailed comments, Z! Yeah, I didn’t really go the extra mile on this mix. I sort of rushed it out because I was supposed to start a project–and then the project was postponed! Ironically, I did have a music master fader going up a bit in the choruses and instrumental, but this was before 2Buss compression so the effect is not that drastic. And I actually do have Waves S1 Stereo Imager widening the choruses a bit…
- acoustic guitars. I was hi-passing them at 160 and running them thru Kramer PIE compressors. If I do another revision, maybe I’ll ride them, take the edge off with a de-esser or multiband and turn 'em up a bit.
- snare could definitely be louder (ALWAYS!
) - drums: I did quantize the drums; first time I’ve done this–mostly to see how well it worked. My main gripe was that the kick seemed ahead of the rest of the groove. When I lined up just the kick it still seemed weird so I lined up the whole thing (Cubase, hitpoint (transient) slice & auto fade.) Then I touched up the bass and electrics in a few spots, but I didn’t want to line up the whole tune… My guess is that it’s probably more noticeable to have the guitars out with locked drums than to have everyone moving a little. I just pocketed the acoustics and it’s much better.
Anyway, thanks again! It’s great to have the help of people with good ears & producing chops.
There you go, jut listened to the new version, great job, it sounds tight!!
As for the master fader going into the 2Buss compressor, that kinda defeats the purpose, the fader rides should be after the plugins chain (but before the limiter of course), I set this up via an AUX track in Pro Tools, that serves as a master fader, because Aux tracks are all post, and Master bus is pre, so anything I gain ride on the Aux is going on after the plugins (if I remember from back in the days I was working on Cubase, on the Master track first four insert slots are pre, and the other four are post?..correct me if I’m wrong), so you could do this by just moving your buss compressor down to the fifth insert.
I totally hear you on the kick drum being ahead, I though I was hearing things, even aligning the kick track with the OH and Room tracks to see if is in sync. The drums should definitely be quantized imho. It’s a drag, because as you said, once you have the drums tightened up, all the rest of the tracks need to be tightened as well, but here you did a great job, nothing to complain.
As for the stereo widening in the choruses, it’s not noticeable so you could push it harder (use a multiband for this, and go extreme only on the highest frequencies), but my guess is you are trying to preserve as much of mono compatibility as you can, which is always a win in my book, and therefore, little is to be gained from going too extreme here.
One of the best mixes I have listened so far, keep up the amazing job Mike!
Zsolt
Hey Z. I posted Mix 2 a week ago. (I assumed that’s what you originally listened to.) I don’t remember editing the ac gtrs for that, but I did smooth their top end. In response to your comments I’ve now relaxed the high-pass, added a de-esser and brought them up to bring out more tone. That will be in Mix 3 at some point.
Yes, I realize 2Buss fader rides should go after plugins. I usually do rides on a SUBMIX group/aux (which is after my “mastering” processing) and which feeds the actual stereo output channel (which only has metering plugins.) On Personality I rode a MUSIC aux (all instruments and no vocals, before mastering plugins) because I wanted the band to come up around the singer. Hitting the compressors a little harder probably didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t perceivable as a level gain… BTW Cubase now has 8 insert slots; 6 pre- and 2 post-fader, where I have Slate’s FG-X mastering compressor / limiter. People complain about “only” having 8 insert slots, but I’ve never needed more…
Thanks again for your thoughts. I am getting busier this week, but I would like to do another mix… less lacking in personality…
Yup Mike, that s what I’ve been referring to, it’s a great feeling when someone actually acknowledges someone else’s input responds to it, that is the only way to learn and to grow. I will be looking forward to your comments and ideas on my mixes in the future Can’t wait to hear the 3rd version I’ll be busy this week too, going to Venice on a 3 day shooting (I work as a field recordist also), so trying to wrap up on Personality, been working on it from yesterday, hope I’ll make it till the deadline Happy mixing Mike, hope to hear from you soon!
Nice production I like the various modifications to the original song, it is well done and not to abrupt.
Good job
Good luck
MIND BLOWING MIX!
great sound! lots of movement and biuld-ups! love it!
great job!
Pretty solid mix man…definitely think the balance is right up there…not sure the reverb on snare but all else is good to me.
I like this mix very much. It has punch and good tone.
One thing that I do not quite like is that there is quite a lot of reverb around the vocal. But that is more of a personal taste.
All in all - very nicely done!