well evidently I have never done one mix right yet. Doesnt matter ive posted dozens of mixes here etc. Someone can say “it sucks”. okay, it will continue to suck until I figure out how to do something different.
Its one thing to say something sucks but its another to give some sort of clear instruction to improve it
So Im pretty lost right now because I feel I have nothing to build upon. forget first base, i can even get my cleats on at this point…cant even tie my shoes
I’m sorry, is Bruce Lee beating the shit out of you? Then quit sparring with him and learn from him 
Forget getting the whole mix right. Just figure out how to get your kick and snare sounding like theirs.
omg
you dont remember me asking about Vh poundcake drums only and all of yall told me it was stupid to try to get the drums right without the rest of the mix??
I mean, these guys throw a plug on the kick and they are done in 2 minutes
All tracks are different.I have mixed the same track 20 times and it still sounds shit ,the shit is fully embedded in the tracking .Other tracks are easy 1176 on the snate add 7 k BAM sounds great .Its just a matter of keep plodding away im afraid and you will get there just don’t give up
because believe me everyone goes through it
dunno man. one can go in circles endlessly an never get anywhere
I normally default back to “im intelligent and creative and talented and I can figure out anything” but at the moment I have to question all of that. The whole music creation thing is so elusive. At least when u go to a gym and work out, in one year you WILL have something to show for it. Im asking myself what I have to show for the last few years ive dedicated solidly to “my music”. hard to see what its worth right now
Two different things. I didn’t say get the drums right. I said get them sounding like the instructors did. You can’t mix drums out of context. But you can observe a kick and a snare in isolation and take away something meaningful from that. Same with a vocal. Same with a bass guitar (as @terryhesticles was doing in his previous thread).
For now, best to think of drums as recording an ensemble of 10 different instruments. Start by focusing on get the three most important ones under control. Namely the kick, snare, and hi hat. I don’t care if you spend a whole day mixing a 4 bar loop of soloed kick/sn/hh. Keep playing with it until you understand whats going on. Then add overheads. Then add a bass. Then add a guitar. Then add a vocal and repeat the process.
Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off.
The Buddha would say “release attachment”. Keep moving forward, no matter the obstacles. Release attachment.
I agree. Figure out how to exit the circle.
totally agree. if I knew which way was ‘forward’ id move on. but if I knew that, then i wouldnt still be back here where I am lol (asking same dumb sh*7 I asked 2 years ago)
Wow so much replies here…
I didn’t listen to it all but the one thing that sticks out to my ear is that the toms are way too prominent and the fact that the EQ is “flawed” on them only makes it worse. There is is a color tone which is close to an F note in them, and the song is in G minor so this constant F drone is kind of annoying, in addition to burying most of the remaining instruments in the low range (bass and kick drum in particular).
I would cut the frequencies that relates to the low F notes on the toms EQ (87, 175 and 350 Hz) to start with.
You have to be “present to the present moment” if that makes sense. Forget the past. How do your feel “right now”?
despondent, hopeless, frustrated, stupid, dumb, ignorant, foolish, untalented. pretty much that lol
Don’t be so hard on yourself mate. I have heard far far worse mixes that that from mixers that have been doing it years
yeah, im sure every element I touched does indeed suck. so how to 'fix" these things u mention??? it it just volume differences between the elements or are we talking eq/compression/reverb?
It’s been said. Mix more songs. That’s really the only way to get better. Self pity certainly isn’t going to get you any better.
the flip side of that is the definition of insanity…doing more of the same thing but expecting a different result. It just hit me really hard this time because I somehow had it in my mind that I was actually making progress and that my mixes were getting better. Not sure how that got into my mind
So it kind of hits me hard that of all the songs ive mixed in the last 2 years that essentially i havent even mixed ONE decent one. Not even one. Even just taking into account drums only. Not ONCE have I hit upon the magic combination for kick, snare, hi hats?? just 3 faders and I cant get that right?
This can not be reality, this has to be some sort of twilight zone
the randomness and subjectivity of it all is what kills me the worst. if I were bowling id be able to see if I was throwing a strike, I wouldnt need someone else to tell me if I had a strike. if it were baseball id know if I had a base hit. I wouldnt need someone else to tell me i had a base hit
But so far (evidently) I cant tell myself if I have a half decent mix. I have to spend hours and then put it online and wait for whatever random person hears it that day and factor in whatever random mood they happen to be in for them to tell me it sucks
Where is the magic elusive path people somehow find where they have their own ears properly trained? id love to find that place
The nirvana you seek is within yourself. Only you can know and understand when you have listened enough to be the expert you want to be. Realize that even then, you are human and subject to change on a minute by minute basis. Being expert is an average over a long span of time. Look within for your wisdom and knowledge, not outside.
You can start here. It’s been working great for me, Dave and Cristina.
I can relate. Hear me out.
When it comes to good vs. bad, music is subjective. Mixing is subjective. Drum sounds are subjective. It’s all fucking subjective.
You have to accept this or you’re going to keep driving yourself crazy. It’s not bowling, where a strike is a strike. It’s art, where sometimes, somebody paints a red square on a canvas and people drool over it for some reason. What you’re producing is always art. You have to remember that, and not try to turn art into something objective.
That being said, an artist has many tools at his disposal. With mixing, you have your ears. You can train them to hear subtler and subtler differences in sounds. They’re still just a tool. And then you have your engineering skills. You know what plugins do what. You know how to use them to change the sounds. You get faster at this as you go. Less experimenting and more precision. These skills can only be practiced and measured on their own, though. You cannot use a final mix in order to gauge these skills. This is the objective part. Are you improving at TrainYourEars software, or whatever kind of other ear training? Are you knowledgable about your software? If someone said, “make this vocal less harsh” would you know how to do it? If someone said, “I don’t want the guitar to stand out so much,” would you know how to do it? There are countless examples. You can train these things, and you can measure your improvements because they are measurable.
When it comes to a final mix, you are in the realm of art. Stop looking for validation when it comes to your art. That’s a black hole and you will drive yourself crazy. It’s wonderful to hear other people’s opinions. They can give you new ideas, or maybe provide a little extra weight to a hunch that you already had. They might have opinions about how good it is. But they CAN NOT tell you definitively how good your art is. Not even the best mixer in the world, or a whole panel of them, can do that. You have to do that for yourself. You have to know whether or not you like a mix. You have to take that responsibility back for yourself. You have to own it.
I think that if you can differentiate between skills and art, you’ll have a less frustrating journey. I hope this helps. I can use this advice myself, to be honest.
Considering the track JonJon just posted, wouldn’t you say that there is some loosely defined range of commonly accepted boundaries, though still somewhat subjective at the end of the day?
I don’t think you can have it at both extremes. If all mixes are completely subjective, then sure, there’s little validity to someone else mixing standard. However, if you submit it expecting it to make the top 50, you automatically concede that there must exists some boundaries of that standard, even if you don’t understand those boundaries, don’t know how to mix within them, or you don’t agree with them.
I’m having to grow in that area. I’m finding out that is pretty futile to stress out over a .5 db fader automation move on a snare bus if there is a perfectly acceptable range of about +/-2db that fader can be sitting anywhere within and still get the job done. Where I agree with you is that things are not cut and dry. They are not black and white. But like…rating mixes or submitting them for review doesn’t even have conceptual meaning if the a standard doesn’t somewhat exist.
?? But would’t you say the reality of art is that its also something we share? So there’s a me/you or a you/“I” dichotomy of expression there that can’t go completely unaccounted for. I’d be like if I invited you and your wife over for dinner, agreed we’d do chicken fettuccini alfredo, its fair to say that the pasta, béchamel, and protein are 3 necessities of ‘culinary art’, even if in my view, serving a deconstructed fried chicken burger and calling it fettuccini is my expression of the dish in its ‘evolved’ from. Social ramifications aside, you might not be able to make a conclusive value judgement on the dish, but you certainly can on weather it falls within that commonly accepted standard or not since you’re the one being tasked with listening to the song.