Pick one.
Pick one.
use the top
Don’t worry about them for now.
2 OH and don’t use the hi hat.
Don’t use them. You don’t know what you’re doing yet.
Stop complaining and start mixing.
Stop whining about how depressed you are and post a 8 channel mix so we can start to help you.
im fully capable of complaining and working at the same time
hard to ignore the toms since they ARE the intro
but of all the pieces, im most clueless on the toms
You have them in the overheads. SKIP THEM.
I know. That’s why I said skip them. Thats because without your kick, snare, and overheads tuned and working together you won’t have a foundation to set them on.
omg, my head is going to explode
i think ill take up calculus to give my mind something relaxing
wont be posting up anything tonight. Worked on it for a solid couple hours but have nothing. Dont even know what im doing. Its way over my head. My original songs are nowhere near this BUSY so im just somewhat clueless here.
The whole recording just sounds dull to me anyway
maybe post something tomorrow but im not sure why because I dont feel like im actually in control of ANY of this. its just million parts flying all over the place. so even if I got feedback what would it do?? if someone asked me how I “mixed” even this barebones so far id have nothing to say. A million tom parts and busy bass lines and this and that flying here and there
nothing is isolated either, everything bleeds into every mic. forget isolated the snare or kick
Then skip it and move on.
The hell do you think you’d do with it? Follow it!
Yup. He needs an easier mix. He needs to simplify this one down to something manageable or move on.
Hey Jon Jon.
Reading the comments (yours & others) prior to listening to you mix I was afraid to press play.
Well, I don’t think the mix sucks at all. It has room for improvement, sure, but it has a lot of good elements in it as well. The main thing to improve for me would be the drums. They need to be more dominant in the mix. Especially kick & snare should drive the song at certain parts. The way I’d choose to make them more dominant is level (turn the fader up!), eq and compression. I’d start with simply turning up the fader and if that don’t do it, move on to the rest.
That being said…
That happens in every field. Medicine, politics, sports you name it. I had the same problem when I watched youtube videos from 15 different mixers. I solved that by choosing 2 or 3 of them that glued better to me as characters but mostly from the results of their work. That matched the style, the genre, the sound that wqas most similar to what I wanted to achieve.
Finally I’d agree with Boz & Jonathan that you should abandon this overwhelming 10 minute and 100 tracks mix and get going on a simpler one!
And most important of all… You are allowed to fall but you are required to get on your feet again! 
the reason I said that is because I feel it does me no good to randomly or blindly follow advice if a) I dont understand it fully, or b) if I dont hear what that person is hearing
im not so much concerned with this particular song or mix because its not my song to start with, im more concerned with learning and growing and getting my methodology and ear together
Just ditch the song and move on.That is maybe why it was used in a mix competition because it is problematic
Doesn’t look like anyone else has mentioned this in this thread, so I will: highly recommend buying and working through Mike Senior’s excellent book, Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio. It’s meant for people like us, and his style is really down to earth and accessible. The book is built on a series of hands-on exercises, using files provided at the book’s web page, so that you can get some direct experience and (hopefully) gain understanding as you go along. One of the very best resources I have come across, and it’s helped me enormously. Hard copy is under thirty bucks, and e-reader version a bit less than that.
I can’t recommend highly enough picking this up and working through it from front to back.
TL;DR
I hope this helps. I can use this advice myself, to be honest. (We can all use this advice.)
It’s all fucking subjective.
You have to accept this or you’re going to keep driving yourself crazy.
You have to remember that, and not try to turn art into something objective.
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.
But they (no one) CAN NOT tell you definitively how good your art is.
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. (me too AGAIN)
(This IS some of the best thinking about our music and what we do, gratz Christina)
Christina, these are some of the most important words in this forum about all of us and what we do, our art.
@Jon-Jon
A few words about “moving forward.” Keep moving…you are bound to move forward…just keep moving."
@Jon-Jon it’s not to your benefit to ask for opinions about your mix and then get angry and lash out at others because they gave you their interpretation of what they hear. You said, “should we go thru and pick out the overblown imagery and hyperbole? The potato chip thing. I didnt start this site or RR. Ostensibly the “bash” section is to give feedback so others can improve. Its pretty hard to draw conclusions from extreme hyperbole and abstract imagery. I mean, if we are going to tout “standards” as applied to art, then surely communication would have even clearer standards” Those are some angry words about something you asked for…if all you wanted were positive comments then you should have asked.
well no one really gets angry at negative feedback. Sure, we are annoyed and irritated to start with if we cant get something right. Aint nobody jumping for joy when they are struggling. On the other hand if someone is already visibly upset I dont see the point in throwing a lot of hyperbole at them.
Jon, I share in your pain. I listened to the mix. I can’t tell you exclusively as I don’t have any of my good gear hooked up via the net. I’d need a wave file or an HQ mp3 to download to really tell you how things sound to me. Based on my little logitech consumer system, it sounds like a decent enough mix to me. The only things I’d work on would be:
the toms being way too boomy. I can’t hear any stick hitting them. It’s all low end.
the kick not having enough click in the beater, and a bit of low mid mud. Pretty much the same issue as your toms…but not as bad. It sounds like a kick drum…it just needs more definition to me.
Everything else sounded pretty darned good to me. Voices were great, guitar sound was really good. I like the effects usage. I think you should use as much as you feel needs to be there as long as you don’t wash things out. Your issues are mostly eq, not effect related to my ears. Subjectivity alert: The snare could have a little more mid punch to it to give it a little more thickness…320, 640, or 860 to see what works best. Snare is ok, just a little paper thin.
As you know, you gotta have thick skin in this field…especially when you feel you’ve done a good job on something. I’ll share a few personal experiences with you, if you feel like reading of course. If not, stop here. 
Experience 1: I posted a mix on the old RR site. I worked on it for about an hour while talking to Will J Rockstar (old RR member) on Yahoo Messenger. I didn’t put much work in at all. I didn’t feel I deserved to win, but I did get into the finals. I felt it was a good judgement call that I made it to that point, and was pleased with the outcome. The person that did win, deserved it. I was just interested to see how well I could have done in an hour because an hour was all I had. So in this scenario, I was more than happy.
Experience 2: Tommy Lee had a contest for one of his albums in Indaba music. I had an “in” to have my stuff submitted directly before the contest opened up to everyone on Indaba. I wrote some pretty intense guitar and bass lines, and because Tommy’s style is a bit techno at times, and sort of not predictable, it forced me to be in an area I had never been in before.
I was so happy with my results, I was sure quite a bit of my work would be used on his stuff…or I’d at least win some of the swag he was giving away. I played for the songs, and totally stepped out of my “shred guitar” mentality. I altered my tones to sound more “for the songs”, I literally wrote pieces for these things that I had never written before. I can’t tell you how happy I was with my results.
Each day. Tommy would upload a video talking about all the submissions as well as who the winners were for the day. Each day that went by, not a single mention about me. The final straw was, he chose a guitarist playing stuff that was shred oriented. The issue with it? Imagine putting your hand on the neck and just playing anywhere as fast as you can! I was so taken aback by this! I could have shredded that dude in pieces and would have done it intelligently, and with melody!
Every thing I submitted was just tossed to the side and the people that he did choose were either terrible, or just added some sort of artistic creativity “for the sake of”. You know…how the word “unique” today is the new word for “suck”? Yeah, I’m telling you…some of these submissions were abysmal! I was astonished I didn’t even get a mention or a t-shirt, pack of strings…water bottle…nothing. It bothered me so bad, dude…I was sick about it and complaining for about a month. If I listen to the stuff I did, I can get in a depression all over again.
So I can feel your pain man, I really can. The moral of my story? I’ll never play for the songs again. I’ll play for me and what I like, and if someone doesn’t like it…oh well, I’m simply not for them. I’d rather go down swinging for the fences than to stand there looking hoping I’m doing the right thing. There comes a time to be be a puppet on a string, and a time to be yourself. The hard part is knowing which time it is.
Experience 3: Staind had a contest of lead guitar playing. Instead of me playing for the song, this time I roasted the song with intelligent shred. I won honorable mention in the contest and got an autographed CD. The dude that won had a bluesy approach, and that was more of what they were looking for. I thought other submissions were better than his, including mine…but there were at least 5 guys that I liked better than me and they didn’t even get a mention.
So, to sum up everything…you never know what people will like. Contests can sometimes beat us up especially when we feel we have done a good job, or the best possible job we could have done. It’s hard to say “have thick skin” when we are so passionate about this stuff, and you hear blatant issues with other work and people seem to bow down and blow them. THAT is what gets me. I’ll never understand how some people can post garbage, and no one will beat their brains in…and then you’ll have a good guy/girl post something, and they get the crap nitpicked out of them. Don’t waste time trying to figure it out…just do your thing and remember…the only competition is the competition within yourself to do better than you did last time. Doing better for others is too wide a spectrum. Do what you do…and if it catches on, cool. If not…your art simply isn’t the right art for those select people.
-Danny
@Danny_Danzi, if there was a contest for forum replies, I swear you’d win ever single time. Haha.
Speaking of Will J Rockstar… have you heard from him in a while? It’d be awesome if you could talk him into stopping by!
well ive mostly moved on about it. On the one hand, I understand that I am still learning…just getting going really. On the other hand, i dont really set out to NOT be in the top 5-10% of anything I do lol.
But it was my first month there and a huge project blah blah. Even at that, the hugeness of the project was only one aspect since i also have many flaws in my basic approach.
But dont worry, there will be another submission to this months contest in about 3 weeks lol. If the same thing happens I will be pissed again hehe. its my way of motivating myself
Haha thanks man. Yeah I still talk to Will once every few months. I told him about this place, but he said he wasn’t doing any more forums for a while. He’s doing good though.