Okay. One more run at it. I pretty much made all the tweaks that @ColdRoomStudio suggested. I like the touches with the reverb. Especially effective on the drums. I tend to not like a lot of reverb on vocals, but I added a moderate amount here. Not as much Gordie does on Fitz, but a lot for me! @miked, are my vocals still too loud?
Jamie, I gotta tell ya, I really love your vocals on this piece. It just works. There’s a lot of emotion in your singing. Very believable. To be honest, I keep thinkin’ I’d like to see you and your buddy do an arrangement of the Fitzgerald. Man! It’d be a great collab. I’d be glad to help with some acoustic guitar. Maybe someone could add some strings and electric? Just thinkin’ …
That’s sounding good to me on headphones, although I would agree with Andrew that those guitars could still come up more.
This weekend I want to grab all the various mixes and A/B them to really get some direct comparisons. I also want to play with the drums and bass some more to see how I can improve on those.
Thanks for the kind words and all of your efforts.
Listening at work on cruddy PC speakers, so no low-end love. First I listened again to your Fitzgerald comp.
The vocals are sounding really good! So now I’m listening with everything in relation that that.
Guitars sound really good and I agree, they could come up a little more.
I can hear the bass - nice job with saturation etc., and I agree, it could come up a smidge too. I am also wondering if it could use a little more compression to level the performance out so there’s not notes poking out here and it’s more of a steady foundation. (?) (Disclaimer: I’m listening on bass-less speakers and am only hearing the upper harmonics, so I may be way off here.)
The thing sticking out to me is the drums. They seem too loud now, and I’m not liking the clickiness of the kick drum. It sounds more appropriate for heavy metal or something.
This is getting better and better, and I am really liking the vocal. You’re bringing out performance really well.
You may already know/be doing this, but just in case - one thing you can do to check your mix is listen to it and your reference at very low levels so you can just barely hear them, and see what is poking out and most prominent in each.
Not just kind words, @skua: i’m serious about the Fitzgerald collab!
Hey, sometime over the weekend, when I have time, I’ll send you a link to d/l the project I mixed, with all my plugs, etc. I’l also render the tracks to stems so you can mix them yourself w/o necessarily having all my plugs. Most of mine are freeware, but I did use several of the Waves Classic Compressor Bundle. @Jonathan helped me build my plugin library over the holidays and his strongest recommendation for me was that I needed to add some FET and opto compressors. Glad I did. Makes a diff.
Thanks, Mike. This is so helpful. So here’s my next mix. So funny, cuz I feel like I’m dragging my feet bringing the guitars up even more. I say, funny, cuz I’m first a guitar player. I feel like I brought it up a lot more than I normally would’ve, esp when referencing Fitz. But then again, he’s got some other stuff going on in his arrangement. But, you and @skua and @ColdRoomStudio are all consistent in saying to bring it up. So here goes.
I agree, I do like the tone of the vocals and esp the bass. Also, I tweaked the kick a bit. Added more EQ in the 70-ish and 2.4K. Pushed it a bit more too. Good call. It was sounding thin.
Yeah, I do know that, but didn’t do it here. That was helpful. Actually, I got it to where I liked the balance, then turned it down and walked around the floor, listening in the next room. Could really hear then what you guys mean about the guitars not coming thru and the vocals being so much louder than the rest of the mix.
Here’s hoping I’m still heading in the right direction!
This sounds really good! …except, the low end, or lack of it. I think it’s just a matter of relaxing your high pass filters a bit or adding an EQ with a low shelf to boost it a little.
I put Sie-Q on it and turned up the “Low” and your mix filled out nicely. Easy fix and good mix!
This is your last mix Tesgin, I didnt really add bass, just moved it around a little and added a touch of solidity and clarity.
The backing vocals still bother me a touch, probably the added chorus is not necessary, and they should have some top end rolled off to send them backwards.
What do you mean by this? Honestly, I listened on my “mix checking system”, then after listening on my monitors, I began to wonder if I was “off” on the “missing the bass” comment…
I wasn’t sure if I loaded the correct version, so loaded it once more, Mike. Yeah, I have plenty of bass in my monitoring, I try to make my headphones and monitors ‘match up’.
I did add a little low end and some compression, but less than a dB in 3 places… It sounded roughly the same, for bass content, just a bit more ‘glued together’
I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but here’s another attempt at improving the guitars and bass. I also changed up the drums to AD2 (thanks @Tesgin for the drum map for MT Power Drum Kit 2). I tweaked some velocities in the drums and made some adjustments to the vocals.
I think the bass might be the biggest change. I tried splitting the track in two. One is the DI low-passed and compressed. The second being high passed and with some added TS-808 clone grit and blended back together. The EQ on the guitars seemed to help open up a lot of space.
Is there an improvement?
I did add a little space at the start… but due to how I started out it still is too abrupt. I’ll know better for next time. This was only supposed to get the song together for practice and kinda took on a life of its own!
Definite improvement. The bass sounds good. However, as Vaughn said, the kick is pretty loud. I think if you pulled up a reference and listened to them side by side you would hear it. I think if you lowered that you’d have pretty good balances all around. …And by the way, please take my comments as merely an opinion of another guy trying to figure all this stuff out.
Thanks @vtr and @miked. I’ll have a listen to the kick / snare relationship and compare to some references. No worries… all comments have been greatly appreciated.
So here’s another tweak. As suggested by @vtr and @miked I’ve boosted the snare a tiny bit and lowered the kick a tad. I think they are coming across about the same at this point? I added in a tiny bit more of the room mikes as well. After being away from it for a week, I suddenly noticed that the right guitar was quite prominent and jangly so I balanced the L and R guitars out a little better.
mix 6:
Now i have to find another song project and hopefully remember what I’ve learned on this one.
Sound good! I think if you lower the bass a little you’re right there! I like the FX chain you’ve got on the bass too. It gives the song a nice drive from down below.
The right guitar is really jangly now, did you post the right one? The guitar balance was ok before, Im not worried if they don’t poke out. It only requires the kick / snare / bass / guitar BALANCE to be right… the tone overall is adjustable/tweakable, as long as its fairly even - left to right…
I think it’s just a matter of relaxing your high pass filters a bit or adding an EQ with a low shelf to boost it a little.
