I was going to say that Alan!
I think you do rush to much in general (out of enthusiasm, I guess? )
Iāve listened to a lot of mixes from you over at Mike Seniorās discussion zone, and I think youāve improved a lot by your hard work and tenacity, basically, youāve got some great consistency that allows you to turn out a good mix in a few hours.
Now all that is missing is to go beyond that and put the time to turn out great mixes!
Iām absolutely sure you can do it, but it seems like you either get bored of a song or maybe youāre not ready to put the time in to get it to a superior level. I suppose itās the 80/20 rule. You get that 80% good mix out of 20% of your time, but the 20% that would make it really awesome takes 80% of time and maybe youāre not ready to do that? I donāt knowā¦
I hope you donāt mind me saying that because I think you are a good mixer, and I believe you could be a great one!
As a disclaimer: Iām donāt consider myself a mixer, which is why I donāt enter mix competitions, but I think I can recognize a good mix from a great mix. Too often you fell short of it because you rushed out in the end, and I think itās a shame so this is why Iām telling you that.
Now this one in particular is good again, although I find it rather bright *TBH itās true of most of the mixes Iāve heard so far, so it must be the material/genre itself that leads to that.
The acoustic is perhaps too predominant and the fizz in the distorted guitars would need taming IMHO. What could bring it to the next level though would be to make it less āstaticā work on various sections with different sounds, add transitions effects, etcā¦ I donāt know.
Cheers mate im listening to what you have to say and thank you .
Its a hard long lonely road and has been for 4 years since I started.
Its all a learning curve .we Shall give it another 4 then have another listen.
Yeah I do get bored of working on shit that no one is ever going to make sound good
but its all part of itā¦Thanks for the encouragement as o need it sometimes .
The kick drum has a narrow high-frequency bell curve that can be brought under control with a frequency compressor.
I recognize a larger problem with inappropriate drumming and/or timing issues than anything with your mix.
Listening to your mix one final time - If I were working on this mix, and this is what I had 2-3 hours in? I would work on keeping the vocals above the guitar. More specifically, there are places where vocal phrase tails are fading down to a volume lower than the guitar. There are a half dozen things you can do to remedy this.
There is some cool stuff Iām liking here in terms of creativity. Sounds like some phaser on the bass? I like it! I might suggest limiting it to the moments when it is poking through the instrument sections. Thatās just my opinion. If Iām nitpicking, Iād say there is a bit of buildup in the lows/low mids, but not severe. Snare seems just a tad hot to me. On my monitors Iām hearing it over the vocal. It IS a good sounding snare though Just coming down a hair would bring it all together in my opinion. Iām impressed with how well you dialed in the tone on the drums. Excellent job!
Not sure if you heard it, but there is some out-of-tune stuff happening on the guitar tracks. You can really hear it when the song first kicks off. Is there a tuning plugin at play here? It may be struggling to correct a chord rather than individual notes, as theyāre intended to work. Hope that makes sense.
Pretty good separation of guitars etc, and yet it all sounds like itās the same band. Overall, this is a solid mix man!
Youāre well on your way. Most anything I hear would be pretty minor tweaks. I really like the creative touches you added without losing the feel of the song. Good job!!
Hey there takka360
I liked some elements of your mix, but there are still some issues Iād like to point out that could drastically improve your mixes in the future. First of, and by the largest amount itās EDITING. This alone could make your mix better 50% without even touching a single plugin. Timing, tempo issues are a must in this kind of material, where the drummer isnāt hitting in time (his beats are in the metronome tempo, but whats between the bars is played too loosely) If you have a good, solid drum performance, and a bass guitar that hits along with the kick, you have yourself a backbone for creating a great sounding mix. So go ahead and learn the Beat detective in pro Tools, it will save you hours and hours of manually slicing the tracks, among other great features that it provides. When you tighten up the drums, go in and do the same with bass guitar, then acoustic guitars. You will hear how the feel of your mix is drastically improving and you havenāt even started mixing.
Second, check the bleed, and eliminate as much of it possible as you can. It creates very nasty phase issues, which when heavily compressed creep up out of nowhere. For instance, that hi hat is clicking all the way throughout most of the song and itās really distracting (and itās just the bleed from the snare mic). Gate it out, or find a single snare hit (thereās one at the very beginning), use that one snare hit and replace every other, or just replace it altogether with some sampled one. Problem solved
When you prepare your mixes this way, you will find out how less processing with plugins you will need to do, in order to achieve a better sounding mix.
Hope that helps out, and just keep at it, donāt loose faith, itās been a looong lonely road for all of us
)