Personality mixed by BengtS

Archive Manic Mix-Off (Finished)
#1

This is my try at mixing this great song. I went DI only on Base and Electric Guitar and Mic only on the acoustic guitar.
I wanted it to be rather punchy and big. Let me know what you think!

Cheers!
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0 voters

#2

Hi BengtS,

I like the general vibe & energy.
I like the tones and really like the snare most of all, which was the hardest to get right in my opinion.
My only suggestion would be about the hi-hat.
Especially in the 2nd verse that is more sparse it sounds very unatural and at times out of sync.
Other than that, in my hobbist mixer ears, I think you have a very good mix!

Good luck

#3

Thanks for your feedback. :slight_smile:

The high hat has been squeezed a lot, so that is the reason, I guess. Perhaps I should have used extra reverb on it, to get it bigger?

#4

If it was me, I would bring it down 1-2db, edit it so it hits on the correct measures, make it a bit thinner by carving out all the low stuff under 1000Hz or more and see if that would workā€¦

#5

Well, I already have a high pass at 800 Hz, so that should be more or less ok. Actually it seems that most of the hi hat is from the overhead mics. On that channel I have some compression and a transient shaper. Apparently, that affected the hi hat too much.

Reducing the overhead by 2dB seems to work nice and I get more from the actual hi hat mic in the mix. That way it sounds much more realistic. :slight_smile:

Thanks for pointing it out!

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#6

I noticed this also. I believe itā€™s not the hi hat itself but the room mics. Had the same issue and did a little eq to tame the evil hi hat!!

#7

Love this mix, veeery even and well distributed! Besides the hat which is probably the room micā€™s that are a little broad on the nasty hat mids, I feel the floor tom a liiiittle boomy. Thatā€™s about it, probably one of the most evened out great mixes out there!!!

Good luck maestro!

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#8

Thanks for your kind comments! :slight_smile:

#9

I like the width and room on the guitars, and the guitars sound really good. Pretty nice room on drums too (especially that intro).

That is what I experienced too. The hi hat is in everything, and strongly. I had to do a lot to work around that. I think yours is bit on the loud side. The stick click on it and the loud splashy open hi hat are a bit much sometimes. The hi hat shuffle before the 1st verse is a nice touch though, being loud enough to be a featured part of the song.

I feel there is some low-mid ā€œbloatingā€ in the mix, or excessive low end. Mostly the kick and bass. Itā€™s not necessarily muddy, as everything is pretty clear, but just not enough low-mids cleared out to keep everything well balanced and crisp. It seems to be stepping on the low end of the guitar. If I had to guess Iā€™d say between 100-200 Hz and 400-500 Hz could use some EQ reduction or sculpting.

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#10

Thanks for the the explanation!
At the moment, all electric guitars have a sharp high pass at 200 Hz. Perhaps I should try and cut at least some of them at a higher frequency?
On do you see another way to clean up the low mids?

#11

@Stan_Halen @BengtS Only very good drummers know how to control their hihat.
This mix is hot !
Love the oldschool kick sound.
Maybe is it a bit too distorted ?
David

#12

Thanks for your kind comment!

Of course it was a trade off. If I wanted more body, I had to clip the snap, thus the distortion. If I backed off the kick, the distortion went down, but then I lost some of the bottom end from the kick.

When mixing, I made the choice of having more bottom end also at the expense of added distortion.

Perhaps there is another way to get both the bottom end and still not distort as heavily?

#13

The freebie ā€œBark of dogā€ from Boz digital can help. I use it sometimes. It is clean and easy.

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#14

I will try it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

#15

I donā€™t like to HP electric guitars any more than that. Iā€™m guessing this is an accumulation of frequencies in the same spots, from the kick, bass, electric guitars, and maybe snare ā€˜bodyā€™. You can try carving out space for each instrument/element in the mix, which is very common for kick and bass (cut bass where kick resonance is at ~70Hz, cut kick where bass resonance is at ~120Hz, etc ā€¦ just picking random examples). Check with guitars and snare too, up into that 400Hz+ range.

I think itā€™s important to tie the bass guitar into the electric guitars too. Find that place where they connect well and the bass will fill in the low end of the guitar and the guitar will accentuate the bass driving the rhythm. Since your bass is the ā€˜bridgeā€™ on both the kick and the guitars, maybe look at that first and make sure it ā€œplays niceā€ with both and doesnā€™t create excessive low end, and that the guitars breathe a little bit more.

#16

Aaa, I see!

When searching for the buildup, I found that the room had a bump at around 450-500 Hz range, which I could reduce. That also removed most of the buildup.
The same bump is visible also in the overhead. But as I already have a 350 Hz cut there, I did not touch it further.

The snare was fine, with very little above 200 Hz, so I did not change that.
The base also has a lot above 200 Hz, but reducing that was not good for the tone of the base, especially when the base was playing without the guitars. so I decided to keep it.

Two of the rhythm guitars also had a lot in the 200-500 region, so I took out 1-2 db at 350Hz on both. that also increased clarity in that range.

But in total, reducing the room had the biggest effect. I took out about 5 dB at 450 Hz. I made the high pass steeper at 24 db/octave, up from 12 db/octave, with the frequency set at 220Hz.

So thanks once again for pointing this out to me! It really helps me improve my mixing! :slight_smile:

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#17

Hey Bengt! Loving the energy in your mix - it really encapsulates the excitement of the performance. It sounds like you have a fairly healthy amount of mix compression on this, but I just love the attitude it gives the track. To me, that counts for a LOT. It sounds to me like you mixed with your heart and not your head, which is really the ā€œX-factorā€ of mixing.

I usually find I can overlook a few errant frequencies if the mix moves me, & yours does exactly that!

Having said that, there is a bit of low mid mud happening. Somewhere around the 150-300hz mark needs a bit of attention. Even a bit of mix buss eq might help clear that up.

Probably the most noticeable mix issue I hear is the lack of definition in the mids of the bass guitar. I havenā€™t auditioned the mix on small speakers, but Iā€™m guessing the bass might become somewhat MIA in that situation, due to the lack of action happening in the bassā€™ mids/high mids. I often find using a guitar amp sim with a bit of mild distortion can really help a bass DI to ā€œspeakā€ in that area of the mix.

Nice work! :thumbsup:

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#18

Hey @ColdRoomStudio thanks for your kind remarks!

Cleaning up the low mids is definitely worth while. So much going on there. Prime suspects for mudding things up are the room mics, the overhead, the kick and the electric guitars. Perhaps cleaning up will be enough to hear the base again?

I will also look into adding some more distortion / saturation to the base.

Thanks for pointing it out to me! It really helps me improving my mixing!

#19

Nice mix Bengt, a lot of energy, it really makes you wanna move :slight_smile:
There are a few things iā€™d like to address that I would have done a different way, that might just benefit the mix. First the thing thats most noticeable for me is the overall compression being applied to the whole mix, it does work, and it creates that sense of movement, but it is there all the time, and it just makes the song sound flat. There are no differences between the intro and the verse, the verse and chorus, the chorus and the verse, and so on, everything is pumping all the time. Your mix could benefit from some master fader rides, and/or different master compressor settings for different parts of the song (the verses donā€™t really need to be that pumped up and in your face, that does take away a lot of the impact when the chorus comes in).
Other things are just my personal taste so take it with a grain of salt - kick lacks the definition in the upper mids, for this type of song I believe itā€™s very beneficial (but the snare is top! ). Bass guitar lacks definition too, which could have been solved with some sort of distortion amplification plugin, while filtering out the low end (on a parallel send off course). The guitars are just a fraction too much high passed for my taste, if you were looking to clear the muddynes in the low mids this way, I think other tracks could have benefited from a larger scoop in this area, while leaving some of the body of the electric guitars in.
Other than that you did a great job :slight_smile:
Have fun mixing,

Zsolt

#20

Hey @VirtechStudios !

Really appreciate your comments and analysis of my mix!

Putting in some dynamics to the different parts is a great suggestion, which I will definitely try out.

As also others have pointed out, the main mix problems are in the mids. This is something which I have to work on. There are so many competing tracks in that region, which makes it difficult.

Thanks for helping me improve my mixing! :slight_smile:

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