Nice mix, I think that the guitars are a little beefed up in the low midrange however. The vocals sound a little pinched, not particularly natural. When it comes to mixing vocals, I find it effective to use as few effects as possible. I usually use compression, reverberation, a short delay in the left channel and a slightly longer delay in the right channel to make them sound wider, and then am VERY conservative with EQ. If it sounds good to start off with, don’t try to over-process it. Aside from a high-pass filter around 130Hz and a de-esser, I pretty much don’t use much EQ on vocal tracks. If they’re harsh I’ll use a high-shelf starting at around 2.5kHz to tone them down a little, and if they’re a bit muddy I do that but turn it up ever so slightly, never more than a decibel or two. The vocals in this mix sound a little nasally, like they’ve been artificially bumped up in the midrange. I dig your drum sounds though, very natural yet refined enough to not sound unhinged.
Redworks! Nice mix! It has a nice relaxed vibe, which is really how the track was played. (I like the panning feedback… ) I just think you could use a little separation between instruments. I think if you brighten your drums and egts it will separate them from your voices. Only other thing would be to even out the bass guitar. (I added an amp track for some more mids.) I don’t know what you’re listening on, but it sounds like there is too much between maybe 100 & 200. I would filter so that all the notes he (she?) plays are about the same volume. Then I’d still compress the low end only. I’ve been having good luck (I think) with a multiband compressor set to only work from 200 lower. There are many videos on this technique.
Anyway, nice work!
If you get the chance, please listen to my mix and comment; I’d appreciate it!
woohoo, finally someone mentioned that effect. I thought it was cool and i did a lot of tweaking to get (what i think is) right. I hear you on the bass. I think that the brightening is a little more a taste thing, i tend to like things a little on the dark side so i am alright with that as long as it doesn’t get mushy. Thanks for the feedback.
Great mix, sonically I like it, Vox is nicely audible before the band.
My main concern is low end. To me it feels a bit too full. As if the bass rules all around from the deepest subs to low mids. Especially the area where low mids of guitars meet the bass could use some fine adjustments.
Ass the bass lines are pretty fastly played, they need more definition. So I might let the kick rule in lowest area (40-60 hz) and maybe try the main bass more around 80 hz. To give more definition some sort of boost (eq/satruation/somehting else) around 800-1200 might give the nice touch to it. And after that I might check the low end of guitars around 150-200 is not disturbed too much by bass.
Those were just initial starting numbers guessed by me. What numbers works best in this case are probably somewhere else.
yep i was going for a big end but it seems to me that i have gone too big. i still haven’t had a chance to look at the mix again but i will definitely look at the areas you have suggested.
Hey there Redworks That nick sounds awfully familiar, RR maybe?
I generally don’t read the other comments before I post my own, so I could listen with unbiased ears, and give my subjective view on the mix in question. That being said, sorry if some of my observations are already listed above
OK, so the first thing that jumps out is the low end (120 Hz and bellow), and low mid-range (somewhere in the ballpark of 300 Hz). That low end is way too big and just overpowers the rest of the mix, eating up your headroom. Kick is buried somewhere deep down in there One thing you as a mixer could never do enough is referencing. Pull up some of your favorite mixes and AB them against yours, ALL the time while you’re mixing. You probably heard of a great plugin that makes your life easier (not needing to import various tracks in your project), Sample Magics - Magic AB. That one is a real time saver in this case. So as far as low end goes, there are workarounds if you do not have adequate monitoring, room etc. The one I found works best for me is Sonarworks Reference 3, basically they have a whole list of headphones they have calibrated, and turned their frequency response into a “as linear as it can” responses. I bet you have a pair from their list, as they have calibrated almost every model there is (at least the well known ones). So basically what you get is, a linear frequency response and no room modes, because you’re using your headphones. So checking your low end and comparing it to commercial releases is just that easier these days
As for the low midrange, I remember cutting out like 9dB out of the electric guitars, and about 7 on the acoustics in this area. Don’t be shy in around here, hit the EQ hard, because it;s where the muddyness creeps up the fastest.
I like what you have done with the vocals, the way you treated them, although the S-es, Shhh and T’s could have been more de-essed. I personally have yet to find a good de-esser that does the job right, so I just cut out all of them from the main vocal track and move them to a separate track. That way, they won’t be affected by any processing (high EQ, harmonics enhancers …) and you could even de-ess just that track, it’s easier to find the annoying frequencies this way
Love the panning electric guitar, really adds some movement and excitement in the mix
There you go, if you just clean up the low midrange, and control your low end (multiband compression is my favorite method) other parts that are more important would just jump out of the speakers, without you ever reaching for a high shelf EQ
Keep up the great work, Redworks
Thanks Zsolt for the good feedback. I am indeed the one and the same redworks from RR. The one thing i have been thinking about is the referencing thing and I think i will start a separate post on it one of these days.
The bass is a good sound in the sub range it missing some of the bite normally heard in this style of music. Not bad just different.
I do feel the bass mask definition of other instruments.
You might sudechaining a compresson from the kick to help seperate the two tones.
I like the vocal and rythem treatments.
Cool mix man…love the drums they are really solid to me…vocal is also strong…but yeah like others said…there’s a bassy thing going on here which is kinda distracting alittle, but good job man.
Hey Redbeard! I think your version turned out pretty good. As has been mentioned, the bass seems a bit too present in subs or something. It’s wide and fat and dominating the mix. The sound of the bass itself (that you got) is actually kind of interesting, maybe somewhat like Sting on “Walking on the Moon”, but of course that’s completely different stylistically. That bass tends to overwhelm everything else to some degree. Also, the lead vocal sounds a bit thin or “megaphone”-like, which separates it from mix I think. It’s okay, just a little unsettling, like the effect was taken just a tad too far. The effect would have worked great on just one section or phrase I think, to make it stand out.
I really like the guitar note delay you have at 1:40-1:50, like an echo, very cool effect and it fits very well there.
Hi Eric…I don’t think I can add much to what’s been already said. I like a lot of things about your mix, but the bass is just too overpowering.
I’m guessing your monitoring setup may not be telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth… which is probably the case for most of us working at home. Nonetheless, the only thing I could suggest is mix referencing on a number of different systems.
Yep usually i just post it in the bash this section and you lot let me know if it is working on different systems. for some reason i can’t get myself to post a contest song in the bash this section so … i am going to need to do a little more leg work on the next one. Thanks for the feedback.
) I just think you could use a little separation between instruments. I think if you brighten your drums and egts it will separate them from your voices. Only other thing would be to even out the bass guitar. (I added an amp track for some more mids.) I don’t know what you’re listening on, but it sounds like there is too much between maybe 100 & 200. I would filter so that all the notes he (she?) plays are about the same volume. Then I’d still compress the low end only. I’ve been having good luck (I think) with a multiband compressor set to only work from 200 lower. There are many videos on this technique.