Here’s another mix I’ve done to keep my hand in - a bit of an indie, shoe-gazy thing. Have a listen and let me know what you think, if you feel so inclined. Thanks:
It was originally a “Mix Rescue” project in Sound On Sound which you can read about here
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mix-rescue-motor-tapes
Here is the “Mix Resue” mix of the song:
Started to do a “quick” listen out of curiosity, then stayed for the whole thing. Cool song and fantastic mix! I listened on my low-end PC setup, which is where I check my mixes. I made a couple of mental notes, then listened to your reference for comparison.
Your mix has a tangible 3d quality to it. The depth, clarity and the richness - front to back, left to right. You use of the reverbs… Really really impressive! (If you’re doing something different or have a new process, I’m keenly interested!)
The tiniest of niggles which is probably just a taste thing - the bass hook. It was poking out a bit for me and was getting a little tiresome by the end of the song. I had the impression after listening that it was popping out, then disappearing until it would pop out again. So maybe just leveling the bass line a little bit or pulling the automation back a couple of dB’s would help?
Thanks for sharing Andrew. I always enjoy hearing what you do with your mixes. 
Well done again. I was going to say that it sounds a little too restrained. Then as i was typing that i started the mix rescue version and that one is a little too unrestrained. Just personal taste thing but i feel like I would want a mix where you get a little more edge without going into sloppy.
Wow What a great sound. Love those hard L and R bgv’s It must be just my hearing because I say this way too often. Can’t hear the main vox especially right away. when you say reach the shore on the other side, it was very clear. This track has major potential:) congrats
I was just thinking the other day, that with all the pro’s in this forum, I hear very little of their music???
While the ‘Mix Rescue’ version sounds ‘bigger’ it also sounds a little murky or muddy, like things are fighting for room. Andrew’s mix doesn’t sound quite as ‘full’ but it’s got an amazing airy quality. There’s a real sense of ‘space’ in the mix and the positioning makes things more interesting to me. I think it sounds terrific.
Like @miked, I ended up really getting into the song. Good stuff! I’ll check the mix when I can, but I’m going to also dig into this band’s other stuff too. Really cool!
Finally got down to my studio and gave this another listen. It sounds even better. I’ll say too the the “poking out” bass riff from my comment above is much less noticeable on my monitors. So it may be just an “issue” with the smaller speakers. (or me. 
)
Andrew, can I ask if you replaced the snare in your mix? Because yours is that much better than the reference.
Thanks for checking it out, Mike!
Thanks Mike - Yeah, when I heard this track, I was taken by the dreamy, ethereal quality it has, and I just wanted to try to create that kind of feeling in the soundstage. The thing I did differently with this mix was that I used longer reverb times, and I also used Soundtoys Crystalizer quite a bit. Just lots of reverb, delays, distortion, compression and generous use of filters to maintain clarity. With the vocals, I pushed the “air” frequencies quite a bit too, even on the harmonies.
I actually struggled a bit with the bass - that bass hook has a really pokey resonance to it that is hard to keep under control. If you mix the track, you’ll know what I mean - it’s around 125hz, I think, and I ended up using some multiband compression to keep it under control. I got it to the point where it didn’t bother me anymore, but I guess there might be systems where it still comes out quite pronounced, particularly if they are prone to resonate at a similar frequency.
Thanks Eric. Yeah, the beauty of this track is that you can take it in a few different directions, depending on how you process things. You could go full “My Bloody Valentine” or “Jesus & Mary Chain” on it, but I was thinking more along the lines of “Cranberries’ ‘Linger’/Dream Academy ‘Life In a Northern Town’” (along with some local bands here who no-one has probably heard of).
I wanted to go there too. I felt I did a get close after the solo right @ 3:21 to the end - it gets a little nasty in that section. 
Hey Paul, yeah this is not my music, it’s just a mix I did. Regarding the low vocals - it’s kind of part of the style. That said, I LOVED the vocals and I wanted to make them pop out a lot more than the “Mix Rescue” mix posted above.
I’m not sure if you’re referring to me there, but let me assure you: I am definitely NOT a pro musician or mix person. 
While I have done some projects over the years that have been paying gigs, my profession (the thing I actually make a living at) is signwriting and graphics. That, along with a lot of other responsibilities takes up most of my time. I squeeze in my music after I get the really important stuff done. I take my time at it, because I like to achieve the best possible result I can within the limitations of my experience, abilities and equipment.
Wow thanks, Jamieson - It’s good to hear that it stacks up ok. Yes, it’s a very different sound. The Mix Rescue mix is very heavy in the midrange, which gives the impression that it is louder. I noticed exactly the same thing about the MR mix as you describe - the vocals feel a little murky and veiled. One other thing I wanted to do was have a more punchy low end than the MR mix, which comes across as a little thin on my studio system.
Yes, the song is cool - the production is pretty well done too - at least, the way all the parts fit together made sense to me.
I didn’t replace the snare, but I did augment it with some samples. I tried to get the raw snare sounding as good as I possibly could. Because the drummer didn’t hit the snare very hard, it was a bit difficult to extract some energy from the drum performance.
I first tried a tactic where I use a parallel transient plugin on the snare close mics to just highlight the “tick” of the attack. That worked quite well and improved the energy quite a bit. Ultimately though, only some high velocity samples could give me the impact that the song needed.
I don’t think I’ve ever completely replaced a live snare with a sample. I like to use samples like seasoning - just to add flavours that I feel need enhancing to make the most of the song. In this song, the samples probably constitue about 25% of the finished snare sound.
I just thought of a couple of things that I did a little different on this mix…
One is something I haven’t used in a while, but I first experimented with it on a couple of mixes I did back in the RR days during the “Slate Cup” of 2012. I felt the chorus in this track needed an energy lift, since the choruses seem to get more dreamy than the verses…so I used the old “wide stereo ping-pong 16th note delay on the snare trick”. Because the delays are in time with the track, it’s subtle enough to not be noticed as an overt “effect”, but it just creates this great “forward movement” energy.
The other is re-amping already processed guitar sounds…
As a slight aside related to the subject, using distorted guitars to lift energy is something that had seeped into my subconcious over the years. Of course, it’s an age-old tactic, but I remember becoming acutely aware of it in a production sense when I was listening to some of the Talking Heads stuff way back in the 80’s as a teenager - particularly for the “outro energy lift” which is somewhat a signature of theirs’. You hear it on “And She Was” from “Little Creatures”, but the first track I remember hearing it on by them was “Once in a Lifetime”. Actually, I was hoping @ptalbot Patrick would single it out for attention in his “Deconstructed #2”, as I think it really makes the outro of that song… but I digress…
As I described in reply to Eric above, the outro from 3:21 felt like a bit of a let-down after the frenzied tom-toms under the wild fuzz guitar solo. I tried a few tactics to build the energy even higher after that. I took the “middle” guitar (the guitar part that opens the track and pretty much plays all the way through except in the choruses), ran it through a guitar amp sim with a fairly distorted sound and then effect that with a really choppy tremolo plugin set to 16th notes. The cool thing about having a slightly distorted guitar sound with heaps of reverb on it is, when you run it through a distorted guitar amp sim, the reverb just turns into the wildest sounding harmonic feedback - It sounds like the guitar is going to explode! That, combined with the rhythm of the tremolo set up a really cool, squalling rhythmic texture. I was so chuffed with it that I found some other parts in the song where the same guitar played the same chords, put 2 different performances on tracks panned left and right and ran them through guitar sims as well…
One more thing I added to that last section was a HUGE, absolutely smashed, “explosive” compressed snare room sample, because sometimes more is more 
The combination of all those things in that final outro bit got me the energy I was after.
Thanks for the great reply. I always learn something from your mixes. That was a good SoS article too! Good stuff all around!
Actually, you know what, I should have. And there was an earlier version of this video where I actually did, but then I recorded it again because I was not happy with the length and the pace of the thing, and somehow I left that off. But I agree with you that the distorted guitar in the outro of that song is really lifting the whole thing, especially by the way it adds some harmonic content that was more or less absent throughout, it creates a new “context” that changes the way we hear the rest of the tracks…
It’s really interesting to listen to both mixes. I like yours a lot! It has more of a punk rock feel, whereas I think the mix rescue one has more of a dreamy feel. One thing I really like about the mix rescue version though is those wide guitars on the chorus. Yours has a lot more clarity. Great job.
Yeah no worries Pat - cool - I really enjoy your breakdowns! Hindsight is 20/20 and all that… I hope that didn’t come across as too much of a “Monday’s Expert” comment.
Hey Riley, thanks for listening and commenting - much appreciated!