Hello all, so this a mix I spent a couple days on. I listened to the original mix only briefly because I didn’t want it influencing my direction, but I wanted to take note of some of the panning. I went head-on into the mixing process and checked myself occasionally using some references I thought would fit the style; SR-71 (Right Now and What a Mess), All-American Rejects (Dirty Little Secret…fun fact, I got to perform this with my Navy rock band for All-American Rejects themselves!), and late Blink-182 (Girl at the Rock Show).
Good stuff!! Great panning and eq. 2 things for me: voice specially during verses could come down a little bit. And also during the verses, there’s something in the kick I think, sounds almost like a slap back delay, I’m not sure what it is. But this s a great mix!
Hey Chase, really digging the snare drum tone on your mix. Nice controlled low end too. Big, spacious and epic sounding are appropriate for this track, I think, and you’ve nailed that aspect.
Some of things I noticed -
I think the slap back delay on the kick drum @rick78 is talking about may actually the transient from the wide panned acoustic guitar. Taming that pick transient would get a less distracting tone on the acoustic IMO, although it’s often a hard balance to get.
The snare drum reverb/ambience sample in the choruses sticks out a tad too much as being obvious in the way it changes the tone - it that could be a little more finessed and subtle, it would work better IMO. A great idea to create impact, but a little too obvious in the execution. I’d like to be able to just sense the whole mix getting bigger, rather than have my ear drawn to the mechanics of how it is getting bigger.
Finally, one thing I’ve noticed in most of the mixes here is the breaths. At this stage in his development as a vocalist, Dylan had the habit of gasping for breath - so his breaths actually contain a pitched element that doesn’t relate musically to the song, and it becomes intrusively distracting to me when I listen to them, especially since the become very loud after compression is applied. @Emma or someone else who is properly schooled in vocal technique would probably be able to identify the reason for it, but I assume it comes down to poor breathing technique.
When I did the original mix, I spent a lot of time correcting those breaths to get them to sound more natural. My solution was to find a set of breaths that had a “purer” unpitched sound and then replace the ones that sounded bad.
Hey! Thanks for taking a listen to my mix, I appreciate the constructive feedback! Initially I didn’t quite understand what you meant by the kick slapback, but @ColdRoomStudio identified it as the acoustic picking transients. It was actually a conscious decision to leave it in for rhythmic effect, but it now seems a bit distracting, my bad! Again, thanks for the listen!
Hey, thank you for the kind words and feedback! I kinda touched on one aspect of the feedback in my reply to @rick78, but yeah the acoustic picking is there on purpose, which in retrospect was probably too distracting for the overall mix. If it was for a client I would certainly make another revision without it.
The breaths got to me as well, and really debated on taking them out or not, ultimately I decided to leave them in for whatever hair-brained idea got into my head, ha! And yes, the more I listen to the compressed version of the file, the more I regret just not taking them out at the beginning.
Well done. This is a personal taste thing but i do find that this mix is a little bright for me. That is not a bad thing though because others will probably really like that.
Good stuff man… In my opinion the guitar is too bright…
drums and bass are great. big and spacious… there’s something on the kick… like a click on upper mid high
vocal need more lift
overall good job man !
Bashing as I listen. First the overall sound is great although I find it a bit too crisp, which I believe is coming from the acoustic transients and highs. The vocals sound great, well featured.
I would have preferred the whole thing a little dryer though, but we’re into taste thing.
The distorted guitars around 2:20 have a kind of flanging that is accentuating some bad high fizz which is not appealing, I would have notched that down (or perhaps dial down the effects used here).
Overall, a good job though!
nice wide mix… be wary it don’t collapse to mono well. the drums could step out front a bit in my opinion. otherwise the guitar tones are solid and bass is nice and full.
As said above a very appropriate mix. Nice use of brick wall limiting on the mix I might be a bit much causing the mud some of the others are mentioning.
There’s a lot to like here, the lead guitars are very tasty, the vocals are interesting and I like the way you incorporated the acoustic guitar without just hiding it in the background.
This is a very “wall of sound” type of mix, and while I appreciate the fullness in the mix I also think there’s some focus lost on what’s happening. I think toning down the reverb on the drums and the delay on the guitar would allow the tunefulness of the song come through.
Good mix. Maybe too bright el. guitars to my ears, Guitars a bit fights for his place with vocals in choruses (hi-mid frequencies).
Too fast fade out in the end for me - but it has nothing to do with sound :¨).
Good luck.
Guitars sound really thin. But good levels and I like the snare. Room effect not so much. I see that it is quite hard to find good FX for this song. Great job.
