Need Help and suggesstions | Mix is Almost there but not quite professional sounding

Lekhan

New member
Need Help and suggesstions

Hello Guys,

Recently i have been working on a mix that i arranged.Below are the details of song and mixing techniques used.


About the Song :

Song contains Vocals, Piano,Drums , Bass guitar, Synth pads , Few saxophone leads.
Main focus of the song is Vocals and backing piano arrangement being the next important aspect of the song.
Few Synth pads and leads are added for decorations but are not the main aspect. Saxophone leads are independent and do not intefer with Vocals/Piano so no problem with the sax.

About the Mix

(All the processing mentioned are in the actual order used in mix)

Vocals - Butch Vig Vocals plugin, De-esser, Breath control plugin,Saturation plugin with a preset to Warm Tape, Vocal Rider plugin,EQ(with low end cut and just a little boosts in mid and High end ) , then a gentle compressoion.
Also i ve used the Haas delay arrangement for vocals with a delay of 25 ms in left channel and 30 ms in right channel.

Piano:
I ve multitracked piano based on the priority.
1.Few set of tracks when piano is important - Here not much processing just an Eq(removing the subs and few cuts in the mids and highs to allow the vocals) and gentle Compression.
2.Few set of tracks when piano is in background and not much important - Huge cuts in the low and mid end . Few boosts on high end.

Overall i like how piano is sounding in the mix in both the cases .

Synth and other instruments

Most of the other instruments just come and go in between and are made a priority over piano by volume adjustments.
And there is one portion when Synth,piano and vocal overlap , there i have used Eq adjustments and volume adjustments as well on the synth.
Drums and bass are also gelling well with the mix.

Addionally

I have added delays wherever necessary mainly on the vocals

I have setup three reverb buses for short,medium and far reverb settings and i ve used the Send and return structure to send instruments/vocals
to the appropriate reverb bus.

Panned the instruments wherever possible to get good stereo.

And also i ve sparingly used Stereo width enhancers, did not want to over use them

In general also i ve taken care of cutting the low ends wherever appropriate.

Mix sounds compatible in mono.

Problem
Overall i feel the clarity is not an issue in this mix.
However when i hear the reference song i feel a huge difference compared to my mix, especially in terms of stereo width ,vocal quality, ambiance of the song
and few other little details.
Please do suggest me on how to improve my mix.

Thanks a lot!!
 
Last edited:
Super cool song, first off!

The biggest thing is the very mono feel of just about everything. Sounds like a good chunk of the tracks are panned center or damn near center.
Don't be afraid of hard panning and using short delays panned to the opposite channel to widen your tracks. Also, width in a mix comes from differences between the left and right channel. On a stereo keyboard (for example), try experimenting with tweaking one side different than the other...eq the left channel a bit darker than the right. Use short (and different!) delays on both sides.

Use unlinked multi-mono reverbs and delays and tweak each side slightly differently.

Also, that kick needs to be way bigger ;)

But again, the song is pretty damn cool!
 
I agree that the kick needs to be bigger, but I also think the snare needs to be louder, or the snare-verb thing that takes the place of the snare every other hit needs to be quieter. Both snares are doing the same job and should be in the same place in the mix.

I als0 agree that some of the other instruments need to be panned a bit. It sounds like you got all the sounds from a keyboard and just recorded everything in stereo, but just left the stereo image that came off the keyboard. The problem with that, is most stereo keyboard patches are just the instrument in mono, panned to the center, with some sort of stereo effect on it, like chorus or reverb. If you leave all those sounds like that, you end up with a mix that has all the instruments panned center and only reverbs and chorus out to the sides. The mix ends up narrow.

The vocal is a little too dry for my taste, but this isn't a genre that I do, so I don't know what is appropriate.
 
Super cool song, first off!

The biggest thing is the very mono feel of just about everything. Sounds like a good chunk of the tracks are panned center or damn near center.
Don't be afraid of hard panning and using short delays panned to the opposite channel to widen your tracks. Also, width in a mix comes from differences between the left and right channel. On a stereo keyboard (for example), try experimenting with tweaking one side different than the other...eq the left channel a bit darker than the right. Use short (and different!) delays on both sides.

Use unlinked multi-mono reverbs and delays and tweak each side slightly differently.

Also, that kick needs to be way bigger ;)

But again, the song is pretty damn cool!

Thanks for the feedback mate ! Will look into it.

And btw credit goes to the original composer! ,☺
I am just stripping it and doing a cover version of it !?
 
I agree that the kick needs to be bigger, but I also think the snare needs to be louder, or the snare-verb thing that takes the place of the snare every other hit needs to be quieter. Both snares are doing the same job and should be in the same place in the mix.

I als0 agree that some of the other instruments need to be panned a bit. It sounds like you got all the sounds from a keyboard and just recorded everything in stereo, but just left the stereo image that came off the keyboard. The problem with that, is most stereo keyboard patches are just the instrument in mono, panned to the center, with some sort of stereo effect on it, like chorus or reverb. If you leave all those sounds like that, you end up with a mix that has all the instruments panned center and only reverbs and chorus out to the sides. The mix ends up narrow.

The vocal is a little too dry for my taste, but this isn't a genre that I do, so I don't know what is appropriate.

Thanks Farview , I will work on it!
 
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