The Last One In The Room - alternative pop rock

andrushkiwt

Well-known member
Hey yo, I'd appreciate your thoughts on this mix. "Finished" a few days ago, but spent two days or so going over master bus stuff, and fiddling with the limiting, tying to squeeze some extra db's out... but it actually come out a touch quieter than normal. I tried leaving more room on the limiter (in terms of how much gain reduction is happening) for the purpose of uploading to Soundcloud. I also printed it to .wav instead of normal mp3, like usual. Finally, the snare has a limiter, which would have allowed me to turn it up even more, without too much happening on the limiter, but I didn't want to overdo it this time. Ready to move on to the next song in the queue.

This song is a couple years old, but with my relatively new equipment, I thought I would try an updated rendition. Plus, [MENTION=187056]JohnnyAmato[/MENTION] asked to hear it... and I gladly obliged. :)



Vocals - $79 sterling st51 condenser, SSL-EQ, CLA 1176, LA-2A, Tal-Dub delay
guitars - Gibson Studio Gothic 01', Digitech GNX3000 (Marshall 900 & AC15 sims), SSL-EQ, CLA 1176
bass - Squire P-Bass, GNX3000 (ampeg through ash8x10), CLA 1176, TSE BOD, API 560, DC1A2
drums - Superior Drummer 3, NY Avatar kit with Nir-Z custom snare, API 560, API 2500
2buss - Scheps Omni Channel, Luftikus EQ, API 2500, SSL-EQ, stock limiter

There are lots of other stock EQ's tucked in there, but those are the main plugins. Reverb is Voxengo's old skool verb on bright studio preset with a couple modifications. A lot of the noise at the end is just me turning on the mic and knocking stuff over in the office :)

For the guys who have heard previous tunes on Soundcloud that I've posted - how do the cymbals sound here? I kept the limiter threshold at -1.3, as opposed to the -0.2 that I usually set it at. This was supposed to make a difference with how SoundCloud handles clipping/distortion as well as high end. What do you think?
 
Damn you. LOL! I'm new here, and when I saw this post, I thought, "Wow, he's struggling with the same issue I am -- chasing that professionally mastered sound where you get all the volume without all the compressed sound." Your comments sounded so familiar, but then I listened to the song and was, like... whatever. Ha ha! This sounds great. Miles above anything I've ever recorded. I JUST registered, but this makes me want to turn around and walk right back out the door I came in. Not sure I belong here.

But, yeah... I just recorded a new album (many before that, but the first one in probably six or seven years), and I'm struggling with the brave new world of self-producing music. All the different compression algorithms (does it sound good on Spotify? What about Google Play? On headphones? Through bluetooth?). It's so hard these days to know your mixes will sound good for all the different ways people listen to them.

I loved this song, and it sounded really loud to me. But then I listened to one of my own recent songs played through WMP at the same volume, and it nearly burst my eardrums. I don't know if that's because WMP has higher gain than listening through Soundcloud/Chrome? Or if my song is really mixed louder than yours.

It's easy for me to say, when I'm chasing the same db dragon, but I wouldn't worry about it. This music is good enough that people will turn it up if they have to. I think I'm going too far the other way and ending up with limiter dips and compression and distortion for no good reason.

Anyway... just want to say I really like the song. Cymbals sound fine, btw. Maybe I'm not at a high enough "level," musically, to comment on this, but you're stressing too much. This is great as it is.
 
Damn you. LOL! I'm new here...

Welcome! Always cool having new ppl here, especially if you partake in the clinic. I've been mixing my own stuff for about 3 years, and whatever level I'm at, I got here with a mix of very hard work and painstaking hours, and these great people here with their vast knowledge and great ears. There are a lot of genres covered within our community, but having good ears for a good mix is the common factor.

Would you post some tunes? You'll get lots of good help here. What kind of music are you recording? Have anything to share in the clinic? Thanks again for the listen and comment :thumbs up:
 
... but this makes me want to turn around and walk right back out the door I came in. Not sure I belong here.

And no, no, no. There are mixes of all types here, for sure. You should have heard my mixes from 2 years ago - shit, even a year ago. Getting monitors was the best thing I ever did for my tunes. Stick around, post some tunes, comment on others', and keep mixin' !
 
Yeah... I just "finished" a new album myself. It's good enough for government work -- meaning, my friends like it. But I want to improve. So much technical stuff I'm bad at. (Throw Cubase's Maximizer at everything!) I just upgraded my studio after several years from Cubase 4 to 9.5. Bought a new audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 18/20). New computer. Etc. Really want to get back into it. I'll post some songs at some point, but I don't want to be one of those "Hey, everyone listen to my new music!" guys without proving that I'll give some feedback. You know? I like to listen to other people's stuff as much as I want help with my own. Just want to make sure that's understood first.
 
...but I don't want to be one of those "Hey, everyone listen to my new music!" guys without proving that I'll give some feedback. You know? I like to listen to other people's stuff as much as I want help with my own. Just want to make sure that's understood first.

That's a considerate approach, for sure. But no one will mind if you throw a tune up. The clinic is at its best when ppl are posting and commenting. Don't sweat it. Put something up when you get the chance, the sooner it's there, the sooner you'll get some critiques.
 
Yeah... that's part of the problem. LOL! I'm honestly a little terrified to post my mediocre music after listening to some of the stuff I've heard here. Most of you are way beyond me, and I've been doing this forever. I know... that's the point. Learn and grow. But it's still daunting to post stuff that you think you've done a pretty good job with -- and then find out that it has 42-and-a-half problems that you never noticed. My musical ego is tenuous at best. There's that fine line between wanting to grow and having to face the fact that you suck at writing/recording. You know?

I'll get some guts at some point. And then you can tear it apart. Ha ha!
 
LOL! Rarely. But I'm spoiled. I like to have my two mics (one vocal, one acoustic guitar), my keyboard (Alesis QS6 -- old school) and my guitars/bass (through a POD XT) always plugged in to their assigned inputs with the levels already set. I just change tracks in Cubase and set the Focusrite monitor to guitars/bass/keys or vocals and don't have to change anything else. If I had to unplug/replug and reset everything every time I wanted to change from Vox to instruments, I'd never record. It's not that I'm using multiple inputs at once. It's just that I want enough inputs to not have to switch things in and out and reset all my levels all the time. It's lazy, but it's worth the extra couple hundred bucks to me to have it all set up at all times.

Does that make sense? Or am I crazy?
 
I had an old Aardvark input when I started that just had a couple of channels, and I used a Behringer mixer to do the same thing, basically. But it took up a lot of room on my desk (I have an effects rack now that I got so cheap you'd hate me), and it was a POS. So I just decided the interface could serve the same purpose. Works for me.
 
God I love this tune.

No nits at all, my friend.

Call this one a day and maybe revisit her when putting the whole record together (assuming that's the end goal)

But she's done as far as I'm concerned.
 
God I love this tune.

No nits at all, my friend.

Call this one a day and maybe revisit her when putting the whole record together (assuming that's the end goal)

But she's done as far as I'm concerned.

I need to put an album together, for sure. I just either keep getting new equipment, or I improve some aspect of the mixing process (guitars, for example) and I think I'd regret putting it together so fast. I'm waiting until I get to some level of experience that I would be pleased with the recordings 10 years into the future. Right now, I can't listen to mixes from two years ago without hitting the stop button or cringing. :) But I do want to, at some point.
 
I love the guitars in the intro. That was cool.

It's cool when the big guitars kick in. But the vocal gets just a bit buried.

Bass sounds nice and it's just the right level.

The drums sound OK. But the cymbals sound kind of cheap. Not much sustain. Drums overall are a bit buried. The power guitars are kind of dominating.

Vocals all around are nice. I might raise the backing vocals just a wee bit.
 
...the vocal gets just a bit buried.

The drums sound OK. But the cymbals sound kind of cheap. Not much sustain. Drums overall are a bit buried. The power guitars are kind of dominating.

Ok. I thought the vocals might have been squished too much. I used the Waves Vocal Rider on this, for the first time. I didn't do whatever you're supposed to with it though - I just slapped it on the "chorus vocal" channel and another on the "verse vocal" channel, and adjusted the thresholds, and turned the "sensitivity" knob up a bit. That's all. There's better ways to use it, approaches that include automation and printing, but since I'm not comfortable with that plugin yet, I didn't want to print anything at this point. Maybe next time.

Weird about the cymbals, though they aren't my favorite. This is the NY Avatar kit, and cymbals are always hit or miss in Superior, IMO. My favorite cymbals are in the Rock Warehouse expansion. I usually use those, but here I went with a different kit. I'll check em' out for my next tune, which I'm tracking at the moment, and make sure to switch the cymbal package.

Thanks!
 
I like the distortion tones on the guitars the way those overtones are clashing and jiving together in the opening. Nice vocal tracks, strong and accurate. Very listenable song. No real mix comments i think you are getting the sound you want and anything i might add is uninformed opinion. Nice falling apart ending!
 
You've got that genre down pretty well. :)

I know this is the mix clinic, and your mixes are right for this style of music....
But.... in all fairness to the new guy who wanted to walk right out..lol.....

There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on too, not just the mix.

I could be wrong, but I think you spend a lot of time with production, pre -production and arranging. I'm sure you to some degree know what exactly what you want.

So to the new guy, don't get discouaged. Just keep doing it. Whereas in a band situation, you can feed off and get inspired by the other members, going solo, you're it. It's all you, baby. :)
So keep on trucking, as they say, and to Andrushkiwt, good job.
:D
Oh, ps. The ending was the best part. ;)
 
I could be wrong, but I think you spend a lot of time with production, pre -production and arranging. I'm sure you to some degree know what exactly what you want.

Good point. I mean, there's a "vision" right when I start tracking, but without a producer or anyone else guiding and shaking their head "yes" or "no", I don't know if I'm making good decisions or not. As I told [MENTION=187056]JohnnyAmato[/MENTION], coming up with the chord pattern and vocal melody are the easy parts, but making a whole track out of that is hard. Almost all things other than underlying chord pattern and vocal melody are found while tracking. So, basslines and lead guitars aren't plotted out, but discovered while it's time to track them. I'll spend 2-3 weeks tracking the songs, making changes constantly, re-writing little things, and then the mix takes another 2 weeks or so, sometimes more, but the tracking part is hardly ever "finished"; I might come up with a new idea somewhere along the line.

So, no, actually, I don't think I'd say "the songs come out the way they were planned". I'm literally writing/recording/mixing/editing throughout the process, and those stages are interchangeable. It's not a linear path.
 
... there's a "vision" right when I start tracking....

So, basslines and lead guitars aren't plotted out, but discovered while it's time to track them.

I'm pretty much exactly the same. Usually I'll hear some kind of bassline in my head, but it doesn't always work out perfectly when tracking, so I just alter it a bit until it does. Leads and solos I might hear something too, but probably 75% of the time I just start jamming over the section and form something from that. That way, something is formed just from whatever I just naturally start doing. I usually save those initial jams as well, sometimes I end up using them because of their raw feel. Ya never know...
 
Good point. I mean, there's a "vision" right when I start tracking.....

So, no, actually, I don't think I'd say "the songs come out the way they were planned". I'm literally writing/recording/mixing/editing throughout the process, and those stages are interchangeable. It's not a linear path.

My original point was that there's so much more than the 'mix' that goes into the final product. The mp3 clnic can just focus on the mixing aspect down to people saying , "Cut 2db of the 100hz on the blah de blah" :)
But there's much more going on to get to that stage.

As to a 'Vision', I think you got more of a vision than you give yourself credit for. You actually seem quite modest at times.

I don't think ANYONE has a complete, clear, finished version of the song in their heads when starting out. Maybe Beethoven, but I even doubt that.

Many times it just evolves with fortunate happy mistakes at times.
:D
 
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