New Mix, what do you think?

Love the song - I really do. A few probs with the mix, though, IMO. I'm no expert, though. so hopefully lots of help will chime in.

And I don't mind the vox effects - I just think you don't need them!

- I don't know if it was intentional, but the whole song sounds like it's being played in a room behind a closed door. I can hear this song mixed quite cleanly
- the snare has too much snap, just a little too much juice on it
- the kick is indistinct
- the cymbals need more air, they're cutting through a bit too much and they don't sound real
- bass guitar is good, not too loud
- I like the sound of the rhythm guitars, but for example at 3:40 or so when you're really going at it, the mix gets muddy and you can't year the individual instruments as well anymore - and that's a sign to use EQ to cut more from everything that's going on.

All in all, a nicely put together song.

Thanks for sharing,
Timbo
 
YellowDwarf said:
Love the song - I really do. A few probs with the mix, though, IMO. I'm no expert, though. so hopefully lots of help will chime in.

And I don't mind the vox effects - I just think you don't need them!

- I don't know if it was intentional, but the whole song sounds like it's being played in a room behind a closed door. I can hear this song mixed quite cleanly
- the snare has too much snap, just a little too much juice on it
- the kick is indistinct
- the cymbals need more air, they're cutting through a bit too much and they don't sound real
- bass guitar is good, not too loud
- I like the sound of the rhythm guitars, but for example at 3:40 or so when you're really going at it, the mix gets muddy and you can't year the individual instruments as well anymore - and that's a sign to use EQ to cut more from everything that's going on.

All in all, a nicely put together song.

Thanks for sharing,
Timbo
Click to expand...

I recorded this about 5 months back and gave another try at the mix. I should have taken everything off and started the mix over from scratch. Instead, I just went through and modified stuff as I listened to the effects I already had in place.

I agree with everything you said. I'd like to think my mixes are getting better, but who knows. I am trying to get the tracks sounding the best possible on my own so I can use them as solicitation for myself. Studios are so expensive, and when you add in that I love different filter effects and random oscillating noises, it gets too difficult to explain to an engineer. I really like to play around with those effects and adjust their elements bit by bit.

Thanks for listening, and replying. A straight up honest post, I appreciate that. I'll get to work and maybe have a fix in place by mid week. I really need to invest in monitors. Headphones are too inaccurate, mine anyway.
 
I think what you said in the last para sums up most people who are new to this site: bedroom recording on headphones to mix. It's a bad combination if you want to put out a good sounding song - trust me, I started there! I used to be all about the creativity of making music - the writing and getting it out there. But my stuff sounded like crap. Now I spend a lot of time mixing and I've lost the creativity end! Mixes sound way better but there's no joie de vivre in there, no sparky creativity.

So it's a tough balance. All you can do is be patient, listen to your mixes in a good room and put them up for critique. You'll get there, but maybe not as quick as you expected.

Timbo
 
Can you post up the whole mix without any effects? I'd like to hear what the raw tracks sound like. It sounds like everything is just hollowed out, like you have a 'telephone' filter on the whole song. It seems like you have some cool ideas and want to go for a modern sound, but it's a bit too buried right now!
 
Hey, thanks a lot for listening. I'll work on putting up a more "bare bones" mix this week. Need to give my ears a break from that song for a bit. That cool?
 
The guitar tones during the 'busy' parts of the song are competing with the cymbals for space. I don't think the bass is there in tone at all, its just muffled and low overall. The vocals are low in the mix at times.
Mixing with headphones requires a lot of experimentation. Burn a disc, and use it to listen in our car, in the living room, at a friend's apartment, etc and make notes on what didnt' translate correctly.
 
mjbphotos said:
The guitar tones during the 'busy' parts of the song are competing with the cymbals for space. I don't think the bass is there in tone at all, its just muffled and low overall. The vocals are low in the mix at times.
Mixing with headphones requires a lot of experimentation. Burn a disc, and use it to listen in our car, in the living room, at a friend's apartment, etc and make notes on what didnt' translate correctly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been doing the bounce-back-and-forth-between-systems thing for a few months now. It's just getting to be too time consuming. At this very moment, I'm debating severely upgrading my headphones or buying decent monitors. The main problem is that I work on music, mostly, late at night. Everyone is asleep, so monitors aren't a grand idea. It's frustrating because the mixes sound completely different (actually, very good) in the phones. I listen to them on other things, and yeah, it doesn't translate over to other mediums the same way.

This is bordering relocation to a more appropriate forum, but do you guys who commented on monitors think that is really the main issue? That a few months with those, instead of headphones, can solve a lot of the problems with the mix you heard? If so, are able to listen through on your monitors at a very low level, without cranking it? If I think I could play the tracks at a low level, so as not to disturb anyone down the hall, I would buy some $350-range monitors.

Whatcha think?
 
Did you take the mix down? The link didn't work for me.

I mix through "monitors" (really stereo speakers) at night all the time and yes, you can mix at relatively quiet levels, and I would still take that over headphones every time (you can still reference with the phones too if you like). What headphones are you using?

My "studio" is at the far end of my house, so I can actually crank it pretty loud without waking people, but you could do a lot of work quietly at night if you had to and then check what you did the night before at higher volumes during the day...some mixes reveal different things at different volumes in my experience.

I didn't hear your mix, but no one thing, including monitors will solve all potential issues with mixing, but generally speaking, moving to loudspeakers of some kind for monitoring will be an improvement over headphones. Maybe not in every case, but generally, yes.
 
Headphones will never give you a true representation of the mix translated onto speaker systems - but you can learn how to do it. It may be time consuming, but when you keep doing it you'll find how things translate - for example bass needs to come up most of the time because the headphones exaggerate it. Vocals need go down (sometimes) from what you hear in the headphones, an effect of the centering.
 
Yeah, I took it down. Didn't like it after listening for the 300th time. Haha. I'm working on something else at this moment, but I'll get that one back up soon hopefully. By tomorrow, I should have this new one done, mixed, and posted.

Honestly, you can check any of the mixes for a reference. I'm pretty consistent with the basics. Guitars eq, panning, drum eq, bass settings...they don't change all too much song to song. Its always only me playing, with the same instruments too.

Try anything here:

Https://soundcloud.com/andrushkiwt

Ok, you sold me. Monitors it is. Girlfriend wants to get them for me for my bday anyway. Think I'll just go for it. Thnks a lot!
 
It was that or studio "time". At $75/hr, I think I'll take the monitors instead . Could be well spent if I can get these sounding marginally better. And it's more fun; another way to be creative with the music.
 
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