90's Pop Punk Mix... need some suggestions for improvement!

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keevhren

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I recently tracked a friends band with the intentions of NOT mixing their record. I'm much more of a tracking engineer/producer when it comes to the world of recording music and mixing is hands down my weakest skill set. However, after we finished up tracking they said they really wanted me to have a go at mixing it and after two days of feeling like I'm banging my head into a wall I've created the above mix (and there's a first pass mix after it on my soundcloud page as well if you listen through).

The thing that I find most frustrating is that things I've tracked and had mixed by others turn out great. My source tracks are pretty solid and can sound great mixed. I simply have no idea how to get them from point A to point B and my mixes always sound like garbage to me... very 'demo' quality as opposed to a legit release.

A big thing I feel that I'm missing out on is clarity of all the instruments and having the mix itself have that nice round/full sound all around.

Hopefully this isn't some crazy book full of stuff but a quick run down of what I'm working with:

Kick In
Kick Sub
Kick Sample
Snare Top
Snare Bottom
Snare Sample
Rack Top
Rack Bottom
Floor Top
Floor Bottom
OHs
Close Rooms
Far Rooms
Front of Kit Crush Mic

Bass DI (Clean Tone in Amplitube)
Bass DI (Dirty/distorted Tone in Amplitube)

Guitar 1 is a pair of mics on the same cabinet

Guitar 2 is a pair of mics on a different cabinet

Lead Vox

Couple tracks of backups

8 mono gang/woah tracks


So definitely not a ton of tracks but a good amount I'd say. It's not some 100+ track dense mix by any means. Most items in the mix are bussed down to master faders and processing is done mostly on those tracks. Anything else you'd like to know? Please feel free to ask and I'll fill you in on what I can if you think it'll help! Much thanks in advance for checking out the song and for any critiques/advice/help you might be able to send my way!
 
1st thoughts - not bad.
The bottom end seems to reside in the bass.
The guitars seem to have no meat.
The bass seems to be in its own world too - apart from the rest.
Still, not too bad.
 
Biggest problem is what rayc said: There's virtually no overlap in frequencies between bass and guitars. You want the guitars and the bass to have a range of frequencies (usually 80-200hz) where they both inhabit the space. That will help the song feel balanced instead of the guitars and bass sitting independent of each other and feeling disconnected.
 
Thanks for the initial feedback! I'm fairly positive I'm filtering the guitars below about 110hz so maybe I'll try to pull that back a bit to balance it out
 
Don't AUTOMATICALLY HP the guitars.
Do it as/if needed & not as a prerequisite.
 
Yep - just a bit more low end on the guitars would blend it together a bit more. The overall levels are good but may need a tweak if you adjust the guitars. Punchy - I like it!
 
Kind of "fizzy" sounding, the guitars and cymbals seem a little too bright. Reminded me of NOFX when he started singing, ha. i agree about the bottom end lacking, but there is there a LPF on the guitars? I thought the vocals sounded really good, particularly the background vox and harmonies.
 
Spent some time making changes on this today and overall I think it's a bit better of a mix. On the drums I tried to add in a bit more punch to the kick and made the snare a bit less bright/gave it a little more thump and body. I brought the overheads down quite a bit to get rid of the large washy cymbals issue and tightened up the room mics as well. Did some slight adjustments volume wise on a few select tom hits to give them a bit more balance.

I rolled back the filters I had on both guitars to give them more low end and also did some slight eq changes to make them a bit less bright/harsh in the top end and tried to get them to sound as if they were playing with the bass as opposed to being in two separate spaces all together. For bass I did some volume changes and gave it a bit more grit with decapitator. After all the other volume changes, I did the same with the vocals but didn't really touch any settings/plugins at all. The last thing I changed was brought down the max volume of my master buss to -5dB as it was running a bit hot (-2.5dB) for me to print something that could feasibly be sent to a mastering engineer so this mix is definitely quieter.



Thoughts on the new mix? Thanks again for all the feedback and suggestions thus far!
 
Did you master the first mix you posted? The second one sounds way quieter (which makes it really hard to A/B them).

Throughout both mixes, I thought I heard the compression pumping.
 
Both mixes of this sound you're trying too hard and over-processing them un-necessarily.

I found the overall sound of the 2nd mix a little fatiguing.

on a good note, it sounds like a great song underneath there. This is one where Greg is needed. :thumbs up:
 
After listening to my mix from last night again this morning, I decided to do the ol' start from scratch routine and zero'd all my faders and bypassed all my plugins. Changed up my master buss to work better for me and then went from there piece by piece. I mixed mostly in mono and referenced every now and then on headphones to check on spacial positioning and such. I think overall this is finally a good enough mix to send the band and to start revising from there. Here's the new mix:



In regards to a few of the previous posts/comments from people. Mix 3 and 4 are definitely different volumes as I wanted to be printing my mix at an appropriate level to send to a mastering engineer. I was not giving it much headroom in mixes 1-3 and am now printing at about -5dB being my ceiling.

On this latest mix I got rid of a good chunk of plugins I was using to avoid it sounding too over processed like Mr. Clean suggested.

As for the guitars getting lost in mono, I think I helped it out a bit with this mix but am not entirely sure how to fix that issue. Suggestions?

And I think this has a much rounder/fuller low end to the mix as well hopefully.

Thanks for the continued feedback! I really appreciate it and it's already helped immensely!
 
Everything is thin and wimpy sounding, except that the very low range of the kick is too much. That makes me think your monitoring setup is mid-bass heavy but doesn't go low enough.
 
The new mix is way better than the others, but it does seem to still lack balls. What are you using for compression? It's almost like you're missing all the low mids.
 
5 is definitely better than 4, much less fizzy. Still seems a little short on the lows to low-mids though.

I guess 90s pop-punk wasn't a super-bassy genre, was it?
 


New mix. Beefed up guitars in the 200-500hz range. Reworked the bass tone a bit for more lows, got rid of the super boomy sounding kick, and took out a compressor from my 2bus chain. I think its actually coming together now.... thoughts?
 
Real good tight guitar playing. I thought they sound pretty good. A wee bit thin, but that's just an opinion.

I'm hearing a little swirliness in the cymbals. My guess it's being caused by SoundCloud. But give it a check on your end to make sure.

There were some minor pitch issues in spots. But I didn't think they really detracted from the overall tune. Punk music can get away with that easier than some genres. Vocal seems a little "bare." Just a bit thin. I think a double tracked vocal would have been much better. Maybe try a real short delay - like 25 ms? Might thicken it up a bit. A little light, almost unnoticable reverb might help too.
 
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