First Mixing Clinic Post...

N

nimpo46

New member
Hello everyone, thought I'd go ahead and ask for your opinion on my mixes.
Here's the thing, I have very little good equipment:

- PreSonus Inspire
- Cubase
- Headphones (??? not monitor headphones or anything)
- EZDrummer (Which i can only get to have one channel per cubase project meaning I can't eq each drum seperately, unless I'm doing something wrong)
- Bass??? Well.... It's Fruity Loops' Fretless Bass synth... which is not great so I get it to do as best I can.. I can't play/don't have a bass so I can't record one.
- Guitar is usually direct in and in the case of 'Not This Way' it's Voxengo Modeler.
- Backup strings are all VSTs done in fruity loops or cubase itself.
- Speakers.. just average cheap speakers.
- Vocal mic is pretty decent, that's about the best piece besides the Inspire box I have.

Anyway, I'm very new at all this and KNOW there is loads of room for improvement, and I'm sure some of it is down to equipment (monitors? real bass?) but figure there might be some stuff you can notice right off the bat. Any help is much appreciated!! Thanks :)

http://www.soundclick.com/AlexCrosby


(BTW, www.myspace.com/delucaband is my band and there are some other songs there that are too long to upload to soundclick for free)
 
Can't listen to your mix right now dude, just thought I'd say two things:

If a song is too long to upload to soundclick, throw it onto lightningmp3.com - it doesn't degrade the quality like myspace either (myspace destroys the sound), it's free, and the limit is a file size of 16MB.

-and-

You don't need amazing equipment to make amazing music ;)
 
Hey Alex,

Nice guitar and synth/string integration. Esp. at intro of Not This Way.
Neat song, like the vocals you tried hard, I think, to do.
In all, that song sounds like that band , I cannot remember is it Soundgarden, the band that does, 'I'm a Creep'?

Broken Chimes to me is a bit medievial for me. I feel there is a nasty plague going around and lots of hunger and that is a court song played with the lute and the remainder of everyone (just three people left: the sad princess, you, and a mute dirty page) are forlorn - no meat on the tables and corpses piling up outside the drawbridge.

EZDrummer (Which i can only get to have one channel per cubase project meaning I can't eq each dwum sepretry, unress I'm doing someting wong
Click to expand...

Go to and click the Open Mixer at the bottom of the drummer interface of EXdrummer (below-left of the drumkit image.)
m1.jpg


Set the channels in the mixer by putting kick on trk 1, snare on trk 2, etc

m2.jpg


Can go then to main mixer in Cubase (Example shows Cubase SX3) and will have each drum member devoted to its own track in Cubase. It may not show quite like that in the main Cubase window, it may show a long list of empty track spaces, but I reduce these down and go with individual tracks, within the audio mixer (circled in red.)

m3.jpg


PS: I aglee about rightningmp3.com I like that site.
 
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Listening to not this way.....

You're burying the drums. You keep adding layers and the drums get further and further buried. 1:40 in and they're damn near inaudible. Not good. The key is to build emotion and add layers without losing anything else. Never lose the drums. Ever.
 
hmm yeah so the dynamics of the drums are not consistent with the rest of the song... i will try and work on that, thanks!
 
Greg_L said:
Listening to not this way.....

You're burying the drums. You keep adding layers and the drums get further and further buried. 1:40 in and they're damn near inaudible. Not good. The key is to build emotion and add layers without losing anything else. Never lose the drums. Ever.
Click to expand...

He's a drummer, what you wanna do is never loss the bass, synth basses are ok to get lost in a mix though, bury them with drums if you can.

Dropbox is a great place to store your music, you get 2 gig for free and one click on the links you post here streams the file. I'm using it for 320kbs MP3's, doesn't get much better than that quality wise when showing off your work.
 
LemonTree said:
He's a drummer, what you wanna do is never loss the bass, synth basses are ok to get lost in a mix though, bury them with drums if you can.

Dropbox is a great place to store your music, you get 2 gig for free and one click on the links you post here streams the file. I'm using it for 320kbs MP3's, doesn't get much better than that quality wise when showing off your work.
Click to expand...

The first thing you'll judge a mix on is clarity...

If everything isn't clear, your job ain't done...

Don't bury anything... Unless A) It's not an important part of the mix... and/or B) It's buried and unheard, but you'll notice if it's missing...

I'm a guitarist... And I'll tell you that you don't want to lose the drums, or bass (foundations), or vocals (usually main focus)...

The vocals/bass can afford to be lost in certain genres like metal, because other things such as the guitars are usually the main focus. It's genre dependant, but there's very little (if even any) genres of music where you can afford to lose the drums.

Mixing shouldn't be a game of deciding what you can afford to lose.
 
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