Lend Your Ear

guitar zero

guitar zero

c = b#
I worked a while on this mix for the "Mix This" forum and posted a couple of weeks ago. Just trying to work on my mixing skills. I was hoping to get some feedback on the mix, but I must have been too late, and the thread seems dead (maybe I killed it?). The song is "Fraud" by The Jongleurs. Here's the mix:
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Maybe this is more of a style thing, but you've got a really clicky metal sounding kick drum for a really not metal tune. Are you using drum samples for the kick? I find that it's somewhat lacking in dynamics and it sounds a bit robotic.

Besides that the mix sounds nice and balanced. Pretty cool song to boot!
 
SloppyJo said:
Maybe this is more of a style thing, but you've got a really clicky metal sounding kick drum for a really not metal tune. Are you using drum samples for the kick? I find that it's somewhat lacking in dynamics and it sounds a bit robotic.

Besides that the mix sounds nice and balanced. Pretty cool song to boot!
Click to expand...
Thanks for your input. Are you sure you're not hearing the high hat hits that coincide with the kick in a lot of places? You can hear the kick alone in the intro without the high hat. It doesn't sound clicky to me by itself, does it to you? The original drum tracks in this were all sampled. I did replace the kick. I thought the original one was impossible to get to sit well in the mix.
 
I like the sound, zero. Reminds me of Lankin. Very smooth. Tight vocal doubling, which is tough to do unless you clone and nudge.
 
guitar zero said:
Thanks for your input. Are you sure you're not hearing the high hat hits that coincide with the kick in a lot of places? You can hear the kick alone in the intro without the high hat. It doesn't sound clicky to me by itself, does it to you? The original drum tracks in this were all sampled. I did replace the kick. I thought the original one was impossible to get to sit well in the mix.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the late response; I thought you had forgotten about this thread.

Listening to it again I still find it a little clicky. I guess I'm more of the opinion that kicks should rather be felt as a driving force then heard. I don't mind a little click for definition, but once I hear it it's hard to ignore.

Either way, I wouldn't worry about it too much, I'm just one guy with an opinion, but the overall mix is so good that I think it's in the realm of subjectivity now. Everything at this point is just nitpicking.
 
SloppyJo said:
Sorry for the late response; I thought you had forgotten about this thread.

Listening to it again I still find it a little clicky. I guess I'm more of the opinion that kicks should rather be felt as a driving force then heard. I don't mind a little click for definition, but once I hear it it's hard to ignore.

Either way, I wouldn't worry about it too much, I'm just one guy with an opinion, but the overall mix is so good that I think it's in the realm of subjectivity now. Everything at this point is just nitpicking.
Click to expand...

OK thanks again. I'll mess with the kick some more.
 
Ahh. This song. I remember mixing it.


The kick was so muffled that if I tried to push the highs to where I like it, you would get too much air. I see your mix is suffering from that! A trigger could fix that though.
 
CrowsofFritz said:
Ahh. This song. I remember mixing it.


The kick was so muffled that if I tried to push the highs to where I like it, you would get too much air. I see your mix is suffering from that! A trigger could fix that though.
Click to expand...
I already replaced the kick with slate trigger. I think I probably just need to cut some beater frequency.
 
Interesting...

What Steen did was he cut everything except the acoustic guitars out until the electric guitars came in. Once the electrics come in, you can't really tell.
 
How's the kick compressed? I may find it overcompressed, maybe that's what's making it clicky when adding the hat.
 
AlexG said:
How's the kick compressed? I may find it overcompressed, maybe that's what's making it clicky when adding the hat.
Click to expand...

Wow, thought this thread died a long time ago. The kick has a metric halo compressor reducing about 3dB on the channel at 4:1, and a send to a parallel fatso compressor with pretty heavy compression dialed in. I think it's more of an eq issue, but I'll fiddle with it to see if reducing compression kills some of the click.
 
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