Mixing Question

JerryD

JerryD

New member
I mixed a song and it seems to be balanced and everything sounds good except that it has sharps sounds and is difficult to listen to after a while. I guess what I"m asking is there someone to slighly dull the master sound......What effect would this be?
 
You should post your song in the MP3 clinic. That way you get a chance of it being listened to, and then you may get some helpful suggestions. It is difficult to prescribe a remedy when the nature of the illness is not known.
 
I posted it several days ago and no one replied. I guess it sucked so bad it was unfixable?
 
When you say you want to dull the sound it makes me think of EQ. Try soloing all the tracks and one at a time and find the one that's too harsh and carving out some of the high freqs.
 
I think it's EQ as well. My problem is the EQ stuff has to many buttons to screw up stuff. I start out and then I'm not sure if it's getting better or worse. You can see below I don't EQ anything. What am I missing in this process below and should I be doing something else???? Thanks for any suggestions.

My Recording Process
1. I record the tracks.
2. Add slight delay on the vocals but leave everything else alone.
3. I add compression to the entire project.
4. Add slight reverb to the entire project.
5. Pan instruments left and right and center vocals.
6. Add the limiting at the end with Glip effect.
7. That's about it.
 
JerryD said:
I looked this device up. So I googled this and this device is basically a hardware Limiter right? Do you have this device?
Click to expand...

Yes I do own this unit Jerry.
It is a hardware unit. Works very good and can add color when you want it to.
 
JerryD said:
I think it's EQ as well. My problem is the EQ stuff has to many buttons to screw up stuff. I start out and then I'm not sure if it's getting better or worse.
Click to expand...

What you need to do is find something to compare your recordings to. Find some music you like in a similar genre or which has some sounds in common with your recordings and compare. Listen to their vocals and figure out how yours are different. Compare their guitar (or whatever) sound to yours. Analyze how the different parts of their mix fit together and try to apply that to your mix.

Graphic eqs are pretty simple to operate. Each slider affects one range of frequency, but neighboring sliders overlap a lot in what they affect. Parametric eqs are trickier but much more powerful. You not only turn it up or down, you directly control the frequency affected and how much either side of the selected frequency is also affected.

It helps to practice with eq so you learn what the different frequencies sound like. Put a well mixed song in a project and insert an eq. Just start messing with the controls until you start to get an idea of what they do.
 
Jerry - your first link in the MP3 clinic doesn't appear to have ever worked, thus limiting feedback.

I've just posted some comments about your latest post there - perhaps it's the same track.

Cheers
 
It may be that your highs are a bit aggressive. There's a good basic concept to remember when using any kind of EQ, and that is to use subtractive, not additive EQ whenever you can. That means if you need to have a bit more midrange, then drop the highs as well as the lows a bit. The effect will be as if you had raised the mids.

What will also happen with this approach is that you will not be adding to the noise floor even though you are "raising" the mids. Its a distinction you will hear clearly in the recording.
 
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