My Latest Attempt At Mixing

nice work- "organic" is a good word to describe it ^ guitars sound great, as does the rest of the instrumentation. nice solo section. no comments really mix-wise. everything sounds appropriate (to me) for this genre.
 
Couple of times the vocals fell under the instruments. I would would try and get the vocals just up a bit more if possible. It sounds very honest.

It is a good recording and mix overall to my ears.
 
I like the arrangement quite well. Good playing, and all the instruments sound clear. I agree with the comment above regarding the vocals. I'd bring them up as well. They're a bit dark. I might try high passing them and boosting higher up to bring some air to them. Apart from that, the vocals sound a bit incongruous. Not really a bluegrass style. For this kind of music, I tend to think of the vocalist singing in a higher register. Well, we work with the voices we have.
 
Robus said:
I like the arrangement quite well. Good playing, and all the instruments sound clear. I agree with the comment above regarding the vocals. I'd bring them up as well. They're a bit dark. I might try high passing them and boosting higher up to bring some air to them. Apart from that, the vocals sound a bit incongruous. Not really a bluegrass style. For this kind of music, I tend to think of the vocalist singing in a higher register. Well, we work with the voices we have.
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Much of Bluegrass this is true, but not always the case. There are many songs (check out Seldom Scene's "Muddy Waters") that do not use that high pitch singing. Just FYI.
 
Robus: Agreed- not the classic bluegrass style. My goal was a sound similar to AKUS. Now if I could just find a female vocalist like Alison Krauss.
 
The instruments sound very clear, but the vocal sounds quite different. Vocal performance is a bit tentative too. The vocal has a bit of a phasey/swirly effect on it that isn't helping.

Anyway, the vocal sounds way different than the rest of the instruments.
 
TripleM said:
The instruments sound very clear, but the vocal sounds quite different. Vocal performance is a bit tentative too. The vocal has a bit of a phasey/swirly effect on it that isn't helping.

Anyway, the vocal sounds way different than the rest of the instruments.
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You are very perceptive and have better hearing than I do. You've nailed exactly the problem I've been having mixing the vocals to blend with the instrumentation. Now it's time for me to come clean. Although I am a bluegrass musician (banjo), the instrument tracks on this recording were generated using Band-In-A Box Real Tracks software. The vocal was recorded with a Tascam DR-05 using the internal condenser mics. I imported the wav files to Audacity for mixing and processing. Now if you or anyone else on this forum can tell me how to mix this so it sounds like it was all recorded together, I would be tickled pink.
Thanks for the feedback.
 
That's impressive. Have they improved Band-In-A-Box in the recent editions? I have the edition that's a couple of years old. I bought it to see if it might be a useful tool for songwriting but found the interface a bit clumsy. Might have to take another look.

I don't know the limits of Audacity or what is possible with it. If you want to move up to a full featured DAW, Reaper is an inexpensive option. There's a very generous trial period and the consumer version is only about $70 or so, if you decide you like it.

To get the vocal sitting better, I would be thinking in terms of EQ, compression, and a bit of reverb. You might need to high pass the vocals to begin with, to get a handle on the low frequency content that clashes with the bass instruments and muddies up the mix. It's easier to blend the vocals when you're not fighting with that stuff. Others can offer more specific advice. I'm somewhat new to mixing myself.
 
tmelvin said:
Now if you or anyone else on this forum can tell me how to mix this so it sounds like it was all recorded together, I would be tickled pink.
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The instruments sound close-to-midi to me. Very clean and sterile. So I suppose you could retrack the vocal is a pro studio environment (ala Telarc-ish) so that the vocal sounds equally sterile. Or track the instruments in the same environment in which you tracked the vocal. I think the second approach would be much more fun.
 
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