Now I Understand

Remix:


Tamed the acoustics (does it make the first bit sound anemic?) 200Hz shelf @ -6dB.
Scooped the vocal. They are much easier to hear and understand. :) (2k, wide Q)
Pulled the high shelf of the master to lose the harshness from much of the mix.
Bass up/guitars down. A little more obvious on the piano duplicating the bass line.
ADDED bus reverb to the vocal to try to get it to fit with the rest. (maybe that's the wrong direction, but it seems to have made it more cohesive).
Piano up, widened, and added "honkey-tonk" effect.
Dropped most of the shaker off the end.
Most of the drums (overheads, snare, kick) attenuated. Still need more on the ride...have to do some manual adjustments. Bah. gonna retrack drums anyway. Not going to bother.

Couple of timing issues (first bass note for example) now jump out at me...have to look at those, too.
 
Vocals still sound weird. I wish I could find the right word. I can only think of "room-y" or "distant", but like I said, I hear them, so it's not about turning them up. They're there. They just sound......like I said before, as if they were recorded with a distant room mic and turned up. Drums are still small, compressed, and way too low.

If I was me, I would start this mix from the drums, even if they don't come in until later. I would also take off any kind of "psycho" or whatever else you have on the vocals and just add some reverb. There's a lot of good things about this mix. I'm just pointing out the negatives (in my opinion), so it's not as bad as I might be making it seem.

For me, everything's fine, but the vocals and drums need help.
 
Cool song Ken - I agree the story develops well from subtle to killer. Keep the "understand" effect you have now (I think it's still there lol).
This reminds me of some 70's or 80's rock anthem - very cool. Vocals are perfect for this style of tune.
The roominess on the vocals may just be reflections - do you have any treatment behind you when you sing?
I listened to both mixes and 2 sounds better - more evened out. This is going to stick in my head all day which is a good thing. :D:D:D:D
 
Okay, experiment with some echo (per advice elsewhere) and knocking the reverb way down once the main part hits. Vocals dry except for stereo widening.

 
RAMI said:
Vocals still sound weird. I wish I could find the right word. I can only think of "room-y" or "distant", but like I said, I hear them, so it's not about turning them up. They're there. They just sound......like I said before, as if they were recorded with a distant room mic and turned up. Drums are still small, compressed, and way too low.

If I was me, I would start this mix from the drums, even if they don't come in until later. I would also take off any kind of "psycho" or whatever else you have on the vocals and just add some reverb. There's a lot of good things about this mix. I'm just pointing out the negatives (in my opinion), so it's not as bad as I might be making it seem.

For me, everything's fine, but the vocals and drums need help.
Click to expand...

I'm actually working on that very thing right now...getting the cymbal volumes evened out so the ride can be heard during the main body of the song.
 
ido1957 said:
Cool song Ken - I agree the story develops well from subtle to killer. Keep the "understand" effect you have now (I think it's still there lol).
This reminds me of some 70's or 80's rock anthem - very cool. Vocals are perfect for this style of tune.
The roominess on the vocals may just be reflections - do you have any treatment behind you when you sing?
I listened to both mixes and 2 sounds better - more evened out. This is going to stick in my head all day which is a good thing. :D:D:D:D
Click to expand...

My room is dead quiet. I have to add anything you hear on it. Same room/mic that gets the acoustic to sound so nice is on the vocal.
Thanks for the nice words. :) Very encouraging.

---------- Update ----------

Greg_L said:
Yes. This thing is way out of whack.
Click to expand...

Honesty and brevity are your forte, sir!
Appreciate the listen.

---------- Update ----------

BroKen_H said:
Okay, experiment with some echo (per advice elsewhere) and knocking the reverb way down once the main part hits. Vocals dry except for stereo widening.

Click to expand...

Too much echo. Next mix will be more subtle...
 
Nope. Sorry man, I hate to say it. The vocals do sound better, but still.....Why "stereo Widen"??? Any kind of stereo widening effect shouldn't even exist. They ruin individual tracks, and they ruin complete mixes when people put them on the whole mix. They shouldn't exist. I've never heard a "Stereo widening" effect do anything other than ruin a track or a mix. Just keep it simple. I'm telling you, your vocals will sound better if you just keep it simple. The biggest "Home recording" giveaway is either too much reverb or just generally too much processing, especially that stereo widening crap.

Just trying t help, man. I'd love to just give you a pat on the back and say it's awesome, but it's not. It's potentially very good, but still only sitting at pretty good right now. The two most important elements, drums and vocals, are what's holding this mix back. Acoustic sounds great, bass...I didn't notice, so it must be ok.

My advice is forget short cuts and "tricks". Like I said, I would take the time to start over and mix from the drums up. This could be good. Everything seems to be tracked well. No reason it shouldn't sound way better, and I bet it would if you kept it simple and stopped gimmicky "tricks", hoping they'll do the.......trick. :)
 
BroKen_H said:
I'm actually working on that very thing right now...getting the cymbal volumes evened out so the ride can be heard during the main body of the song.
Click to expand...

Those aren't that important. Listen to any rock ballad, or song of this feel and speed. Other than the vocals, the snare is probably the loudest thing, or close to it. Right now, your snare sounds like it's being choked and crammed into a box. Get those drums louder, let them breathe, compress them less and make sure that snare (and kik) are present. I didn't notice a problem with the cymbals. Maybe there was, but I definitely thnk the snare needs to breathe more and dominate more. I'm not saying this because I'm a drummer. It's the problem with 99% of home mixes. People add stuff, and add more stuff, then they double stuff, and stereo widen stuff, and then process stuff more, and by the time they're finished, they forgot they had a drum tack in there somewhere.
 
I know you're rolling your eyes and close to hating me now. But you'll thank me one day. :)
 
No, I'm thanking you now. I've learned the value of brutal honesty is in the fact that it's HONEST. I'll work some more on this on my next days off and see what I can take out...:) Usually I use Polar on my voice for the doubling effect that "stereo widener" gives it. It's basically pitch shifting up and down by a few cents and adding those panned hard left and right. I'll kill the whole thing and snap the snare up a bit. Still think the ride was too quiet... :)
 
RAMI said:
I know you're rolling your eyes and close to hating me now. But you'll thank me one day. :)
Click to expand...

Rami is 100% right in everything he's said. This mix is overhyped and overcooked and overprocesed to the point it sounds mostly terrible. It's hard to listen to. Go back to square one and forget all the DAW trickery for now.
 
BroKen_H said:
No, I'm thanking you now. I've learned the value of brutal honesty is in the fact that it's HONEST. I'll work some more on this on my next days off and see what I can take out...:) Usually I use Polar on my voice for the doubling effect that "stereo widener" gives it. It's basically pitch shifting up and down by a few cents and adding those panned hard left and right. I'll kill the whole thing and snap the snare up a bit. Still think the ride was too quiet... :)
Click to expand...
The ride might have been too quiet. I honestly didn't notice. I was too busy noticing other things.

As far as doubling vocals, nothing wrong with that. You can also try doing it by singing twice. But no matter how you do it, a couple of things to be careful of: 1) the "second " or doubled track doesn't have to be loud. I usually have mine about 9db's lower than the main track. It still thickens it up without sounding like 2 people singing at the same time. B) if you're going to do it artificially, try to keep the amount of repeats down. That might be "Feedback" or "Repeats", depending on what you're using. You probably want as little of that as possible. I'm not talking about the echo, that's something else and you can put as many repeats on that as you think you need. I'm only talking about the "doubling" or "thickening" of the vocal track.
 
I'm at a bit of a loss. The only "trickery" I have on here at all is a few scattered compressors (bass buss, acoustic buss, and vocals), some (not nearly all) tracks have HPF on. The acoustic bus has a 200Hz shelf that comes in after the intro. The two acoustics have notched EQ so they sit distinct. One reverb for all channels. One vocal echo for the intro and main body, ducked hard during actual vocal parts so as not to interfere. That's it. I don't even have a single compressor on the drums...No effects besides what's on the vocals, which keep getting pared down.
What else should I lose?

Mix 4:

 
Everything sounds so excessively hyped. That's what I'm saying. Maybe it's your monitoring environment. Maybe it's bad EQ and compression choices. The highs are ear splitting, the lows are rumbling, everything is squashed together. No dynamics. Maybe your source sounds are rough to begin with, I don't know. The drums sound like generic pre-processed e-kit samples or something. It just doesn't sound organic at all. I know you're trying hard and all that, and that's cool, I just think you need to go back to the drawing board and find out why everything sounds so overblown to the point of being harsh and messy.
 
Faders down, everything off, start a mix. Got it. The tracks are mostly good (except the drums (exactly what you described) and my singing (which is getting a bit better as I go)). All right then. Appreciate the honesty and the good advice. :)
 
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the outro acoustic is pretty boomy and kind of loud for the effect that I think you want, coming down from that main groove. You might try retracking furthur from the sound hole.. it's a short part and HPFs only do so much.
 
fat_fleet said:
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the outro acoustic is pretty boomy and kind of loud for the effect that I think you want, coming down from that main groove. You might try retracking furthur from the sound hole.. it's a short part and HPFs only do so much.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Good point. It was mentioned, but way back in the beginning. I put a low cut on it and no HPF, if it's still boomy, I'll have to try again. It is really easy to play. Just run an E chord up and down the frets...
 
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