Wicked Game Cover - Mix Review

Takes balls to cover this song. But they give it a go.

Your levels are all over the place. Bass and lead guitar are too loud. The drums are buried. The bass sounds woolly. Are you high passing?

Whatever plugin is giving the lead vocal that gainy tone isn't flattering your vocalist.

I'd suggest stripping back to raw tracks and rebuilding the mix from the bottom up. Get the bass and kick drum balanced and working together. Then the rest of the kit and the vocals, then the rhythm guitars, then the lead guitars. Get you levels sorted out before you start adding effects like that reverb.
 
Well, the vocal performance is great. Tough song to sing, so good job there.

The rest of the mix is a mess. I have to really stretch my imagination to hear the drums. The bass is almost non-existent and woolly like Robus said. I'm not finding the vocal plug detracts from the vocal just yet. I want to hear it in the context of a good mix. I'm thinking it might work as is.

This sounds like the guitar player mixed the song. Gotta remember, there are other members in a band... even a one-man band.

As Robus said, start with the bass and kick. Pull all the faders down, then bring up just the bass and the kick and get them working together. Bring in the vocal. Set it to the same level as the bass and kick. Then bring in the rest of the drum kit. Look for a good balance but remember, the bass, the kick and the lead vocal are the beat driver and melody. Do not put anything louder then them. After you got those working well, bring in the guitars, keyboards, kazoos and whatever else you have. They are all in a supporting role and should not be louder than the bass, kick, or lead vocals.

Pan, EQ, apply compression, apply reverb and delay, as necessary to separate the different tracks from each other. At this point, only make minor adjustments until you feel it matches what you want to hear. Then close it up and put it away for a few days.

Hope this helps.
 
Feedback is much appreciated. I'm making some progress on this I think. I worked quite a bit on the kick->bass compression. I'm not super excited about the snare & high hat on this. I think where I went wrong before was trying to EQ to the ever-present high hat keeping time with the song, which resulted in muddying the drums pretty heavy and losing alot of top end.

Based on suggestions, I went the less-is-more route, and took a lot of (maybe) un-needed eq'ing off the snare, bass, and vocals. I pulled the compression way back on the lead vocal, as well as eq, and it cleaned up that little overdrive / distortion I think y'all were hearin....Definitely was some high band pass on the bass, pulled that off as well.

Tried to balance the L/R guitars as well, made the rhythm more on the supporting side, probably a couple areas where i could ride the faders a little with him.

Still a work in progress...thanks y'all!

View attachment Wicked-Game_r2_session.mp3
 
Good improvement. I'm hearing things that weren't there before.

Still got some work to do, though. The kick is a little boomy and not quite gelling with the bass. I'm a little bothered by your statement, "I worked quite a bit on the kick->bass compression"; it's not just about adjusting compression to get them to work together. In fact, it's basically all EQ. Notching and boosting so they don't step on each other. Find where you get a nice solid thump on the kick, then notch out that range from the bass. Find where the kick rings, then notch that out. Then apply compression to get the right amount of sustain on the kick and consistent feel on the bass. Disclaimer: I'm no expert, no matter how long I've been doing this.

Guitars could still use some balancing, though individually, they sound good.

Vocals sound nice. Right now, I wouldn't change them.
 
Ah by that I meant sidechaining; that's new to me and I was fooling about.... Not I worked quite a bit on it and I think I have solid gold :-)
 
studioinaboxnc said:
Ah by that I meant sidechaining; that's new to me and I was fooling about.... Not I worked quite a bit on it and I think I have solid gold :-)
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about sidechaining anything just yet. Get the basic stuff down first. The sidechain might sound good here and there, but you're applying it to the entire song. I can already hear some nasty stuff in the bass on the remix. 2:03-2:15, for example. Just use some EQ and compression on each individually for now. The bass is def wooly sounding. Like there's too much 150-350 in there. A good starting point for bass is HP 40hz and a cut in the wooly section. Any boosting or cutting elsewhere depends on the bass, strings, amp, cabs, mics, etc... Really, aside from that bass and kick, the rest sounds pretty good. Like Chili said, I'm also hearing things that weren't noticeable before. Right from the start, actually.

Please support the forum and critique others' tunes as well. It'll go a long way and there's plenty of ppl here into your genre.
 
I listened to both versions. Did you gate the bass in v2? It sounds weird - at least in the beginning. It also sounds like you gave it a low end boost. I would have just left it like it was in v1 and turn it up a couple of dbs.

I thought the singer could handle the high end of the range, but struggled with the lower notes. The falsetto stuff was great. The vocal sound was much improved in v2.

Guitars sound a little muffled. The slide guitar seemed to have a string or two out of tune.

Drums sound canned. The mix needs a more powerful snare sample.
 
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