Magic in the mix. Seriously substandard in solo. How to deal with weird alchemy.

cfg

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Many years ago I briefly tried tinkering with home recording, without much success, and gave it up. I decided to give it another go about four weeks ago with very basic gear (Lenovo Ideapad 300, Reaper, Focusrite Saffire 6 interface, and two EV676's, monitored through a pair of Advent Calypso's driven by a Fisher surround sound integrated amp) and I've finished my first crack at a complete section of music, rock music, a short mix, no beginning, no end, just a few bars that repeat, complete with a guitar track, a bass track, and a stock beat from Addictive drums. I am somewhat surprised that it sounds as good as it does, but here's the problem. Half of the bass part I nailed, the other half went off the rails spectacularly. Now in the mix, it's very interesting, and somehow it works, but solo'ed, it sounds like an unmitigated disaster, and frankly, for the life of me I can't figure out why it sits so well in the mix. My guess is there is some kind of interaction with the other instrumental parts that somehow pulls those mistakes into a special place that can only exist within those same instrumental parts. Is this a reasonable way to view the phenomenon?

Thinking ahead to when I try to actually record music instead of merely learning the recording process by trial and error, I can anticipate times when something similar might occur, and my first and strongest instinct (as someone who has always striven toward perfection in other pursuits) would be to trash it, even if it works well in the mix, especially since there is not a remote chance that I could ever play it that way again. What have engineers usually done in such situations? Is there a philosophy of this peculiar aspect of putting together a mix where one or more parts are terrible alone yet work maybe even very well in the mix?
 
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Sometimes things just work.....In context.

It's more common than one would think.
Take for example vocals. In some rock music solo just the vocal and it sounds like crap. But in the mix it works. Two artists I've personally heard soloed come to mind. David Lee Roth and Billy Idol
On their own, horrendous, but in the song it works.

As to your situation, maybe a happy accident? If it sounds good don't worry.

:D
 
I have to agree with everyone above. You're not going to listen to is soled. I would even say, that if it sounds good soled but doesn't work in the mix, that is even worse (and very common).

It really is about context/mix.
 
This is not uncommon. Over the years, I've heard solo'd tracks by various top artists - vocal; guitar; bass - from their #1 and top 10 songs.
Incredibly, the bigger the hit song, the worse the solo'd tracks seemed to sound. Some of the guitar parts sounded like the player was just
standing about waiting for the session to start, messing around on their guitar or singing - stopping and starting with very irregular intervals.. nothing
to suggest a song was being played. Then it's un-solo'd and BANG! there's that #1 hit song back atcha - guitar part sounding perfect.

When guitars were solo'd, you could hear all the scratching, string noise and breathing that got buried in the mix.
 
Cherish the happy accidents that no amount of planning will give. These are the things that make songs memorable to people.
 
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