Mixing Question: Problems getting healthy dynamics range, re: vocals

cavedog101 said:
I have a suggestion.

Make a copy. Keep what you have now. On the copy take everything and I do mean EVERYTHING off of all the tracks. Now using only the volume controls and the pan, place everything in the mix where it sounds like it should be.

It sounds to me like you have spent a LOT of time with each instrument without considering how it works against the other stuff. Nothing is helping anything else and therefore nothing is supporting the song itself.

And tune and time the vocals. And time the drums. Just because you have access to plug-ins and effects doesn't mean the have to be on the recording. And you're WAY overthinking this.

Consider the copy a working copy. Don't try and duplicate what you have already done. Above all else.....serve the song. But first let's see how big the canvass is you'll be painting on. Volume. Pan. Gainstage.
Click to expand...

Actually, when I started, I stripped everything bare. Got rid of all FX (except amp sims) and began with simple gain staging. Mixed in mono to be sure I could hear everything clearly. From there, I moved out of mono and placed everything in its own place in the stereo field (LCR panning). Then I as I started adding fx, I went entirely top-down: I added just the slightest compression on the master buss to catch some peaks, added EQ and then saturation/exciter (Waves Vitamin) and a multi-band compressor. It was actually sounding pretty decent at that point (except for the vocals!).

Then I went down and tweaked EQ for the vocals, guitars and bass and added a little compression and fx sends. Then added some parallel processing.

I'm thinking the biggest things that are hurting the mix right now though is that there are very little dynamics in the vocals (it's all the same volume, regardless of what's going on with the band), or in the drum track. I'm liking what the drums are "doing" but from beginning to end they're all the same volume (I think that's a big part of what miroslav and jkuehlin and the others are saying). There are dynamic changes in the guitars, but they're not following what the drums are doing (which is no dynamic change!), or the vocals.

Please clarify for me cavedog: would that be what I think you're describing? Or am I missing it?

Tesgin
 
miroslav said:
I don't use Reaper...but that doesn't matter. What stems do you have? Individual tracks are better, but let's see what you have.
I'm tired of listening to the mix I'm working on...so a can take a break with something different.
Click to expand...

I can send whatever you'd like. I could send the stems of each track without fx? Would you want separate tracks for each guitar, bass, vox, and each drum track?

Tesgin
 
Tesgin said:
I can send whatever you'd like. I could send the stems of each track without fx? Would you want separate tracks for each guitar, bass, vox, and each drum track?

Tesgin
Click to expand...

Yeah...other than you cutting them up and/or comping tracks from your raw recordings...just send the final, individual tracks without any FX/processing...that way I'm not layering my stuff on top of existing stuff.

Send each track from the "ZERO" starting point on your timeline...so if you have a track where it's bits-n-pieces of audio with nothing in-between...bounce it out from the "ZERO" point (without FX/process)...so that I get all the tracks from the start to the end of the song.
That way I can just drop them in my editor starting at zero, and all the tracks will be lined up and perfectly in sync.
If you bounce any of them...do them at whatever sample rate you are currently using and go with 24 bit....but I'll work with whatever you send, just do them all at the same rate and bit depth.

Does that make sense or should I explain it better...? :)

I guess dropbox would be easiest, unless you have a better idea...just make sure you have each file with download capable/allowed.

If it all works out...I'm going to give you just my version of the mix and the FX/processing I do individually and on the mix...but you should then use that as a guide, and do your own mix.
If anyone else does the same thing for you...you'll have multiple examples to compare to, and also the differences in the way each person approaches the mix.
I think that should help you find some direction and offer some ideas...but of course, you can decide how you want to do your mix in the end, it's your music.
 
Hey Tesgin, Miro had a pretty good idea of just working through the session and building a mix. I'll do a quick one for ya too if you'd like. For mine you can leave everything as-is. Just dropbox/google drive/WeTransfer the entire thing. I have Reaper and Addictive to no need to render those to audio. Just leave the midi and all the presets in there. I'll be able to open it. It would help me if you gave me your entire plugin list, that way I can make sure I only use your plugins. I think this would be an easier way of demonstrating than trying to write everything lol. I'll p.m. you my email.
 
Tesgin said:
Okay, just got back from work! Working on getting the tracks/stems now. Thanks! Will PM shortly.

TB
Click to expand...

Send that link of tracks to me as well. I have some free time this weekend... Maybe....

Hell, you should just post the link here on forum. Nobody going to steal your song here. :)
 
Thanks, miroslav.

That'd be great. Yeah, I like the idea of posting it here. Maybe someone else will be so inclined as well. That'd be great. I'm blown away at this forum and how helpful the comments have been. Really blown away that you guys are taking me under your wing. This is awesome.

I'll post the links below.

Thanks again,
Tesgin
 
jimmys69 said:
Send that link of tracks to me as well. I have some free time this weekend... Maybe....

Hell, you should just post the link here on forum. Nobody going to steal your song here. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks, Jimmy. I did just PM you, but I'm not sure if it "took" cuz my reply didn't show up in my sent folder. Odd.

Anyway, miroslav also suggested posting my tracks here, and jkuehlin asked for the REAPER project. I'm good with that. Awesome. So, here goes ...

Here is a link to download just the tracks, with no fx: Downloading from DiskStation
Note, though, that I also included stems of the guitar and drum master tracks, in addition to the flat DI of the guitars: the guitar stems have all fx removed except for the amp sims. I included the drums also just for reference, but the MIDI drum track is there as well. There are several muted tracks: bckgd vox are not there yet. Just experimenting. They’re pretty bad. EG 5 is nice, but I thought it was too much so I nixed it, but the track is still there. There’s an EG 1 (orig) track: I included it, but that was my first run at the guitar 1. I like the second better so muted it, but the stem is there anyway.


And here is the link to download the full REAPER project: Downloading from DiskStation
Not compressed, full project. All files are intact. It’s the actual project. I included three reference mp3s as well. The reverb impulses are there, but I also used some guitar impulses in S-Gear. Not sure if I need to include them (let me know. I can do that). Honestly, I’m not wed to those impulses though. S-Gear has so many great impulses built in. I did not have a chance yet to re-do the vocal track (well, actually I “did” but it was awful. I tanked it!). I’ll have time to do that either tomorrow or Friday and can post a link to that as well. Also, as requested, I included a .png shot of all the fx in the project (from the Project Media/FX Bay view).

Thanks in advance. I'm eager to see what you guys do with this.

Best,
Tesgin
 
miroslav said:
Neither of the links work for me.

In Internet Explorer, it's blocked due to invalid certs, and there is no option to proceed anyway.

In Chrome I get this weird message:

The webpage at https://usgofile.re.cs.quickconnect.to/6vHG1/sharing/125IFj1CB?tunnel=/tunnel/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Those links were to my personal server. Never had a problem before. Maybe it's cuz of the size. Not sure what happened. Sorry about that.

It's late now, gotta hit the hay. I'll try something else tomorrow. Never heard of that WeTransfer thing. I'll check that out, or maybe google drive.

Sorry all.
Tesgin
 
Hey man... We have a low level hurricane/tropical storm dumping water all over South Carolina.... I've had the studio shut down all day because power lines can go out and cause surges. I gotta wait until this storm passes by before I can give those files a good look
 
Okay. Trying again.

Here's the link for the tracks: Sync.com | Control Panel

Here's the link for the REAPER project, zipped: Sync.com | Control Panel

So, the 2nd link, the REAPER project, is to a zipped file, to keep the file structure intact. It is my understanding that Apple's compression logarithm, which creates the zip file, is lossless? Is that correct?

If not, here's the link to the full project, unzipped, but you'd probably have to download each of the folders separately: Sync.com | Control Panel

Sorry for the delay. Worked all day. This is my first opportunity to update the links.

THANKS a million!

Tesgin

P.S., hopefully sometime this weekend I'll have opportunity to re-record the vocals. Will post when done.
 
jkuehlin said:
Hey man... We have a low level hurricane/tropical storm dumping water all over South Carolina.... I've had the studio shut down all day because power lines can go out and cause surges. I gotta wait until this storm passes by before I can give those files a good look
Click to expand...

No worries. My son just flew into Tampa this morning to visit his girlfriend. He said it's fairly calm there.

Stay safe!

TB
 
What is the size of the file? Full albums around 25GB. I'm not sure I have time to grab this right now. I'll give it a bit...
 
Seriously, we have to fix this for others. I have 250GB per second download speed here.

If I get this down I will share it on my WeTransfer site for others. This is like old school dial-up for me. lol!

No offense. It is just way slow....
 
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I'm downloading now...it's going pretty fast here...600MB in about a minute or two so far.............done!

I selected download all....and it zipped it into about 800MB total. :)
 
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