Another one from the studio, Hard Rock Ballad

[Ninja_Drummer]

Hey guys here's a new mix from the studio, prolly one of my best yet, it's hard rock ballad with some screaming in it. I did some ad lib post production piano to add thickness and dynamics.

Lemme know what you guyses think.

"Break" by Amherst feat. Ken Luengo on piano

 

[Greg_L]

Hmm, well, the good is that the guitars and keys and stuff sound pretty good. I think the instrumental performances are all good. The mixes levels are mostly pretty good. The vocals could come up some, but.....

The bad....the vocals are horrible. The melodic singing parts are pitchy and just not good. The screaming isn't very good either. All of the vocals miss the mark badly to me. The singing needs to better and the screaming needs to be more aggressive, or macho, or something. It sounds like a teenage kid trying to sound hard.

The medium...the drums are pretty close to being good, but the kick is weak and boxy sounding. Too much midrange and/or low mids in the kick make it sound too natural, boxy, and small for a song like this. Needs a lot more meat and punch from the kick. Sounds like you mic'd the bottom of the snare? That's cool, but the blend with the top is off. Or you have phase issues. It sounds kind of thin in the softer passages. The snare sounds much better in the louder passages. Maybe you're hitting it harder and more of the body and tone is coming through. The toms sound pretty nice, but I'm thinking they're coming too much from the overheads. Did you close mic them? Some tone from the toms would be good I think.

 

[Ninja_Drummer]

This wasn't my band I recorded btw, but yeah, totally forgot about inverting phase on the bottom snare *doh! Though it should've done it already when I eq'd it for more high end whilest having the top eq'd for meat. But I guess it didn't work out so well. Yeah, sorry about the kick, I kinda got careless with this band's drums (yes I know) and just slapped a kick drum mic in the hole without really finding a sweet spot. And it didn't really help that I hadn't tuned the kit beforehand (recorded with my kit btw).

Toms were closed mic, but I think the issue was to much bleed on top end in the overheads through eq. I kinda brought out the lights so that the drums and cymbals came a little bit more in your face in the mix when it came to heavy parts.

Vox I really couldn't do much about, the singer was pitchy to begin with, so I just tried cleaning it up with a lil bit of overcompression and saturation. But oh well, best I could do, I didn't really want to mess with a pitch shifter, I feel that might do more damage then good in this case since I don't usually mess with them to begin with.

 

[ddrummer8]

Mix sounds pretty good, I like the piano and guitars. I can live with the screams. I agree with greg on the drums, but sounds like it can be fixed. Vocals are the last thing you want to say oh well about though. In tune vocals make your overall mixes sound more polished and professional. This performances pitch can easily be fixed with something like melodyne. I hate to say it, but with today's vocals and how perfect they are, anything out of tune sticks out that much more. Listeners don't know it's flat or sharp, they just know it doesn't sound good. So I recommend at least taking a stab at some pitch correction, it can really help. Other than that, with a few more tweaks this can be a really good mix.