First off, nice song
I have done a couple of the mix contests and so far these were the easiest actual tracks to mix. I personally like the heavy guitars, and the drum tracks are decent etc... I wsih there was a hi hat track though. I would love to have a little of that crispy hat sound going thorugh the verses with the clean guitar a bit, but oh well
I did listen to a couple of the mixes so far.
Blue Bear..... there were things I liked and didn't like. I thought the drums and bass were pretty nice. Not necessarily the style I would have gone after on the drums, but very cohesive none the less. The vocals were a little dry for my taste, but its all just opinions isn't it
The biggest thing that I didn't like was that the heavy guitars had a real muddy feel to me. try out some of the HF sweeps on that new Sony of yours on a guitar buss or something. This sort of song needs to have a lot of energy in the heavy guitar riffs to me.
Strave, there was some cool creative stuff that I really liked in your mix, but also some really serious engineering fauxpaux's in my opinion. First off, I like the little drum compositions. I really liked the flavor that they added. I also liked the vocal sound. It was maybe a little processed for my taste, but I though it did fit pretty well. I also really liked the heavy guitar sounds, but thought they were a little overbearing in the mix. Tone was good, maybe just back them off 4db throughout. I saw earlier that you thought the vocalist had some pitch problems. Tnhis may be true, but I felt like the vocalists emotion was worth more than any problems there may have been. I feel like the vocals would have sounded better without autotune. I heard more autotune artifacts in your mix than vocal problems without autotune. The biggest problems that I had however was in the drums and bass. First off, after the very intro I fell like I never hear the bass again. I like the kick sample you chose, but it seems to loud compared to the rest of the kit. Quite a bit too loud actually. Its quite possible that the drums would sound a lot better (at least to me) if the kick went down about 6db and the heavy gits went down that 4db I mentioned earlier. That may even solve the bass problems that I heard as well. The compression however is a different story all together. It is most certainly WAY overcompressed. I don't know if it is just mix compression, but it sound like a drum buss or maybe even overhead compression to me. To me the overheads sound seriously smeared and out of whack. Not only that, but whenever the heavy guitars kick in I feel like the drums just dissappear (except the kick which in my opinion is just too loud throughout the whole thing. I do understand that the current pop punk genre loves to release those excruciatingly loud mixes. They do it however without the serious smearing and pumping that happens in your mix. Getting a mix that loud but without artifacts like that is not an easy thing to do. It requires careful attention and great gear. Also, did you replace the snare with a sample? It sounds a little too processed and steady to have been the real snare. Personally, I don't like that snare sound a whole lot, but kudos to you if that was the real snare track and you managed to make it sound like that. It sounds like a real snare to me in the sense that it does not feel heavily EQ'ed. Just not the snare sound I would have chosen. Also, the toms have no punch to them. That would have been Ok if the kick wasn't so punchy though. Basically, no good drummer gets a kick sound like that without the rest of the kit sounding in timbre as well.
Of course these are just my opinions, nothing personal so take it how you guys want.
Now that I have given my feedback, here is a link to my first 30-45 minutes of this song
http://www.nowhereradio.com/xstatic/singles?aid=4450&alid=-1&1111094015
