Project X: Feedback on early mixes

spantini

COO of me, inc.
I'd appreciate some feedback on this one. This is a first mix of early, rough tracks. The vocal is rough, I know. I'm trying to get a better singer (and lead guitar). The drums are MT Power Drum Kit - mechanical and not fully developed yet, just a steady beat to hold the song together for now.

My main interest right now is how do you think the overall sound is. I tried it brighter but it just didn't seem to sit well. Making the guitar brighter seemed worse to me.

Thanks in advance.



Dropbox - Project X - Simplify your life
 
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The vocals are rather buried and muddy in the mix. Guitar tone i quite like but it lacks dynamics, depth and sounds all in the middle. Do different takes panned either way and maybe drop an acoustic guitar low in the mix behind it.. Levels on it seem a bit up and down too so may benefit from more compression. Thems the first impressions.

Mark
 
You probably need to notch out something in the guitar for the vocal unless you get someone else and even high-pass some because it is muddy.

Have you tried doubling the guitar with a different guitar or pickup/tones and pan wide RL. This mix seems very close to mono. Maybe spread out drums a bit - you do that thing at the start but I'm just not hearing much outside the middle.

The vocal sounds like it's clipping some places.
 
Yeah, it's pretty much all up the middle. Except for the intro, drums have only some slight panning, barely detectable when solo'd. The intro has toms panned for stereo but I haven't gotten around to adding more toms with fills in the rest of the song - that should help with that to some degree. Guitar and bass on center. There is only one vocal on which I put two stereo plugins panned L & R about 25% each - effectively mono with a slightly wider sound.

I already planned to add an acoustic and now, with y'all's suggestions, I'll add another electric rhythm guitar with different tone and pan them L/R. That will definitely open it up. I'll get to the vocal after those.

Right after I recorded that vocal I got a sore throat (it was scratchy at the time), then my voice dropped an octave, then I lost it completely. I can barely whisper now. But it's not sore anymore! :p

Thanks again.
 
Spantini

Its hard to judge because the drums and bass aren't really setting the groove. Timing seems off several places, like the guitar got ahead of the vocals. Plus, the guitar part is just too much strumming. It changed a bit around 1:40 but then got back to the strumming in the verse. Plus I don't know if the distortion effect works for that style of rhythm guitar. Maybe a cleaner guitar with a second distorted guitar doing a more sparse part would work.

It needs something to lock onto. I would take a step back, work on getting the bass and drums working, then come back to retrack the guitar parts.

Ive got a song that's sitting on the back burner now, because I can't get a good locked in bass part. The drum part seems pretty solid in MT. I wanted to get my bass playing buddy to do it, but with Covid around and him having some serious health issues over the past year, he's not coming out of his man cave. I've almost grabbed an interface, sent him a copy of Reaper on flash drive and said "have at it". Until I get the foundation, I can't get the guitar parts right.
 
There are probably big gain staging issues with this mix. Maybe read up a bit on gain staging. I suspect the vocals were tracked too hot.

The intro sounds great but when the vocals kick in that balance is lost. Gotta try to make the tune carry that initial balance.
 
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Project X.2

The recording levels on the mixer meters were -18dBFS to -8dBFS, and the analyzed loudness is shown below :

loudness.jpg

In the rough mix I kept everything around -12dBFS, so I am puzzled by comments suggesting clipping. I need to figure that out.. I did notice when rendering to the stereo .wav in Reaper the levels in the render window went into the red - maybe that's the clipping, even though all other levels are well below. I lowered the master by 4.5dB and dropped the render levels to around -2.5.. out of the red.

I am massaging the mix levels, bringing them all in around -14 LUFS +/- for a more balanced mix which sounds better. On the guitar, I switched out the Fuzz/Distortion for a Chorus. Sounds better but I'm still working on that. Added more compression to the vocal to help even it out some.

I also shifted the guitar by 1ms to address the timing mentioned earlier - that helped tighten it up a wee bit. I'll be working on adding an acoustic guitar next, then the panning.

Dropbox - Project X - Simplify your life
 
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The vocal is definitely clipping/distorting at points. It's very obvious at 3:12. If the levels in the DAW were good, then I'm guessing you may have been distorting the preamp and/or mic, or you have a bad cable issue, etc. Something is not right there.

I also agree that the instruments are not locking in rhythmically. It does need to "tighten up!" :)
 
Ok. I see it now in the waveform - looks a bit shaggy there and I was close to the mic. I'm going to re-track the vocal, varying distance with volume.

I actually thought that clipping was my voice as it was rough and crackly leading up to a sore throat and laryngitis.
 
Project X4

This is a slightly different version of X3

I had to retrack the Right side acoustic and I included a little more of the first two strings in many areas. I also added some different emphasis on the strumming in the mid section (A-G-A-G..) to give it a bit more drive. Also, the MONO blurb in the middle is now gone.

Other than some slight ReaEQ, identical on both, there is no other processing of the guitars.

If this version sounds ok to everyone, I'll move on to adding the bass.

Dropbox - Project X - Simplify your life
 
X6 may be awhile as I'm reworking the MIDI drums to add variation and some stereo separation.
My attention span with MIDI is limited so I'm taking my time here. Thanks for hanging in, everyone! :guitar::listeningmusic:
 
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