A mix of mine, and and usual, I HATE IT!!

jeff0633

Member
I just can't get all the multitude of things right. I wrote and recorded this alone over the last few days. I HATE my own voice, I hear some kind of honky eq band but sweep and sweep and can't find it. THEN, I forget to use vol envelope on the bridge mid section and the back ground vocals seem too loud for the lead vocal, but there is just a thousand things to do and I get frustrated because I can't remember them all, and I get bored and just render it and stop working on it. Now I listen on my phones and HATE IT.

I just want to give up sometimes.

You'll Never Know by TNphotog | Free Listening on SoundCloud
 
This has me wondering, are there personality types that just aren't compatible with mixing and being able to stay with it until they are truly satisfied? I sit here listening and I realize that I can point out numerous things I just have fixed and worked harder one. Am I am maybe needing to face the fact that I have a personality type that just has trouble concentrating long enough to reallt work at a mix and just do the things that need to be done.

Listen to the backing vocals on that first "Once again" statement, it is way too loud, I could have fixed this easily with a drag of a volume envelope. Listen to the backing vocals on the long ending of " You'll Never Know", they are too harsh, I should have done some eq envelope, Why didn't I? There are multple instances where my vocal is out of pitch, why didn't I jkust work at the vocals until I got them good, where I didn't hear out of pitch parts. It isn't that I do hear these problems, it's that I seem to lose patience and that "Stick to it" mentality that it seems a good mixer just has to have. My god, it's the delayed gratification thing. I can't just delay and be patient until I getr it right EVEN THOUGH I know that if I did I would be more satisfied with my mixes and songs. I do the same thing in my songwriting, I don't take the time to just keep at it and mold, arrange, make new parts and actually work at it before I start recording.

So this may all be just my personality that I am fighting against and I may never be able to write, record, or mix because I am just not compatible with doing these things. Uhg
 
Really nice song. Don't be so hard on yourself Nice Job. I'll try to answer a few of your concerns :
1. I personally make use of every thing available to me. (If pitch bothers you that much use pitch correction)
2. There is no substitute for patience and hard work. I get a cup of coffee listen to my mix and make notes. Take a break, (maybe a whole day) Go back and change, repeat, up to 10 times (if needed) Same for Mastering but usually not quite as many times.
3. I try to write as much of a song on acoustic guitar over a period of time as possible, let it develop. So there is more to work with later.
So my question to you is "What's the rush ?" Where are you going ? :confused:
 
The song is great in my opinion, the mix sounds good, the vocals should be higher. I notice the problem with mixing our own songs is that we recognize our voice better, so we tend to keep it at a lower volume. The singning is great.
 
Thanks for the replies and encouragement guys. Here is another mix I just got more serious with over the last couple hours. I backed off the limiter to get more dynamics back. Also raised the main vocal a bit more as my brother also told me it wasn't loud enough. I hadn't used the T-Racks "ONE" mastering plugin a long time and that thing just squished the mix so I took it off and just used DMG Limitless on the transparent setting to get the dynamics back. Added Microshift with the mix knob up about halfway on the main vocal, turned the reverb mix on the vocal up just a tad. I think it did help overall. So right above, I have zero reason to be rushing things and getting impatient. Hope this remix sounds better. Thanks

You'll Never Know (Remix) by TNphotog | Free Listening on SoundCloud
 
I'm hoping this helps. If not, ignore :)

View attachment You'll never know.mp3

This is a guess, but I'm thinking the problems with the mix are monitoring related.

Here is what I heard: Reverb on the vocals was drowning out the mix and the vocals are very sibilant. Have you tried a gated reverb instead of a straight hall reverb? Might work better. I really like Freeverb too.

The kick and bass didn't have a lot of presence, and the whole mix had a pronounced harshness to it (which is all ok ... fixable). The width of the mix was also a bit too far out to the edges. So what I thought could work (from a 2-bus perspective) is lower the overall volume of the side channels, but give them a solid 4-5db boost centred at 100hz to keep the apparent width in tact while warming things up. Then on the center channel, boost the kick at 61hz (narrowish q), boost the 80hz( wide q) rumble of the bass, dull pretty much everything from 1.5khz to 8khz (wide q) by 3-4db. Boost the midrange centred at 500hz. finally, boost 12-20khz slightly with a multi band (not in mid/side mode).

Don't give up.
 
Very nice tune. The intro reminds me of "I'm not in love" by 10cc.
I got used to your mix pretty fast, but I think Redstone's mix brings the main vox out better.
Nice work of a super chill tune.
 
Restone's mix definitely took off some of the 'harshness'. A different reverb on the lead vocal would be something to look at.
 
Definitely being harsh on yourself. Its a clear mix and whilst they'll be a 1001 things you notice, thats only because by the time you complete, you've probably played back parts hundreds of times or more. It gets boring, it stops being fun. Unless of course you're an excellent musician/ engineer / editor all in one. The desire to create stops me binning it all cos my productivity efficiency is appalling!

Mark
 
Back
Top