Please help me improve this mix! "This Is Not a Snipe Hunt"

H

Hot_Mess

New member
Hi everyone,

I am new to recording and mixing. I just downloaded Logic a couple months ago and here is the result. ("This Is Not a Snipe Hunt", first song.)

https://soundcloud.com/jessicazin

I would really appreciate any pointers to help me improve.

Maybe I'll do another post to outline all the things I hear wrong with it. I'm sure I'll be missing a lot!
 
Here's my self-critique:
On the positive, I like my lyrics and melody.
I think the I like the arrangement.

Negatives:
I fear the effects I added to my voice are unpleasant to listen to. I felt they were necessary because I'm a female and because of the type of song it is. What do you think?

Midi guitar? I guess this is frowned upon but it sounds ok to me. I fear it won't sound ok to most people?

Overall the song sounds kind of mushy. Too many tracks?

The vocals go up and down in volume a lot esp. in the first verse, even though I used compression. Probably I was moving closer and farther from the mic? I think I'll have to rerecord them cause I don't know how to fix it.

I watched some youtube video about panning and gave it a shot. Any feedback on this?

Thanks so much for your time!--Jessica
 
Hm. To me there's a lot of room for improvement here. Overall the mix is very quiet with some tape-like hiss really audible. Kinda sounds like there's a thick wool blanket over the whole thing, or like it's coming from a different room....but then a weird digital squiggle at 3.19 sounds very in-your-face, like it's part of a different song happening much closer. Spoken vocals seem half-hearted and are occasionally buried. When they first started, I thought it was part of some kind of radio soundbite. The digital percussion kind of sounds like what you hear when someone 4 blocks away is blasting hip-hop from their car. And you're right...the MIDI guitars are pretty fake sounding, almost mosquito-like. I can hear you have some really interesting ideas that want to come through and I'd like to hear how you progress with more experience, but there are some tough obstacles here for listeners to overcome. Focus on better captures during tracking and the song will almost mix itself. Thanks for sharing and sorry if that was a little harsh.
 
I thought fat fleet got it right.

All the effects on the part that is sung just kill it. It seemed like you used effects just because they were there.

Some vocal levels were pretty low in the mix. The kick is loud compared to the rest of the tracks.
 
Hi Jessica. I listened to Never Been Arrested. I listened to Snipe Hunt too. Both tunes share a bit of vocal timidity. Arrested is better than Snipe but the vocal comes and goes like you're moving around an SM58. For Snipe the vocal needs to be way louder and way more present. Example at 00:40 the gong completely buries the words that are coming out of your mouth. You could simply change the cadence and let the gong bang then come back in. The rest of the sounds are fine with me because the story is the star here. Let it shine.
 
Thanks for the comments, I appreciate the honesty. I agree with the specifics like the gong problem, and the vocal shortcomings, but I feel like the bigger problem is it does all sound like it's coming from a wool blanket far, far away! What is up with that! I mean, if the midi instruments are from Logic, even if they sound fake, why does it sound so muffled? That is the like the first thing I'd like to figure out.
 
Hot_Mess said:
Thanks for the comments, I appreciate the honesty. I agree with the specifics like the gong problem, and the vocal shortcomings, but I feel like the bigger problem is it does all sound like it's coming from a wool blanket far, far away! What is up with that! I mean, if the midi instruments are from Logic, even if they sound fake, why does it sound so muffled? That is the like the first thing I'd like to figure out.
Click to expand...

Too much energy in the low frequency range. Use a high pass filter to roll off the low end. You should immediately hear it sound more mid-range like a flat screen TV. Then roll the HPF back a little bit to put some low end back in, but not too much. This is a general suggestion to address the “wool” issue and I could be way off.
 
I liked it = except for the spoken part - I'd have preferred you to raed it as text rather than throw a recitation metre on it. The slightly muffledness of the rest reminds me of The Residents in their Duck Stab/Buster & Glen/Meet the Residents prime.
I'd have expected something slightly angrier from Iggy Town.
 
High passing the master track is a good quickie fix, but the more difficult, more rewarding path will be to figure out which tracks all that low end is coming from. Solo them one at a time. Figure out which tracks you want the low energy from and which ones you don't. Any one song can only sustain so much sound in any one part of the spectrum. If you're just stacking stuff with no regard for how it will play against the other tracks, it'll sound pretty messy. Also, like MMM said, effects can be cool but use them judiciously if and when they are called for. Me personally, I would try taking em all off and adding them back one by one with a critical honest ear to the over all effect on the song. But that's just me. TBH, I'm still learning myself.
 
fat_fleet said:
Me personally, I would try taking em all off and adding them back one by one with a critical honest ear to the over all effect on the song.
Click to expand...

As I was reading through the other comments, I was thinking this ^^^

I'm guessing the wool blanket sound is caused, at least in some part, by all the effects you're using. I'd try removing them. Maybe keep an EQ on the vocal, but only use a presence boost - like maybe 3db at about 5K or so. Leave everything else you're doing off. Put up a new mix and let's listen to what it sounds like.
 
This is a pretty intriguing tune. It made me think of some of that anti-folk type stuff that was around a few years back. There's a lot of interesting ideas, but as you mention, it's kind of smothered in a foggy blanket.

I always think if you're going all MIDI, then you need really good quality samples. If you don't have that, then you need to intersperse with real instruments, otherwise you end up with a flat sound and no dynamics. Everything being midi combined with heavy vocal processing leaves you in a tough place before you begin. I'm guessing you have no access to a real guitar or bass?

If you can find better quality drum samples (the military rhythm's cool, but the samples are all distant and muddy) and re-do the vocals with a more even volume and less processing, then you may see more improvement. In the longer term, I'd try to get even a cheap guitar and bass - even if you just plug it directly in and process 'in the box'
 
"I'd have expected something slightly angrier from Iggy Town." Thanks, that cracked me up.

Super helpful feedback about the low frequency stuff. Now I have a place to start.

Also several people had the same comment about the verses should be spoken more naturally. I think I will do that.

This has been a big help, thanks everyone.
 
Here's the reference point I was making.
Also note - towards the end (4.27) for a homerecording studio for 1976 is pretty cool. The fact that 2 of my all time fav albums were recorded there is SUPER cool.

PLEASE don't clean things up too much.
 
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