Hi, I’m a beginner learning to mix- just got this song off a multitrack site and thought I’d give it a go using Protools First.
I understand that I’ve got a very long way to go from here so I’m asking for some constructive feedback on my first mix: Where do I go from here? What can I start learning today that will help make my next mix more professional? What’s my next step?
Also, this was a live recording and I think the vocalist was moving around quite a bit but I wasn’t sure how to fix it- what can I do about this? Thank you in advance!
I don't think it's that bad actually. For a first try it's pretty awesome.
Keep the vocals in the spot light, any instruments start to take away from that duck them in volume to sit them juuuust behind, if you want a particular track louder in volume than the vocal then be careful of the high end because your attention will be drawn to it. Listening on laptop so literally can not hear bottom end so can't advise you on this. Is that insanely loud 4 clicky kick a part of the bass drum? OR the bass drum? It's very.... very loud, definitely turn that down. It's got far too much high end it sounds more like a clap to me instead of a thump. Too clicky, which is 4-8khz area, need to tame that.
Get a nice reverb track on the go and send tasteful amounts of your tracks to it to fill your mix out a bit. It's a very empty mix so you can get away with it. Low pass the reverb bus at 6k though so you can get away with adding more reverb with no brittle highs.
Snare could do with some plate verb, play with EQ boost 200-250hz on snare for punch, Compress with slower attack 30ms or so to keep transient attack.
If she's moving around too much from the mic and your vocals are dropping out and not staying consistent then you need to compress it. the tone may change as she moves away from the mic but the volume will at least be consistent. Listening the vocal gets too loud in some places, and too quiet in others so compress, it's pretty standard to see how much high end you can boost 10-12khz and above to open the vocal up, if your esses get out of control you can add a de-esser to tame it back down again while keeping the high end boost. Compress lightly afterwards sounds great.
If you have an SSL Bus compressor, then I think your track will really benefit from this on your mastering bus compressing 1-3db's max.
Play with some delays on the vocal see if it sounds nice, keep it tucked way back. 1/8th notes seem to work well most of the time.
It's a really nice mix what you have though. I would just try what I mentioned if it were me mixing, and by then other things will have to be tweaked to fit until you can get that nice balance of lows/highs/compression/verb.
I can't hear panning/lows etc because listening on laptop. Nothing seems too bright/or harsh on this thing so well done there.
