First mixdown - Hog Wild

  • Thread starter Thread starter ericaop
  • Start date Start date
Not bad overall. I'd say your biggest issue is that the individual instruments sound disconnected from each other, partially performance-wise, but primarily sonically. It sounds as though each instrument were eq'd/compressed to sound good by itself, whereas they should be mixed to sound good with each other.

The bass seems like it is in its own world, disconnected from both the guitars and the drums. It seems overly-prominent in the midrange, causing it to poke out a bit more than it should (in addition to the bassist over-playing a bit in certain parts). Use some EQ to 'move it down an octave' (as in, not by pitch-bending, but by emphasizing somewhere in the 100-300 range, vs. the 400-600 range). It needs to growl, not poke.

The guitars sound as though they either have a room mic or a roomy verb on them. Whichever it is, I would dry them up a little bit, as they sound like they're in a different room from the drums. It's possible that shifting the left guitar 20-100 milliseconds earlier might help alleviate some of this, as it sounds like he's noticeably later than the right guitar. Hard to tell from here, but solo 'em up and you'll be able to fix it I'm sure.


Those are my thoughts any way. This sounds like it could end up sounding pretty good!
 
Yeah, they definitely do sound disconnected, however, I eq'd them to have their own sonic space (switching to mono to get it clearest via one channel and without panning. I have both guitars delayed on the ghost side. Guitar 1 is left and has a ghost track with 20ms on the right, visa versa with the 2nd guitar. I think that's been my struggle overall is getting things to glue together. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.
 
I'd turn off the ghost tracks, personally. As for eq'ing, you can certainly over-sculpt and end up with too much space between elements. Think about it like building a cobblestone floor. The bigger the space between stones, the more holes and bumps there will be. The trick is to sculpt so that the stones all fit together, not so that they're nowhere next to each other, you know what I'm saying? Certain elements have to overlap in some fashion in order to gel. They can overlap without obscuring each other.

Ideally, the performance and the mixing make it sound almost like the kick drum is triggering the bass guitar when they hit together. The bass guitar acts almost like the bottom string of the guitar, providing the girth the guitars need, but can't really reproduce themselves (anything other than single notes on the guitar will make the low end mushy to varying degrees. Thus, single-note nature of the bass gives a strong, clear foundation to the guitar chords.

These are, of course, generalizations, and as such might not be the right advice for your genre/specific song. It just gives you an idea of a potential starting point goal, know what I mean?
 
Thanks for such great insight. I am new at mixing and this is certainly great advice. I'll try to shape the tracks less so it's not so disjointed
 
I need more feedback from others, please? :-) I'll definitely review any post you'd like.
 
Hey Ericaop

Although everything is done well, I get the impression they were done separately, and then thrown into the mix. Like the singer never heard the lead guitarist and the guitarist never heard the singer. The lead guitar is competing with the vocals. Needs to back off and let the singer sing, then cut sick on the awesome soloing during a vocal break. It is all well done, they just dont go together. Thats just an IMO
 
GuitarLegend said:
Hey Ericaop

Although everything is done well, I get the impression they were done separately, and then thrown into the mix. Like the singer never heard the lead guitarist and the guitarist never heard the singer. The lead guitar is competing with the vocals. Needs to back off and let the singer sing, then cut sick on the awesome soloing during a vocal break. It is all well done, they just dont go together. Thats just an IMO
Click to expand...

yo man, thanks for your feedback. The vocals were done later but he was definitely listening to the track. I will continue to automate some of the volume to try and better focus attention :) ... I've done a little so far, but you know, things like this take time, because at this stage its heavily based on perspective and this one needs to simmer for a bit.
 
I listened to version 2.

I thought things were well played. The levels on the instruments were good IMO.

To me the guitars are swallowing everything else up. The vocals seem a little distant, and I think that's caused by the big guitars. If it were me, I'd do a couple of things. I'd retrack the guitars with a little less gain. That way you could turn them down and still get a bunch of power behind them. Then I'd turn them down. :)

I thought the reverb you used kind of dates the song. If you're going for an 80's sound, then you got it. But to me it sounds dated.
 
Another thought (that's based on some of the other comments you received). It seems like everyone in the band is calling out for attention in their playing. It's like four guys are all simultaneously saying, "Hey look at me" rather than working together to hold the song down.

IMO - the singer should be the center of attention through most of the song. The other players need to support that and not go wild with their playing from start to finish.
 
TripleM said:
I listened to version 2.

I thought things were well played. The levels on the instruments were good IMO.

To me the guitars are swallowing everything else up. The vocals seem a little distant, and I think that's caused by the big guitars. If it were me, I'd do a couple of things. I'd retrack the guitars with a little less gain. That way you could turn them down and still get a bunch of power behind them. Then I'd turn them down. :)

I thought the reverb you used kind of dates the song. If you're going for an 80's sound, then you got it. But to me it sounds dated.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that's the characteristics of the room which the guitars were tracked in, there's no added reverb that I can control. The bass, fortunately, had a direct line to the board as well as mic'd amp... also, the band is actually not together anymore, but I'm mixing the project to the best of my ability because I enjoy it and because I want to be proud of something we did. I want a finished product.

I like to run everything direct and use guitar rig or something (personally) and you can get any sound you want, but the instruments were tracked at a real studio, I just happen to be mixing it... so retracking isn't an option. I'll try some other stuff to get the reverb out of the mix, but I'm not sure I can do much more than I have.

So, you'd want the guitars turned down? Maybe I'll try that just a smidgen. Thanks for the feedback TripleM :)
 
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