A mixing problem I may be blind to?

Pub Style

Pub Style

You Are The Walrus
This song is typical of my mixes.

I love giving the drums their own space in the mix. Question is.. am I going overboard with this thinking and mixing them a little to loud? Our drummer (deaf to his own instrument) (sorry Kirby) likes this. I like it too! However, since joining this forum I've had the chance to listen to others who have real legit studios. I'm still breathing, so I'm still learning.

Any feedback is appreciated. But certainly not mandatory.

Sometimes I can get in my own way when mixing my own material, thus leaving me kicking myself months later.

https://soundcloud.com/user-288456323/rattlesnake-smile
 
Last edited:
I thought this was really good. If I had to critique something, it would be the distortion settings on the geetars. A little too much broken-amp fuzz style for me. It almost sounds like a bad choice of pickups to my ears. That's completely personal preference though. I played it through while surfing news sites and nothing really stood out or made me want to turn it off... Sounded very good. Nice work dude

edit: there's a really nice high end to this. nice and airy. you can hear it across the mix. one more critique - you might want to distinguish the bckgrnd vox from the lead a little more. Near the end, when they go back and forth, it's hard to tell which is which momentarily. Personally, I'd make the secondary vox less bright and panned out further.
 
Drummers are all deaf, it comes with the territory. I think the vocals need to come up just a little bit overall, but mostly in the chorus.
 
Sounds great to me. Drums have a nice live room sound. Fantastic vocal performance. Handclaps are a nice touch. No nits from me, great job all round
 
The vocals sound down a hallway compared to the guitars. So the l/r guitars have the illusion they're standing in front of the vocalist. Less reverb on the vocal and raise it, or lower the guitars.
 
Bulls Hit said:
Sounds great to me. Drums have a nice live room sound. Fantastic vocal performance. Handclaps are a nice touch. No nits from me, great job all round
Click to expand...

Thank you, buddy.

And thanks for noticing the hand claps! That was the hardest thing the get any kind of sound on.
 
Nola said:
The vocals sound down a hallway compared to the guitars. So the l/r guitars have the illusion they're standing in front of the vocalist. Less reverb on the vocal and raise it, or lower the guitars.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I have a bad habit of mixing my own vocals too low. I must kick that!
 
Pub Style said:
Yeah, I have a bad habit of mixing my own vocals too low. I must kick that!
Click to expand...

It's not that far off, and in fact I think the vocals might be mixed fine, but the l/r guitars just too loud. Guitars never have to be as loud as you think.

I'd mess with both angles and see if the vocal is too low or guitars too loud.
 
Real cool song man. The drums seem to me to be mixed well, I second bringing down the side guitars a bit. I might see how it sounds to dip a couple dB 1k-3k on the whole track. And maybe try easing a bit on the master limiter, I think that's giving some harshness to the track.
 
Drums sound cool, I almost thought they were fake lol and I mean that as a compliment. How do you get the snare so pronounced? I'm having trouble making my snare pop like yours here. As far as the mix overall, maybe the guitars are a tad loud? Only certain times I thought so, the chunky parts during the verses for example. The volume of the mix is pretty high and the high end is slightly piercing to me. Overall sounds really polished with good playing and singing by all, good rock and roll song!
 
Personally I think the music part sounds great. I am with some with some of the others by saying the vocals are little low. I like the way it sounds, just needs to be a little louder as they get lost once everything gets going along with background vox. Awesome song though!
 
I would say reduce the guitars and bring up the vocals . The other thing that sticks out to me is the tone of the guitar during the solo . It seems a bit harsh . Doesnt seem to punch through as well as it could . That harsh frequency is usually around 2k .Also the guitar rhythm tracks seem really dry . Maybe set up a bus that has similar room to the drums .
 
Great song!! Very cool vocals. Just a heads up, I listened on my macbook, and the kick is not there. Only if you care about smaller speakers, you might want to consider adding a little "snap" to the kick.

Love the late 70's / early 80's vibe, brings back good times!

I think I also agree with the comment on the limiter, seems like maybe the drums are eating up the dynamics? I had this issue with my tracks and ended up limiting the drums first before taking it all to the master limiter, which allowed the rest of the mix to come out, but still had loud drums (I like my drums loud too :-) )
 
I'm feeling it. After reading all the other posts and listening myself, I think I can safely say I feel the rhythm guitars are a bit high in the mix. I've been dealing with/learning this exact same thing on my song.

Other than that I might try actually drying up the verse vocals a little and bringing them back to this for choruses.
 
Yeah, everyone has hit on the imbalance. Sounds like the band is in several rooms. The drums don't seem hot to me, but I tend to mix drums hot.;)

I might have wanted a bit more definition on the guitar solo..seem a bit thin.

Small nits aside,

Nice work and good backing vox.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top