Beatles Cover - Come Together ... check the mix?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jndietz
  • Start date Start date
Nice hard-rocking version of one of my favourite all-time classics.
Nice guitar and bass work. Good voice. My only nit are the drums. They just don't sound big enough to me. Can't make the cymbals out either. But nice version allthe same.

Joey :):):):)
 
I think I'll spend some time with the drums and see what I can do...thank you everyone +reps all around
 
I think that the second mix was a bit better in the percussion department, but I feel like the guitars and vox aren't getting the sound they deserve.

You need to take the comp off of the master fader OR the two bus... if you're not doing either of those... you HAVE to be running some sort of comp before your board. Take the outboard comp down or off.

I feel like some parts are shaky as far as the timing goes. I'd clean that up.

I feel like the EQ was not used as well as you could use it. The guitars sound a bit muddy and underneath everything else once the songs gets in full stride, play with rolling off some lows on those as well and I feel like it would help.

Overall REALLY awesome idea... I know I don't have the balls to take that on haha
 
Something no one else mentioned....it seems to me that you could spread the field to make the mix remarkably better. The L&R are kinda vacant. Implies a mono mix...not exactly there; but a lot of potential lost by not panning the guitars , at least, wider. MHOYYMVFWIIW
 
jeffmaher said:
Something no one else mentioned....it seems to me that you could spread the field to make the mix remarkably better. The L&R are kinda vacant. Implies a mono mix...not exactly there; but a lot of potential lost by not panning the guitars , at least, wider. MHOYYMVFWIIW
Click to expand...

Interesting that you mention this. I was comparing the recording to other professionally made recordings and noticed that the mix does seem to be stuck in the middle.

I then ran it through a plugin made by Image-Line, called Maximus. Its a "mastering" plugin that I use a lot on dance music that I make. Its essentially a really fancy MBC. But, anyways, after running it through that, making it a little louder and all that, it sounded a lot better.

However, if I wanted to expand the guitars more before a mastering session, what would you reccommend? Adobe Audition has this native plugin called a "stereo widener". I've used it before but am not sure if I liked the results it gave.

The distorted guitars were recorded as such: one hard panned left (-100%) with humbucker, one hard panned right (+100%) with humbucker, one in dead center with single coil.

TIA.
 
What's an MBC?

If you're still at pre-mastering, why not just pan the guitars right and left on the platform...instead of using digi-voodoo on the stereo mixdown with uncertain results? Maybe I don't unnerstand something. I wouldn't necessarily go 100%...just move them apart until the sound like they're in-communication, and not remote...wherever it sounds good. If you're saying that the guitars were already panned 100% R&L before mastering, something wrong happened , I think. I sometimes use stereo expander applications to squeeze a too-wide audio track [like sampled concert piano] into a narrower field by going negative on the % slider. Did you do that on the mixdown or something...by accident?? Cuz the guits on the outside sure don't sound 100% panned.
[I was gonna suggest you compare to a pro mix to get an idea of the squeeze in your track.]

If I use expander on the mixdown, I get the delay and verb levels thrown out of whack....and I lose the fine control available by tweaking individial pairs or single tracks before a stereo mixdown. I'd suggest you get the field-spread done right in the raw mix...and just level up and compress lightly ..if needed...at mastering time. My personal boundary, now, is that if I have to do more than EQ a little, slightly compress, and level up at master, I scrap the mixdown, and go back to the platform to get it right.
 
jeffmaher said:
What's an MBC?

If you're still at pre-mastering, why not just pan the guitars right and left on the platform...instead of using digi-voodoo on the stereo mixdown with uncertain results? Maybe I don't unnerstand something. I wouldn't necessarily go 100%...just move them apart until the sound like they're in-communication, and not remote...wherever it sounds good. If you're saying that the guitars were already panned 100% R&L before mastering, something wrong happened , I think. I sometimes use stereo expander applications to squeeze a too-wide audio track [like sampled concert piano] into a narrower field by going negative on the % slider. Did you do that on the mixdown or something...by accident?? Cuz the guits on the outside sure don't sound 100% panned.
[I was gonna suggest you compare to a pro mix to get an idea of the squeeze in your track.]

If I use expander on the mixdown, I get the delay and verb levels thrown out of whack....and I lose the fine control available by tweaking individial pairs or single tracks before a stereo mixdown. I'd suggest you get the field-spread done right in the raw mix...and just level up and compress lightly ..if needed...at mastering time. My personal boundary, now, is that if I have to do more than EQ a little, slightly compress, and level up at master, I scrap the mixdown, and go back to the platform to get it right.
Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

MBC is a multiband compressor. Neither mp3s posted in this thread had any thing post-mixdown done to them. I was simply saying I played around with another mix I made of it a few days ago and put an expander/gate on the track to bring it up a little bit.

I'll try maybe bring the guitars to 85% instead of 100%. And play around with it.
 
I think your trying to fix too many problems in the mix here. It's hard to say without hearing the dry tracks. It sounds like you've squashed the room right out of the drums. The snare sounds like you've got the threshold way too low and it's squashed the transients right out of the kit. Where's the kick?

So how about try this

Kit

- get rid of the compression on the snare or at least pull the threshold way up, you only want to be compressing the odd peak, not smashing it to death

- the bass will sound fine if you get the kick in the mix, that'll give you your punch

Guitars

-way too much mud in the 200hz range, you can eq them, but I'm pretty sure you're gonna have to retrack them and adjust the tone on your amp.

-wanna big sound, play the track again and pan them hard left and right

- turn the guitars down, if there was any life in the drums it's getting assaulted by the bumble bee guitars.


It's hard to tell hear, but I think there are major source issues here. I don't think this tune is repairable in the mix, so maybe we should hear it with no plugins first?
 
steppingonmars said:
I think your trying to fix too many problems in the mix here. It's hard to say without hearing the dry tracks. It sounds like you've squashed the room right out of the drums. The snare sounds like you've got the threshold way too low and it's squashed the transients right out of the kit. Where's the kick?

So how about try this

Kit

- get rid of the compression on the snare or at least pull the threshold way up, you only want to be compressing the odd peak, not smashing it to death

- the bass will sound fine if you get the kick in the mix, that'll give you your punch

Guitars

-way too much mud in the 200hz range, you can eq them, but I'm pretty sure you're gonna have to retrack them and adjust the tone on your amp.

-wanna big sound, play the track again and pan them hard left and right

- turn the guitars down, if there was any life in the drums it's getting assaulted by the bumble bee guitars.


It's hard to tell hear, but I think there are major source issues here. I don't think this tune is repairable in the mix, so maybe we should hear it with no plugins first?
Click to expand...

I'm confused about this mud. I put a high pass on the guitars and did no other boosting or anything. There are hardly any plugins used on this mix...Compressors on a few things (kick, snare, vox). Guitars ARE panned hard left and hard right.

:confused:
 
I think you've got to stop worrying so much about the guitar sound, it's the least of your worries. A good exercise for you is to try and do this mix without guitars at all. If you can't get a mix to sound full with just the bass, drums and vox, big guitars are just going to make the small mix smaller. When I do a mix here's the list of priorities

1) vox
2) drums especially the kick and snare (the snare drum is probably a close second to the vox believe it or not!)
3) bass
4) guitars
5) other

Often the drums to me are even more important than the vox too!

So try this... Do the whole mix without guitars first, then add guitars to taste. Let the bass handle the bottom end instead of the guitars. Guitars in the background with a little reverb in unison with the bass will sound way bigger than guitars with a lot of bottom end to loud in the mix.

Good Luck!
 
Also, I wanted to add that Soundgarden already covered this song...and is a LOT slower than our version.

YouTube it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top