Dirty Games, completely remixed (original)

The acoustic guitars sound really thin, like there's a hi-pass filter that's set to too high of a frequency. And they're a little brittle on the high end as well. There's a bit of a hole in the mix that some slightly lower frequencies of the acoustic guitars could fill comfortably.

The vocal performance is great. They're a little hot in the upper mids for my taste, but others around here seem to like that.

Solo guitar sounds great. Maybe a little too hi-passed as well, but not bad.

I'm still adjusting to a new arrangement of my sub and speaker crossover point, so I can't comment too much on the bass. It sounds absent to me, but I keep making boomy bass-heavy mixes so I can't be held to my opinions on that :)
 
i agree with Tad that the acoustics could use some lows. that lead guitar does sound really great though. i like the spacing on everything. kick might be a bit too boosted in the 50hz area? those bongos sound nice tucked right where they are, to me. vocals sound very nice and clear.

i'd spruce up the intro. get those acoustics more full sounding. maybe automate the EQ so the lows drop off when the bass comes in? i'm saying that if you filtered them for the purpose of the dense band section.

then again, i have lots to do on my own stuff, so please listen to the others first. great song, by the way. very catchy melody
 
I thought the vocal sounded pretty good. Nice singing. It's missing a little low end. But it's nice and clear.

The acoustic guitar is very tinny sounding. Missing a lot of the lower end. Like there was a roll off way up in the 100's

I like the clean electric on the right side. I thought that tone was nice.

The bass was decent. But I'd like to hear a little more attack on the notes. Also, I think you could probably give its low end a little boost.

Snare sounded OK. I can't hear much from the kick. The low end is mostly the bass. The crash cymbals were a little loud and a little harsh sounding. Maybe pull them down a little and notch them out somewhere in the 2Khz - 3Khz range. Somewhere in there is a frequency that's not agreeable.
 
Tadpui said:
The acoustic guitars sound really thin, like there's a hi-pass filter that's set to too high of a frequency. And they're a little brittle on the high end as well. There's a bit of a hole in the mix that some slightly lower frequencies of the acoustic guitars could fill comfortably.

The vocal performance is great. They're a little hot in the upper mids for my taste, but others around here seem to like that.

Solo guitar sounds great. Maybe a little too hi-passed as well, but not bad.

I'm still adjusting to a new arrangement of my sub and speaker crossover point, so I can't comment too much on the bass. It sounds absent to me, but I keep making boomy bass-heavy mixes so I can't be held to my opinions on that :)
Click to expand...

andrushkiwt said:
i agree with Tad that the acoustics could use some lows. that lead guitar does sound really great though. i like the spacing on everything. kick might be a bit too boosted in the 50hz area? those bongos sound nice tucked right where they are, to me. vocals sound very nice and clear.

i'd spruce up the intro. get those acoustics more full sounding. maybe automate the EQ so the lows drop off when the bass comes in? i'm saying that if you filtered them for the purpose of the dense band section.

then again, i have lots to do on my own stuff, so please listen to the others first. great song, by the way. very catchy melody
Click to expand...

Thanks guys. I'm going to be honest, I really don't have a clue when it comes to mixing acoustic guitar, and by "mixing" I mean just making the track sound good even on its own. I'm going to study up on that. I thought on this one I had a happy medium where they were thick enough for the intro but tidy enough for the rhythm section. I guess thats because they were really thin in the previous mix. I will have to do what Andrushkiwt said and automate EQ for the intro, or cut and paste to another track with different EQ. You're right about why I hi-passed the acoustics, to get them out of the mud in the rhythm. This is my first time ever hi-passing anything, so I may have overdone it on some instruments. The lead guitar is a Strat through the Mesa Boogie Mark IIc+ model in my Line 6. It's a very versatile amp sound, and I love that Weezerish crunch it can get on rhythm. I'll check out the kick thing you mentioned. I had my kick and bass carved out and perfect together, then I added in room and overhead drum tracks that I had been ignoring all this time. I should have gone back and made sure the kick and snare were compliant in all those tracks, but I didn't. Oh, and I wanted to let you know that I used the living shit out of Code Red on this. Thanks for that one! In return, here's an EQ plugin I found and have been using a lot: Luftikus. It's fixed-frequency, so it's very simple. But it has worked analog magic for me.

Tadpui, if you are able to listen to it where you can comment on the bass, I'd love to know what you think. The bass is one of the most important things to me in this recording, and the tracking wasn't the greatest so it's hard to work with. The thing is, it was the first time I ever played bass to this. I hit record because I always do, but all I was doing was feeling out the changes for the first time on bass to get ready for a real take. Well, I loved the energy of that "rehearsal", and I couldn't match it with other takes. So I kept it, despite its playing and recording flaws. I've got it sounding cleaner than it ever has, but it's important to me that it is still low and strong. It's been a constant back and forth trying to find the balance. The bass should be sounding pretty prominent in this mix, but if you're used to low lows I can understand if mine sounds wimpy to you!

Okay, so a few things to work on. I should sleep, but...
 
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