Looking Glass

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Stratomaster

Stratomaster

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My latest mix-a harder rockin song. I didn't sing this so I don't have to make excuses for the singing. Housemate on drums, a tough drum track to play and he did admirably. Other notes:

-Used addictive drum samples along with the recorded sounds on kick and snare, I like the result but it was a lot of tedium.
-Tried a reverse swell effect on vocals, you can hear on first words of lines occasionally.
-I missed the massey l2007 limiter I used to love in pro tools, so loaded this song from studio one to pt just to use the limiter and I still love that limiter.
-improved drum recording I think-besides adding the samples most everything else is little to no effects-drum bus I added the isotope trash and a good bit of room verb.

So let me know how it sounds, guitars too fizzy? Vocals sitting ok? I think there's a lack of high end?. Maybe a little lower in volume than songs of this genre.

Thanks for your time and comments
Strat

 
The mix sounds pretty good to me. Everything is holding its place without sounding cluttered or overloud. I think your guitars are at a good level, driving the song while leaving plenty of space for the vocal. I do like where the vocal is sitting. I'm hearing it clearly without it being too much out front. A mistake I hear often in heavier mixes is putting the guitars up too loud, which creates an arms race involving vocals, bass, drums, etc.

I did not find the guitars fizzy. They are heavily compressed and processed. I'm guessing they are plugins. It is a bit of an odd contrast when they come in at the start, right after the acoustic guitar. It's not what I would call a beautiful tone, but that isn't what counts. What counts is how they sound in a mix context, and what they contribute to the song. In that sense, they sound fine.

The reverse vocal doesn't add much in my opinion. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to vocals, and don't care for anything that competes with a lead vocal. But that's my aesthetic, not necessarily yours.

So you replaced the recorded kick and snare with samples? Just curious, why?
 
My only nits on the whole mix is the snare (sounds muffled), and the bass (personal preference): the song and vocal sounds so much like Rush, I just want the bright 4001 sound... It's actually a really good bass sound, just not what this old Rush fan was expecting. :)
Past that, love the "Sailing through the Straight of Gibraltar..parts of the song. Sounds VERY Rush.
 
The mix sounds pretty good, but I agree with Broken the snare is boxy/muffled. Have you used a HP filter on everything? It seems muffled in the low mids in general. Since you have so much going on you can probably get more aggressive with the HP than usual.
 
Thank you guys for such a quick response-

Robus-There are no plugins on the guitars-they were recorded loud enough through a marshall amp to have my next door neighbor complain. Prs and a strat through a rat pedal. Kick and snare were augmented not replaced using melodyne to create a midi file and sent that to addictive drums. Just an experiment, I wanted more control over the snare as it has been a weak point in my recording/mixing and continues to be...Thank you for your time.

Broken H-Rush for sure! Love em. The snare...I think the "mastering" process I do has something to do with the snare sound-it's the thing I notice changes the most as I use limiters, compressors etc. Still learning. Thanks!

Nola-Thank you for listening. No I don't use a Hp on everything. I rolled a lot of lows out of the drums on the drum bus, there's so much stuff happening at 100hz or so with the live drums I feel like I'm gutting the sound when I roll everything away. Maybe a case of mixing by sight more than sound. Still early in my drum recording/mixing career.
 
Stratomaster said:
Nola-Thank you for listening. No I don't use a Hp on everything. I rolled a lot of lows out of the drums on the drum bus, there's so much stuff happening at 100hz or so with the live drums I feel like I'm gutting the sound when I roll everything away. Maybe a case of mixing by sight more than sound. Still early in my drum recording/mixing career.
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I'd HP all the other instruments at like 125hz. Then for the drums go in for each one and listen carefully. For kick like 50hz is usually good. Snare you can go higher. Try to get that boxy sound out of the snare with a little dip in EQ. Take general mud out around 300-450hz by ear. Go to the point where you get clarity but don't gut the sound and lose the purpose of the instrument. Also try to think big picture and not give too much weight to how individual instruments sound when isolated.
 
+1 on the snare being not amazing.

Guitar has good tone and sits well as others said.

Really, it's just the snare that needs work
 
I hear you. My voice is the problem with mine. It gets really harsh when I start trying to "master" my music. I'm slowly learning the frequencies that get whacked out and I cut them before I try to master. I'm also learning a lot by reading here. One thing I've learned is to leave a light mastering suite (a touch of the things that I'll do after) on the two bus, but bypassed. I'll flip it on and listen through the song once every once in a while to try to catch those things. Really want to send this year's release out for pro mastering this year, though. So I'm really unsure how to prep for that. Suppose I'll ask questions when I get all the polishing done around June-July time frame.
 
I didn't think the snare was much of an issue at all, though maybe a little 5-7khz bump might brighten it up. Thought it was well balanced. Good tune and mix.
 
I thought it was pretty good. It's a catchy tune and yes, it really does have a Rush vocal vibe.

Here's my nits. Intro. Get rid if it. It's like it belongs to a different song.

Solo section. Bring up the lead a bit. They rhythm gtrs are driving hard and the solo is kind of in a background wash along with the vocal stuff going on there. (Backwards vocals in that section?)

Nits aside, I really enjoyed listening, I'll even listen to it again!
:D
 
I think the guitars sound very good...bass guitar too. I thought the snare sounded OK. Really, mix wise I didn't hear anything that stood out as needing to be addressed.
great work man!
 
I thought the crunch guitars were pretty good. The bass was very good. I like Ric basses.

I might nudge up the lead vocal when the backing vocals are singing at the same time.

The doubled acoustic guitar in the intro wasn't terribly tight. It also had a "recorded in my bedroom" sound.
 
Thanks for listening people, "pretty good" is not good enough for me so I did a remix trying to really focus on keeping the drums on top and the snare especially. Brightened the drums considerably, turned up the guitar solo-maybe too much, but turned down the guitars otherwise. Rolled whatever low end there was out of the guitars. Added some guitar licks during the second verse. Some vocal tweeks here and there, faded an audible click track in the opening section.

You ever have those songs where you have two parts that work but you can't find anywhere else to take it? This is one of those songs, could never find a third part so I just did a lazy guitar solo repeat chorus blah blah. So yeah the song itself gets repetitive and has the obvious RUSH influence. I was just happy not to have to listen to my own voice singing for a change : ).

I'm considering this done

REMIX:
 
Agree that this is down to personal preference. I'd like more chug on the crunch guitars and I'd like them punching through all parts of the mix. But that's just me. I think it's a pretty darned good mix.
 
TripleM said:
Agree that this is down to personal preference. I'd like more chug on the crunch guitars and I'd like them punching through all parts of the mix. But that's just me. I think it's a pretty darned good mix.
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I second that. Wait, if 3M agreed with me, then I guess I third it. Yeah, I third this.
 
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