Just needed to add this again. The client paid for one day to mix 10 songs. I have spread that time out over a couple week period as I have other sessions to do at another facility, live sound work, and refereeing soccer games to do in between. To top it off, I have been fighting a cold for the last 6 days!
If any of you thought doing this for money would be a lot of fun, and that you can do stuff perfect all the time, this whole Love Lode thing that I keep posting songs for should be a nice little insight into what the reality of professional engineering can be sometimes. This isn't the first time a client wanted many mixes done in a very short amount of time. Generally, I don't even have the luxury of just doing a little at a time then coming back to it like I do here.
I could nit pick 100 other things about this mix that don't sit well with me. A big one being how "small" the bass guitar sounds because of the fact that he played the strings very hard while tracking which caused the strings to not get a full rich tone. The backup vocals would also need either to be re-tracked or extensive editing to get them tight as far as starting/stopping on time with each other. I also didn't like how "edgy" I tracked the backup vocals now that I hear them back (this was tracked about 4 or 5 years ago....). The floor tom's top head appearently went out of tune before this take, thus has a very flabby/cardboard sound to it, which sucks during the post solo break down part. Oh well. With more time I could play around with Drumagog and a floor tom sample to see if that worked, but that probably would sound phoney.
The kick and snare drum need some work too. I think the kick is too "stabby" sounding and the compression on it isn't regulating it as well as I would like. Something like
a Cranesong STC-8 would probably give me closer to what I am looking for, but the Behringer Composer Pro I am using will have to suffice! LOL Generally, I would have preferred a bit sharper/cracky sounding snare, but any more added high frequency eq to the snare would bring out the ride cymbal ring on the snare track every time he hits the snare.
I am happy overall with the guitars. A few performance issues that I could deal with in editing, but you would have to listen close for those and in a way, I sort of like the loosygoosy vibe to them right now.
Ed