Hi. I’m still fairly new around here and a journeyman mixer at best, but thanks for the opportunity to take a stab at mixing some high quality tracks. You may never hear my result, because this thread will probably be long gone and forgotten by the time I finish my mix, but this will be a good learning experience to help me come to grips with my all-digital system (Cool Edit Pro older version, waves plug-ins, Alesis Monitor Ones).
My first step was to take the raw tracks and play with the volumes a bit to see what was there. Nice song. First, let me congratulate you on an excellent tracking job. There is nothing I perceive that needs to be “fixed” if you know what I mean. The
acoustic guitar was especially well recorded and cleanly played. I compressed it a bit, boosted the upper frequencies slightly and added a bit of reverb and it is indeed sweet.
I was particularly interested in the drum tracks, because my band is going to record a demo at my house and I’m faced with recording drums for the first time. The kick drum sets off one of the toms, but this gets lost in the mix. I probably would have driven myself nuts trying to fix that unnecessarily. Lesson learned. Sorry, but I hate the snare sound. Too much like a field marching drum for my taste and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do to fatten it up. I added a bunch (probably too much) reverb to it. After listening a few times I think I’m starting to get used to it in a Police kind of way.
The other curiosity is the almost shouted section in the last verse. Comes from out of nowhere. Punched in? I reduced the volume on this section a bunch BEFORE I compressed and then some more after. I need more work here.
Overall, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of stuff in the higher frequencies and I find myself searching for places to bring that out more (maybe it’s my old ears that have lost all the high frequency response). The more I mess with this, the more I hear The Police….I think it’s the field drum snare and muted guitar stuff. Did you intend that influence?
More to come as I make progress.