Music to Murder - Crawl

[HugoRibeiro.Com]

The harmonica, guitars and vocals are my favorite. Although the whole song is great. And yeah, I agree, great drum sound too. Also think its been nicely programmed. I can imagine the amount of work.
Superb work Mr. Fishy!

cheers

 

[Retrohazard]

...I'll try to get back if you have a new mix for sure!

One more option that might help if you are listening for frequencies that overlap the vocals...pop it into mono and see if the vocals come through nicely. Personally it's much easier for me to hear any masking this way too. You can punch in each instrument as you listen and see if when one comes in (like the guitars) if the vocal sort of disappears just a little. Then fool with volume adjustment or maybe just an eq adjustment in the guitars or vocal or both.

I have been in the habit of bumping the vocal eq between 1k to 2.5 k to see where I want the vocal to come through. Basically where it sounds the best in that freq range. I don't really like bumping the vox so I try to carve out that space first in other instruments. Then if I can't get it I might just bump the vocal up at that preferred freq. I USUALLY skip from 2.5 to 4k because it gets harsh pretty quick. 4 to 7k might bring the vocal out too. Especially if you feel the mid range is in a good place and don't want to mess with it.

So many things can make a difference. I have moved the HPF on the vocal up a little and felt the vocals were clearer and somewhat louder in my mix...

Vocals are number one in most songs though so it's worth the extra work to get them right!

 

[kindafishy]

The harmonica, guitars and vocals are my favorite. Although the whole song is great. And yeah, I agree, great drum sound too. Also think its been nicely programmed. I can imagine the amount of work.
Superb work Mr. Fishy!

cheers

Thanks Hugo .

The drums took a while, yeah. No more than the countless hours everyone around here spends on their tracks though. Such a time sink, but I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.

 

[kindafishy]

...I'll try to get back if you have a new mix for sure!

One more option that might help if you are listening for frequencies that overlap the vocals...pop it into mono and see if the vocals come through nicely. Personally it's much easier for me to hear any masking this way too. You can punch in each instrument as you listen and see if when one comes in (like the guitars) if the vocal sort of disappears just a little. Then fool with volume adjustment or maybe just an eq adjustment in the guitars or vocal or both.

I have been in the habit of bumping the vocal eq between 1k to 2.5 k to see where I want the vocal to come through. Basically where it sounds the best in that freq range. I don't really like bumping the vox so I try to carve out that space first in other instruments. Then if I can't get it I might just bump the vocal up at that preferred freq. I USUALLY skip from 2.5 to 4k because it gets harsh pretty quick. 4 to 7k might bring the vocal out too. Especially if you feel the mid range is in a good place and don't want to mess with it.

So many things can make a difference. I have moved the HPF on the vocal up a little and felt the vocals were clearer and somewhat louder in my mix...

Vocals are number one in most songs though so it's worth the extra work to get them right!

Thanks man. Great tips. I do 90% - 95% of my mixing in mono. What I am not doing enough of lately is raising and lowering the volume throughout the process. I used to do that, but I stopped somewhere along the way.

Agree with the importance of the vocal tracks. I'll play with the frequencies you are suggesting.

Cheers.

 

[sammydix]

Cheers, fb .

I'm not the vocalist/lyricist. That's Sam (sammydix). I don't think he and I have ever discussed Guns N' Roses, so I'm really not sure. Musically, perhaps. Early G N' R was certainly stuff that I listened to endlessly when I was in high school. I think I chewed up 3 copies of Appetite For Destruction and 2 copies of Lies in my car's cassette deck. Yup. Cassette deck... in a sweet 78 Mustang II...

I have heard rumours that Sammy dances like Axl though (don't tell Sammy that I told you that).

We wear our influences (of which there are many) proudly on our sleeves.

Thanks so much!

LOL! black dudes don't 'sway.'

 

[kindafishy]

Updated mix. Thanks a lot for the feedback thus far. I considered all the mix critique very carefully, and I made the following changes:

- Subtle low shelf on the toms to drop the ring ever so slightly.
- Enwettened the vocals a touch (actually noticed an error in the chorus where I missed a reverb send)
- Enwettened the snare a teensy tiny bit.
- Brought the snare down 1 dB.
- Replaced the bass and harmonica compressor with MJUCjr.
- Replaced the 2 bus compressor with MJUC (Mk 3).
- Took another pass through the vocals at loud and quiet levels and rebalanced them against the song. I didn't find any masking issues, just levels.

The link in the original post points to the newest version, but here it is for convenience -> https://app.box.com/s/witiftwteqohdtgpn5qf2d9k6jh0d46j

Any other thoughts are most welcome. Did I take care of business? Did I go overboard with any changes? Did I introduce any new issues with any of my tweaks?

Thanks peoples. I owes ya.

 

[rayc]

Kindafishy,
the link doesn't link for me at present. I shall return.

 

[Tadpui]

Something I didn't notice upon first listen is that the left guitar has some sort of rattle or cab resonance. Once things get going it's totally masked, but thought I'd mention it.

The racktoms don't seem to boom and resonate as much this time around. There could still be a surgical slice made on that one tom that's centered (right around 3:00 on the timeline). The panning didn't strike me as much as it did last time...it's such a subjective thing, I'm actually enjoying the overhead panning this time.

Still love the song, that constant threat of it blowing wide open but never giving in. This will be a fine addition to an album where there are plenty of other opportunities to go full bore.

 

[kindafishy]

Something I didn't notice upon first listen is that the left guitar has some sort of rattle or cab resonance. Once things get going it's totally masked, but thought I'd mention it.

The racktoms don't seem to boom and resonate as much this time around. There could still be a surgical slice made on that one tom that's centered (right around 3:00 on the timeline). The panning didn't strike me as much as it did last time...it's such a subjective thing, I'm actually enjoying the overhead panning this time.

Still love the song, that constant threat of it blowing wide open but never giving in. This will be a fine addition to an album where there are plenty of other opportunities to go full bore.

Sorry for not responding earlier, Tadpui. The forum was down for a bit and then I went on a fishing trip with my kids. Awesome vacation, but no access to forums or anything of the sort (which is kinda good, I suppose).

Before I left, I re-amped the left guitar with a cleaner amp. The previous version of that guitar track was actually the sound of the speaker breaking up. It sounded the same in the room and I was actually pretty happy to have captured it. More than a few people on this thread and elsewhere have pointed it out as a problem so understanding that my intention was not coming across, I (swallowed my pride and) redid it.

I am happy that I did because I am much more satisfied with how the song sounds overall now. The break up/resonance is gone and it has been replaced with the clean channel of my Fender Champ which sounds remarkably like my old Twin (the Champ clean channel is designed/voiced to sound like a Blackface).

I also moved the shelf a little further down on the toms to remove just a little more of the ringing. Just a little, because I like the ringing, but at different volume levels, I was picking up what you had pointed out.

The mix in the first post has been updated with the latest, but if you or anyone is interested, here is the link for convenience -> https://app.box.com/s/witiftwteqohdtgpn5qf2d9k6jh0d46j

Any other thoughts are most welcome. My intention is to have this puppy "ready for mastering" so if there is anything else I can do to improve the mix, I am all for it.

 

[mjbphotos]

Look at automating the overall volume - around 1:05 (and again around 3:40) it gets really loud compared to what came before but then at 1:40 the volume drops again. When the bass first comes in, in time with the kick, they are really boomy, I think its mostly the kick, which sounds good, just too loud. The harp is a nice touch, but could be a bit louder, and I'd move it just off-center so its not in the same space with the lead vocal.
Left guitar sounds so much better now.
The quick fade out of the instruments is a little too quick, would expect to hear a little reverb ringing out a little longer, and then there is a little (vocal?) sound after, not sure its supposed to be there.

 

[kindafishy]

Look at automating the overall volume - around 1:05 (and again around 3:40) it gets really loud compared to what came before but then at 1:40 the volume drops again. When the bass first comes in, in time with the kick, they are really boomy, I think its mostly the kick, which sounds good, just too loud. The harp is a nice touch, but could be a bit louder, and I'd move it just off-center so its not in the same space with the lead vocal.
Left guitar sounds so much better now.
The quick fade out of the instruments is a little too quick, would expect to hear a little reverb ringing out a little longer, and then there is a little (vocal?) sound after, not sure its supposed to be there.

Thanks, Mike.

Volume increase/decrease
This is how the song is written/played, but I can appreciate that the difference may be a touch too stark, so I'll brought the verses up by ~1dB each. I do want contrast here. I don't want it to be too drastic. Does this work better?

Bass/kick
I was wondering about this. I have a very good monitoring environment, but I am still not fully sure how far I can push it. I thought maybe that there was a touch too much down around 45Hz or 50Hz or so. I put a HP filter on the whole mix just to shave the bottom end off a tiny bit. I do want to have a thick and powerful bottom end, but I want to walk the line on the side of "not boomy". Better or not enough?

Harp
Up by 1dB across the board. Panned the main line slightly to the left and kept the delay as it was (as it was already panned out).

Guitar
Thanks, man. I am also much happier with how it sounds now. Everything got messed up when I changed the guitar. It threw everything out and I had to go back and do a lot more EQing to re-seat a few different elements. It was definitely worth the effort. I was very skeptical at first as I personally liked the overdriven thing, but I must admit that I like this much more and it serves the song better. You (and a few other) were absolutely right about this.

Fade out/End vocal
This bit is tricky. Everything either stopped dead, or I did some poor edits back when this was recorded (or something like that). In any event, I did already have a short reverb there that I was sending several elements to to fix the ending, but since it was coming across too abrupt, I swapped that out for a much larger reverb space. The vocal bit was indeed supposed to be there, but it was an experiment. I changed it. Better?

Update is here (same link as the original post) -> https://app.box.com/s/witiftwteqohdtgpn5qf2d9k6jh0d46j

 

[mjbphotos]

The first two times the harp comes in, bring the volume up another 1dB, but fade it back down to the existing level as soon as the vocal kicks in. Same thing at 3:40 when the har comes in.
The song's volume dynamics are much better now - there's still a noticeable difference like you wanted but I'm no longer reaching for the volume knob!
The end still is too abrupt - can you maybe retrack just that last guitar lick to let it ring out?
Sounds good, other than those little nits!

 

[kindafishy]

The first two times the harp comes in, bring the volume up another 1dB, but fade it back down to the existing level as soon as the vocal kicks in. Same thing at 3:40 when the har comes in.
The song's volume dynamics are much better now - there's still a noticeable difference like you wanted but I'm no longer reaching for the volume knob!
The end still is too abrupt - can you maybe retrack just that last guitar lick to let it ring out?
Sounds good, other than those little nits!

Unfortunately, I can't retrack that last guitar because I don't have either of the guitars that were used on this track anymore. I can see if I can do some editing to add more ringing out chords there instead of trying to rely on reverb to trail out (unless you mean the lead noodling of course).

I will make those harp changes as you suggested.

So, I'll assume that since you didn't notice/mention any boominess with this version, that I took care of it with the HP on the 2 bus.

Good stuff Mike. I won't get to these changes for a couple days because I am in the midst of another mix right now, but I will do them. I won't repost to this thread so it will stop getting bumped, but the link in the original post will be updated when I upload another version. I'll probably PM you for a private screening.

Thanks for your thoughts on this track. Helped a lot.

 

[dobro]

Drums and bass both translate well on the Avantone. Really attractive cranked.

 

[kindafishy]

Drums and bass both translate well on the Avantone. Really attractive cranked.

Thanks dobro! I was hoping you would listen and chime in. An Avantone Mixcube is definitely on my future purchase list. Happy to learn that it is translating there. Cheers.

 

[rayc]

Kindafishy,
I'm listening to mix in post #33.
Coherent & cohesive mate.
'tis a good thing in its entirety.

 

[Atkron205]

kinda dark, I like it.the harp is cool. snare sounds good. really like the guitar sound.

 

[kindafishy]

Kindafishy,
I'm listening to mix in post #33.
Coherent & cohesive mate.
'tis a good thing in its entirety.

Excellent, thanks so much, rayc. I am just going to do the last couple changes that mjbphotos suggested above and then this one is waiting to be mastered with the rest of the complete tracks. I appreciate it. I feel like the honesty around here is pretty unique to HR. Nobody lets anything get by, so when all the tweaks are finished and you guys say it's done, it's done .

 

[kindafishy]

kinda dark, I like it.the harp is cool. snare sounds good. really like the guitar sound.

Nice, I am glad it is translating there a bit on the dark side. That's what I want from this track. I think it helps to project the vibe I want for it. The song is really supposed to move between feelings of despair and hope. I wanted the mix to reflect that. Appreciate the kind words.