My first mix - Heavy metal cover of "Addicted To Love"

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Hi guys, I realize it's incredibly bad form for my first post to be asking for opinions on my mix, but I've learnt a lot from these forums without signing up so far, and you guys seem pretty helpful!

Anyway, to the song. I feel like I'm going crazy listening to this and agonizing over trying to get it right. I feel like I haven't listened to real music for days. I desperately need another set of ears on this one!

The drums and bass are VSTi's (Superior drummer and Spectrasonics Trilian), the guitar is me playing DI to a VST (Amplitube) and the vocals are my friend. He (the vocalist) is not very experienced and I really want to get him back in to do them all again, so please excuse the actual vocal performance. I'm mostly asking about the mix, how the instruments are sitting and interplaying with each other... it sounds fine to me at my desk but I just don't know any more... All feedback welcome, be as brutally honest as you want. Thanks heaps!

Addicted by Justin Cunningham 5 on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

EDIT: New version posted below
 
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Hi, I found some guitar parts which seemed to sweep into the center of the stereo image early int he track a little disorientating which kind of threw my focus while listening through headphones, it kind of felt a bit like an after thought, bolstering up of the main guitar riffs. Overall to my ear the track lacks dynamics, there is no sparkle at the top end and the lows don't punch hard enough to drive the progression, but that's subjective and might well be just my own personal take on it.

all the best

Tim
 
I like the song idea much!

+1 to lacking dynamics.
To me, it seems, that the snare dynamically sounds exactly the same EVERY hit. Not sonicly moving. The guitar sounded good over here. Tho definitely missing a little bit of high end. But with the current sound of the drums right now, it would probably hurt the mix. You need to get drum samples that are more dynamic, play around with the velocities of all the drum hits ( try and find a velocity randomizer in your midi section) and then play around with the velocities of critical song parts.

Drum mixing ; High hat is a bit too low for a metal track like this. Cymbals too.. maybe just make that snare sound less robotic, lower it in the mix by like 4 db, Then raise the whole drum kit 2-3 db.

Try adding an eq, post distortion, in the neighborhood of 500 hz with 3-4 db on the guitars, and adding some string sound eq to the bass, where ever that lands (try 1Khz). Sometimes you can thicken up the gutars like this by decreasing the distortion and then maybe adding some gain after the distortion. Would help the dynamics of the guitar parts too. Look for a gain setting that sounds crunchy with as little "fizz" as possible :)
 
Thanks guys, wow that's some detailed feedback. I appreciate it so much! I'll definitely look to add more sparkle to the guitar and fix the stereo issues. I actually cut about 6db at 500hz of the guitar to make room for the vocals as that's where the growl seems to sit, but I'll try to find a better balance

And the drums... Yes the drums need more dynamics, I'm still trying to get my head around the combo of superior drummer and reaper, hard since I'm new to all this plus not a drummer at all.

Still, I'm really glad I posted this now and hopefully tomorrow when I get back into my studio I'll be able to make it sound great from your suggestions. Will post updates if you are interested. Thanks again!
 
Alright I've tried to take the helpful advice on board. To me it now sounds more dynamic, the snare is not so annoying, and just better I suppose... if anyone would care to give me their thoughts on this new version, I'd be ever so grateful - once again excuse the vocal performance, I will get the vocalist in to do it all again, this time with headphones cause there is a fair bit of bleed in there

 
It's still snare dominated. Wimpy 1s and 3s and slamming 2s and 4s. Back the snare off, bring up the kick, cut the mud guitars, turn the vocal down a little, use reverb to give things some space. It does seem dynamically flat so maybe ease off the compression.
 
Thanks. There's basically no compression except the snare and vocals, the waveform looks a lot more dynamic in an editor, soundcloud tends to make things look more blocky. But of course it's not about how it looks. When you say cut the mud guitars do you mean lower the volume of the guitars or cut some lows out to make them clearer? Cheers
 
The guitar mud I hear can probably be addressed with eq.
 
Just for the sake of completeness, here is the mix I think I'm happy with. Of course any comments are still welcome but I don't want to make any drastic changes. I've had the vocals re-recorded and I'm pretty satisfied with how it came out. Thanks for listening

 
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