New Song "We Are One" - How's This Mix?

  • Thread starter Thread starter dewhitt
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Good job Dave...

Curious why you lowered the singers voice down @ 2:30 where he is talking...just seemed to me it should have stayed consistent with his other volumes...kind of like David lee Roth when he does his talking thing.. The singer has a Steve Miller kind of sound and feel. Good tune.
 
Hi TAE, thanks! I'm actually the singer and guitar player, so it's my voice - thanks for the compliments. I like your voice a lot, so I really appreciate it!

For the breakdown part, I guess I was trying to make it sound like it was "off-mic" and just yelling out stuff to the band. Also, when the bass player did the BGVs, we were intending to have him overdub some additional ad-lib stuff there, but we somehow just forgot to do that :facepalm: I did debate the volume point though, so it's possible I may go back and bring that volume up to do like you said and keep it even.

Thanks for listening and commenting!

Very Best,

Dave DeWhitt
 
Oh, man! This song JIVES! The guitars are in my face, and wow... they sound GOOD! Guitar solo fits in very well. Vocals are amazing!

That said, and I hate to say this, but in comparison, your drums sound almost dead. The toms sound like paper, and IT'S KILLING ME to say that. The snare drum sound... not much better. With everything else popping like crazy, melting my ears with glorious goodness, the drums need an injection of adrenaline. The drummer / performance is awesome, too, which makes the drum sound even worse. I..... man, I wish I could say that they sounded good, but... They sound like they have heads that haven't been tuned in a long time, played in an un-treated room. The cymbals sound really harsh, too, in the upper-mids.... probably lower quality cymbals, or poorly mic'ed. It kills me to write that, but I gotta be true to my ears...

The song itself - top-notch, brother. Great songwriting.
Guitars - A+
Vocals - A++ (love your vox, dude. You not only can sing, but your voice sounds amazing... Great pipes, bro.)
Bass - not sure, didn't stand out, but it was there, and didn't distract.
Drums - Can I help out? :D :D :D

Nothin' but love for ya, man. Keep writing, and thanks for sharing.
 
Hey Jason, thanks for the listen and the feedback. Yeah, no doubt the drums are now, and will probably continue to be, the most challenging part for me with my limited setup. The room isn't good at all, and I have low-end mics for overheads, and not enough decent preamps to do everything well at once. It's getting better over time as can upgrade little by little, but for now, this is what I'm working with. That said, I actually really like the overall drum and bass sound and mix in this track, especially for the style. I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Certainly the individual parts don't stand up to a drummer's scrutiny (ouch...lol) but altogether, I think the whole thing works. I like that it sounds pretty natural, because actually it really is. 90% of that drum tone is coming from the overheads in this recording. When it came time to mix this one, I just pushed the overheads up and then brought in all the direct mic'd stuff in underneath for support. I went back just now and tried to see if I could do anything better with the toms, but the challenge I'm having is that they're coming in from the OH tracks, so I can't really get them isolated to "fix" them. I may come back to it later with fresh ears and a fresh head and try again.

Anyway thanks for the great comments!

Very Best,

Dave
 
Dave, I always love your stuff. But this one absolutely kills. What a great song and performance! I get what Jason is saying about the drums, but I also get your situation, and in this case, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and the drums end up working for me. Thanks for sharing this. (If I could sing like you, I'd steal this and tell my wife I wrote it for her!)
 
I thought this was good. I like the guitar sounds and the playing.

I agree with PoeticIntensity that the drums are a bit weak. For a song like this, I'd like to be feeling the kick in my chest and I'd like a lot more crack to the snare.

Little click or something at 1:03.

Great harmony vocals. There's a frequency in the lead vocal that's bugging me. I'd guess it's somewhere in the 500hz-1000hz octave. Just a little cloudiness.

Bass sounds cool too.

Love the lead playing.
 
Great harmony vocals.

Geeeez........I HATE TO DISAGREE at the risk of anyone even THINKING I didn't like to song A LOT!! But the harmonies need something in my opinion. They seem to come in from the sides too unevenly..........if that makes any sense at all. They're also a bit too up front for my taste only. They need to sit in a space just behind the main vocal. Just my 2 cents......if that much.
 
Sounds like a funked & guitared up Huey Lewis track which isn't bad.
the drums work - it remains that they could've been better but we all work with what we have.
With my new set up I couldn't do a kit at all, (I miss my real 8i8o INCA - the supposed 8i6o of my Focusrite is based on all kinds of complications and digital/spdf connections).
Your Heavy is more my style. Plus I love Wah Wah.
 
Performance and mix sound super tight to me dave. I think you've all done a cracking job here and I enjoyed the listen. I don't know that I'd have picked up all the stuff that PI did with regard to the drums, but I'm not a drummer so maybe that's why. I think what I mean is that to the average non-drumming listener these kind of issues may go by unnoticed - so if they're the biggest issues in your setup, you can probably live with them for the most part (not to say PIs feedback isn't useful or valid).

Only thing that stuck out for me was the spoken bits - they come across like the track is turned down too low rather than sounding off mic. I'm sure you can tweak em easy enough if you so desire. Other than that nice work :thumbs up:
 
Bob, thanks for the compliments! I'm glad you liked this one! I always love your stuff too, and I'm glad a guy whose guitar tones I respect so much enjoyed the song and the mix...I think that means I might be moving in the right direction!

TripleM - Thanks as always. I swear that cloudiness you hear is just my voice...lol. That said, I will definitely take a look at maybe a subtle EQ tweak there to improve it...you steered me in the right direction on my last mix, "Heavy", so I'm inclined to listen!

Mickster, it's interesting that you zeroed in on the BGVs, cause I had tons of trouble with those. First off, I wasn't sure really what BGVs to even put in this tune...normally I hear everything loud and clear in my head, but this song didn't really seem to call for much in the way of BGVs to me. So, I just took the easy way out and shipped it off to my bass player and asked him to do whatever he wanted with them. He sent me a lot of tracks, and I ended up using only about half of them, but it was interesting to see how much stuff he came up with since I was coming up empty. Then when I went to mix them, I almost scrapped the whole BGV thing again, cause nothing was sounding right to me in the mix. Where I ended up with them in the end is ok I think, but I agree, it's still needing something. I'll probably try to work on them a little more before I stick a fork in this one.

rayc - Thanks man, I appreciate the comments. I agree...I love wah wah. Almost too much in fact! My setup with I/O is a total pita. I had to set up an aggregate audio device on my Mac since I'm using two separate physical interfaces to give me enough inputs to record the whole band at once, and the whole thing is a little klugey (however the heck you spell that...). It's working, but most of the time I feel like everything is held together with chewing gum and duct tape, and if I breathe on it wrong, the whole thing stops working. Ugh.

robgreen - We non-drummers have to stick together around here...haha! That's the second comment on the spoken parts, so I will revisit that before final mix. Thanks!

Tobe - Hey, thanks for checking it out and I'm glad you liked it!

Very Best,

Dave
 
Always funny to see all the different tastes. I kinda like this one. Keep at it.
 
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