Original Tune "Howl" - Mixing and Production Critique

[cmharwood89]

Hello all,

I just recently picked up my home recording hobby again, and several years of rust have accumulated, so I'm forgetting things and making mistakes all over again.

This is an original, written and recorded for the February Album Writing Month (FAWM). Over the past couple of days, I decided to try my hand at recording and mixing it "properly."



Some production/performance disclaimers:

• Some of the performance leaves a bit to be desired. The vocals, in particular, could use a re-tracking in a few passages.
• This was my first time programming drums. They're busy, but I tried to make that business a feature rather than a bug.

Looking for any feedback on what works, what doesn't, and what needs tweaking.

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I'll document everything I did below. It's more information than you need to know, but since I'm asking for detailed mix feedback, I figured it'd be best to have it written down.

Recording notes:

• Vocals recorded with a Warm Audio WA-47jr LDC six about 7 inches off my chin with a pop filter. Recorded in a large, rectangular room with vaulted ceilings, wooden floors, area rug, and furniture. I also threw a heavy wool blanket over a stand directly behind the mic.
• Electric guitars run through a modeling amp (Boss Katana) and from there into my interface
• Acoustic guitar tracked with the WA-47jr aimed at the 12th fret in cardioid patter plus a stereo X-Y pair of small-diaphragm condensers. The stereo pair gave a nice wide image and attack, and the LDC brought a bit more body.
• Drums from EZDrummer 3, Studio kit, main room. Ambience mics muted.
• Bass and piano tracks from Band-in-a-box realtracks libraries.

Mixing/Production notes:

• All mixing in Reaper
• Cleanish electric guitars were high-passed around 170Hz, with a 3dB scoop at 350 Hz. Two stage compression (1.5:1 followed by 5:1) to level and tame transients.
• Heavier overdriven guitars double-tracked, panned L/R, and rolled off below 150Hz. Single 3:1 compression set to remain active almost all the time (~3dB gain reduction), with the goal of maintaining a thick sound through the chorus.
• Acoustic guitar tracks bussed together and processed with EQ to roll off below 120Hz, with a scoop at 750Hz. Moderate compression to maintain volume.
• Main vocals high-passed at 120 Hz and hit with 2-4 dB cuts at 750 Hz, 4 kHz, and 9 kHz. I have a tendency towards a bit of a nasal honk that I struggle to EQ out using condensers, though the Warm Audio has proved to be the most forgiving of my mics. Light compression and de-esser (Lisp).
• Background vocals EQ'd to move them to the back of the mix. Then I disabled BV master sends and let them play through the reverb bus only. Makes 'em kinda spooky.
• All of the instruments + background vocals were bussed to a shared reverb. Kick and bass reverb sends were dialed waaay back, so they're mostly dry. I used convolution reverb (ReaVerb) with the Bricasti M7 IRs from Samplicity. I used an IR with a long tail to get the big atmosphere I was going for.
• Main vocals sent to a second reverb. I used the same IR, but stretched it to shorten the tail to about 60% of its original length.
• Master bus compression (very light) and TDL Kotelnikov as a limiter to tame the peaks and get an LRA around 9.
• Acoustic guitar and piano bits are sprinkled into the background. A bit tough to pick out if you don't know that they're there, but I don't want to make them too obvious.
• The echoey background vocals are also sprinkled in for dramatic effect, most noticeably in the bridge and final chorus.

 

[Eric V]

Good song, and I really liked the vocals. Seemed a little louder in certain passages, maybe a bit more compression?