Pointers?

[PlnsMstkn4Jacob]

Alright so I'm working on a mix for a band, and I've gotten to a point where I'm just not completely satisfied with how the mix is coming out.

For one, I feel like it's kind of dull sounding, especially listening to it in my car, it just sounds so "flat" and unlively. What are some steps I could take to livening up my mix or giving it some feeling?

Also, I used a middle overhead to capture the snare drum which I normally use and it works out great for me but this time it picked up too much cymbal, either he had really loud cymbals or I just didn't place the mic as well as I normally do. Anyone have any tips to removing some of the cymbal sound or removing harshness from cymbals because I want the snare to be loud and punchy without bringing up the cymbals with it.

If you want to hear the mix it is at www.jacoblacally.com under the portfolio section, and it's the last song listed, titled "Bells".

 

[Robert D]

Alright so I'm working on a mix for a band, and I've gotten to a point where I'm just not completely satisfied with how the mix is coming out.

For one, I feel like it's kind of dull sounding, especially listening to it in my car, it just sounds so "flat" and unlively. What are some steps I could take to livening up my mix or giving it some feeling?

Also, I used a middle overhead to capture the snare drum which I normally use and it works out great for me but this time it picked up too much cymbal, either he had really loud cymbals or I just didn't place the mic as well as I normally do. Anyone have any tips to removing some of the cymbal sound or removing harshness from cymbals because I want the snare to be loud and punchy without bringing up the cymbals with it.

If you want to hear the mix it is at www.jacoblacally.com under the portfolio section, and it's the last song listed, titled "Bells".

You might want to try a Multiband Compressor on the cymbol/snare problem.
For the more general problem of flat and unlively, can you narrow it down to dynamics, spectral spread, panarama, depth,..............

 

[LeeRosario]

I don't have a way of hearing what you did, but I will tell you this:



If you wanna be a hardcore perfectionist like me, start up a few new different mixes from scratch and compare.


Sometimes you get too far into this shit to salvage your own mess. Eventually you can get what you want in one shot.


Like I said, I can't hear it, so I can't give you any practical advise.

 

[sushi-mon]

Nice Mix

Have to say, pretty nice job ! Also, very cool tune, and it must be a pleasure to work with talented musicians

I liked what I heard, however, just listening to it on junky computer speakers, but it sounded good there.

The snare sounded a little "thuddy" to me. Maybe a little more snap to it. The vocals were nice and clear and not too much bottom. I did not hear much that was objectionable, other than the thuddy snare. Most things seem to be sitting well in the mix.

I think LeeRosarios advice is pretty on. After a while, you just kinda do get lost and forgot a lot of things and decisions made that led you to have the mix where it is, so it can be hard to improve on it since you have so many things tied into that mix.

I would think his advice to start fresh, and have some alternate mixes is good idea. The song is pretty free form in a lot of ways, very acid jazzy fusion rock emo thing (whatever that means). You might even want to consider making it more structured by deleting some parts, and making some re-arrangments. Bring out the producer side of yourself and see what happens.

Also, since this song is pretty dynamic, you might want to try and increase the the overall dynamic range, and use LESS compression. This could be the lively that you are looking for. Put up some level meters, and see what your range of RMS values are in your mix. Try to increase that range from say, 10db to 15db. This would most likely involve cutting back on your compression thresholds for each track, and then needing to decrease each tracks fader gain in the mix. But what you should end up with, is a more dynamic mix and possibly livelier.

But for what it is worth, I don't think you are far off from having this thing nailed.

 

[sushi-mon]

Lively vs. unlively

I have always found that going from the studio into the car, always goes from lively to unlively. A big part of it is that we are used to critical listening in a good monitoring environment, AND the fact that we are working with numerous 24 bit tracks simultaneously in high fidelity. All of it gets wittled down to a two track 16 bit mix. And we expect it to sound "better" in the car ?!?!

I believe that at this point, is where solid MASTERING can really shine. I have not been involved with much of that yet, so I can't advise you there. But, I think we audio engineers, should keep in mind that we are spoiled sitting in our sweet spots listening to all those nice pristene hi fi tracks running simultaneously.

 

[fraserhutch]

void *vp;
char const *cp;
volatile int *ip;

How's that?

 

[gordone]

HaHa! That was the first thought that popped into my head!

I hate Pointers! I'm much more comfortable in Java.

This week I'm debugging a JNI interface on HP-UX - blech!

void *vp;
char const *cp;
volatile int *ip;

How's that?