Hi all,
At this point this is as much an effort at documenting my progress as it is asking for input--hopefully it helps out some lurkers in addition to helping me structure my mixing process better!
I've been listening critically and I'm thinking that the main electric guitar has too much low-mids. It felt like it was muddying things up, and clouding out the acoustic and vocals a bit more than I liked. Once the electric muddiness was cleared up, I noticed that the main acoustic also seemed to have some boominess going on. I tried to locate the problem frequencies, which to me seemed like they were in the 180-350ish area and a bit below 500, and when I took some of those out I liked what I heard more.
Also, I wanted the beginning of the song to sound more 'straight down the middle,' and to have it open up gradually as the song builds. I made a change which I think helps in this regard. In the previous version, all 4 guitars kicked in at the beginning of the song (Hard L panned acoustic with no pick, hard R electric, and an ever-so-slightly panned R acoustic and panned L electric in the center). Now I have it starting with just the two down the center ones. It sounds more solitary to me, if that makes sense, and I like the vibe for the lyrics of the first verse. At the end of the first verse, right before the harmonies and bass come in, the hard L acoustic enters followed by the hard R electric.
Something I like about starting out more minimalistic in the intro is that you can really hear the ambient vocal reverb I added. I use a lot of guitar pedals with a Radial EXTC for creative mixing purposes, and for that I used the Walrus Audio Slo set to 100% wet. The vocal reverb is actually derived from the full vocal double, which I later chopped up to just use specific phrases.
The next thing I really want to mess with is panning automation, to change the feel in different parts of the song. I've read several different approaches to panning in this thread alone, so it seems like there isn't necessarily even a standard set of best practices. It would be very interesting to hear these concepts discussed in the context of this song specifically.
RE the bass resonance--I actually spent some time really sitting with and playing my bass the other day and I think
@spantini was spot on, it's just a dud low E string. I'm gonna pick up a new set and re-track the bass.
Cheers all!
Max