Some help with these mixes please

  • Thread starter Thread starter Goldilox
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Goldilox

Goldilox

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I could do with some fresh ears on these please.

Some background:

This is a local musician & friend of mine. We started an album project in my home studio about 6 or 7 years ago just for fun. Recorded rough demos of him doing about 10 songs & then he rounded up dozens of musicians to come and add overdubs to them.

I sent him final-ish mixes of about a half dozen of the tracks around 5 years ago (I even posted a few here back in the day) & then everything went quiet & I assumed it had all been forgotten about. Jump forward to a few weeks back & all of a sudden he's asking me to send final mixes to a guy he knows for mastering. In the meanwhile I'm completely out of practice having gone into a professional studio to do my last project & let them worry about everything.
 
The one thing that jumps out to me is the acoustic guitar on both tracks. I can't imagine how it was recorded. The room seems to have added a lot of less than desirable sounds..........and there's a lot of noise from the pick against the body...........etc. I think if you re-track the acoustic guitar part you might have a better mix to work with. Just my 2 cents.
 
It was recorded with a Samson c01 about 6 inches from the neck/ body join in the conventional fashion. Unfortunately, given the artist's insistence on laying down the guitar & vocal together without a click track over dubbing is not an option & most of what you are hearing is bleed on the vocal mic.
 
I understand. Not much you can do. The intro is where you mainly notice the problem though..............and I assume the vocal mic track is silent until the vocal comes in right? Something still off there. Not sure how to fix it.
 
On Confusion...

The vocals are kind of dominant and the guitars are getting crowded out. With the harmony vocal in, the guitar is almost lost. The harmony vocal is also pretty loud relative to the lead vocal.

Not sure I bass really fits the song. It's pretty low-heavy and rumbly.

On Girl in the Sun
My mix comments would be similar.

The guitar again is very roomy.

I'm hearing some background noise in the intro. Some other spots too.

I also think a bass doesn't fit. These are both lighter songs. The bass just kind of weights them down.

The guitar is pretty roomy and the rest of the tracks are dry. The vocals are covering the guitars.
 
yeah nothing special with that acoustic sound. I know you were limited by the artist's demands, and unfortunately his music suffers because of it. It gets lost and makes the whole track sound you just took a tape recorder, sat it in the front of them and hit record. There are some good parts such as the harmonies, but I don't think they can shine because of the rest of it. If he's not will to come back and lay down at least a second acoustic track, then just get it the best you can and send it away.
 
If you are mixing it on a DAW you might play with moving the acoustic guitar track around by a few samples as you might find a better phase relationship between the vocal mic and the guitar mic. Brightening the acoustic guitar until it impacts the vocal track might help give it slightly more definition. I think that the backing vocal tracks might benefit from grouping and then applying a bit of hi-pass filtering so they feel more airy and a bit of room-styled reverb might make them feel closer to what others described as the roomy-sounding lead vocal and guitar.

You might do some automation with the track that has the most background noise on it, which seems like it is being increased due to compression. Once the vocal kicks in you can't hear it, so my guess is that the compression on the voice is bringing that level up, so turning the compression on only when the vocal is present might dampen that down a bit. If the harmonica is completely isolated it might have more impact if it was left off part of the arrangement so that is just doesn't drone aimlessly.......JJJ666
 
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