"Tough Luck", first rough mix

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mattr

mattr

Resident moody teenager
Had fun recording this with some friends yesterday afternoon. We shut ourselves in my bedroom and didn't let ourselves out until all the tracking was more or less done.


"Tough Luck"


Drums are quite obviously samples. Bass was DI'd from an Ashdown head. Guitars were through Orange and Marshall half-stacks and a Fender Hot Rod mic'd up in the room next door (e.g. my sister's bedroom, though she's at uni at the moment so she can't really complain :p). Vocals were just done in my untreated bedroom with an NT1000. Vocalist hadn't spent much time in front a mic before but recorded really quite well.


I've been having trouble mainly with getting the rhythm guitars to sit behind everything without being lost. I've had to scoop the high mids a bit more than I would have liked to at the moment, and they still don't quite feel right. Might have to retrack these.

I also got a bit carried away with cutting up and editing guitar parts in the intro so it now sounds a bit jarred and awkward, and a bit like I'm pumping a compressor. Past the first 30 seconds I started making more subtle edits, but I haven't had time to backtrack and sort out the first bit. If you can sit past the opening then it improves, I promise.

Oh, and sorry for the heavy limiting and really loud drums... I'm going to get shot down for this, but this is a "mix in preparation for Myspace"... yup, that's right, I'm mixing this so it will sound good as a horrible low bitrate MP3 :D

It works though - as a 64kbps MP3 all the levels sound just about right. I feel no guilt for admitting this!


Thoughts? Criticism? Improvements?

(My new monitors are coming in the post at I speak, so I'll probably start again with this mix once I have them up and running. I'm still mixing on some rubbish old hi-fi speakers at the moment)
 
Found the cause of the muddy first note... I had the attack on the bass compressor (UAD 1176) set wayyyy too slow. Something else on the list to sort once I've cleared this hangover...
 
Good songwriting, arrangement and performance. Thoroughly enjoyed the song. Lot of energy. Nice tone on the bass.

If I were to offer suggestions, I'd say not layer the guitars so thick to give the vocals a little room. The voice comes through, but it is crowded... but that's nitpicking

Good song, thanks for sharing.
 
i won't comment on mix as I am on my latop. But I loved the song and want to have sexy time with the singer.
 
Loved it. Mix sounds great to me. Song sounds great. This has a lot of potential.

And I too would like sexy time with the singer. :D She sounds a little like Hayley Williams from Paramore. Anybody else hear it?

If you don't mind me saying, the song itself reminded me of Paramore. But probably just because of her.

By the by? What are you using for those drum samples? They sound great!
 
Nice tune. Im listening on cheap cans, but its sounds good on them. And most consumers will be listening with, well, comsumer gear anyway. Nice
 
Great song, loved it!
Drums sound very good, bass sounds wonderful and the guitars nice and full. Good voice too....:cool: I would try to put the same room verb as on the rest on the voice to weld it in better, but really that's nit-picking. Well done, nice work!

Joey :):):):)
 
Something bout her esses bothered me but in all i likey. Rockin'.
 
Another vote for sexy time with the singer! ;)

Sounds great... my type of music too so easy to please me with the song.. Overall like the production, bit over compressed in places though.
 
On phones so not much to say on the mix...but as a pop/rock song it excells...great performance by all...it does sound unfinished but as you say its a rough mix...great stuff Matt..A+
 
Decent little tune however the mix needs some work.

there doesnt seem to be much panning in song...things sound centered.

I like the song...singer sounds good.

What i would use on guitars is a filter or perhaps a combo of eq and filter...use highpass on filter.

I would use an eq or filter and remove the lows from guitar and boost the highs a bit...then add a saturation plugin to absorb some of the highs.

As of right now the song sounds one dimensional...it sounds like everything is fighting for the same frequencies...That can be fixed though.
 
Thanks for the comments :). We're still working on this and it will improve from this initial version.

D_Vincent said:
Decent little tune however the mix needs some work.

there doesnt seem to be much panning in song...things sound centered.

I like the song...singer sounds good.

What i would use on guitars is a filter or perhaps a combo of eq and filter...use highpass on filter.

I would use an eq or filter and remove the lows from guitar and boost the highs a bit...then add a saturation plugin to absorb some of the highs.

As of right now the song sounds one dimensional...it sounds like everything is fighting for the same frequencies...That can be fixed though.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input, but unfortunately I'm already a step ahead of you... already got some fairly drastic eq'ing going on with the guitars, including a fairly steep HPF on the rhythms and a high shelf to smooth off some of the happiness. All the apparent low end of the guitars is coming from the bass, and they sound really silly and thin when soloed! Also got a saturation emulator dialed in quite subtly, strapped across the rhythm bus as well.

Maybe its the bass that has a bit too much going on in low mids that's muddying things up a bit.

We're retracking all the guitars next week anyway. Some of the parts were quite sloppy and the initial amp tones weren't quite right for the mix to begin with. I've got some DI tracks that I could reamp, but its not worth it really considering the takes weren't that great to begin with. Needs to all be really tight to work :p

Other than that, we're probably going to do another lead vocal overdub to try and solve some of the sibilance issues, and also capture the lyrics with a bit more attitude!

Will probably do the retracking and have a new version at the start of next week.

Sorry for any typos in this post. I'm tapping this out on my phone in my physics class :p
 
the song is catchy. everything was put together just right.

the guitars are great, the vocals are superb and overall the song really screams out potential. the vocals are really the highlight of the song. really enjoyed it and look forward to more material from you guys.
 
way to go sounds very Tsunami Bomb-ish...

I like this. everything sounds really good. Performance is tight as shit. I can't hear the bottom end on this at all but its my speakers i'll have to give it another listen from home.

but it sounds good so far.
 
Yeah, I'd say this song definitely has potential for some mass appeal.

To nitpick, the singer's performance was very well done, but am I the only one that found it a bit dry, or perhaps not quite bright enough? I guess I just think that on a pop-rock radio tune like this with a chick singer, the vocals need to be buffed to a studio shine.

Great work all around.

MattD
 
Wow.... Listened to this one twice.. Lots of energy and enthusiasm. Great work!

Okay... I can usually spot electro-drums from a mile away, but man. Holy cow, those drums are nice. Mind enlightening us how those drums were done? The only thing I can think of to make them sound better would be to have Greg L. do em'. I'm not presuming to invite him by any means to do it, but that's just the first thing that came to mind. I'd try to do it myself, but mine record a bit dark, still... The more I think of it, Greg L's drums would open this song up wide.

The vocalist, for not having "been in front of a mic" much, did a fantastic job.

Though I'm not a guitarist, and my mixing skills are still improving, I'd have to agree with Chili as far as the guitars and vocals go. The vocalist really shines on this piece, and it seems like the guitars are fighting for some stage-time as well. I'd scoop the guitars ever so slightly in the range of the vocalist to make her "pop" just a bit more.

Great work, though.

...now taking a 3rd listen...
 
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