Diagnose my black metal mix please!

[BrandonS]

http://www.satanicdirge.com/secret/sd-venom-testmix.mp3

I use Adobe Audition 1.5 to produce, and Line6 TonePort with Gearbox for the guitar and bass tones. Blue Snowball USB mic for the "vokills". Drums programmed in FL Studio 5 with FPC, and mixed in Audition...

So I just cooked this up an hour ago or so. I've been trying to mix this song for two days, while reading stuff like "The EQ Primer", and "Getting Your Mix to...mix". Here's what I did. Please tell me what I did wrong, or right, and what I can ultimately do to make the mix better, and to the level of a final mix!

I added a parametric equalizer to each instrument and sound... Two rhythm guitar tracks, two lead guitar tracks, and one small solo track. The rhythms had a somewhat scooped mid-section, and the solo and leads have a mid section with a "higher point". The bass is basically rolled off around the bottom, near the 80Hz area, not that I really know what the difference is between Hz or anything, but it sounded good to my ear.

I raised the highs of the crashes and hats and such, and raised some of the lower area of the kick drum. The snare ended up sounding pretty awesome, but also it became much harder to mix properly because it became kinda hard to hear for some reason when combined with all the other sounds.

After all the equalization and effects were put on, and the song was mixed, I exported it into the highest quality of MP3. Then, I imported the MP3 back into the recording program in a new session. I think I applied a FFT Filter because i heard someone talking about it around here. It didn't really seem to make too much of a difference, though. Then I applied a "Quick Filter" which is what it is called in Audition. It let me turn up 5 different areas of frequencies that changed each area of the sound, from the extreme high treble to the lowest bass! It also let me turn up the "Master Gain" which I put on about 150, a pretty good height.

Lastly, I applied a TLS Pocket Limiter with a knee of 70% and a gain of 0.50, not very strong really. And that is what you are listening to there, with that MP3 I posted!

I'm interested to know what more I can do to make the mix sound proper. I think I may have mastered it up to the right volume, eh? Is it loud enough? I think if I got it equalized properly, it would need mastered less, though. Less limiting perhaps. When I play it in winamp, the visualization bars are pretty small...

Pleeeease help me out! :zombie:

 

[Nebulous]

As im listening:
-Brighten the snare
-brighten the kick and take soem low mids out
-take some low mids out of the guitars, maybee a tad bit of brightening too

Overall the whole mix is a bit bass heavy, to the point where it's overbearing.
As far as BM goes, nice work

 

[BrandonS]

Hmmm ok. I could do that. That's really all that is wrong? It was loud enough? That is good news for me, as I can finally continue to get all the songs ready to release and such.

 

[Nebulous]

Well I did say as far as BM goes hehe.
It's a bit hard to tell sometimes, cos I don't know what you started out with, so for all I know this could be a golden sound compared to the original tracks. There is definately some more things to do, but I think those have more to do with tracking things better. Like gettnig more body into the guitars, gettnig a bass sound that sits better in the mix, real sounding drums and vocals that are a bit clearer.
Sorry....

 

[Thedeloshimself]

sounds like COF haha

 

[joeymusicguy]

my infamous trick for snare drums, because im the most anal person about mixing that you'll ever meet, is turning it up as loud as possible. then, turn it up louder.

mix the rest of the music, get the song slammin.

then turn up the snare some more.

now put on a master bus compressor, turn up the snare.

now if you "master in the mix" like i do (when i export, its mastered), i slam the mix to make it competively loud, then i look on my gain reduction meter as i play back my work of art. i make sure the music is hitting 0 - 3 db gain reduction, and the snare is hitting about 10 (that means its like 10 db louder than everything in the mix.

and then i am a happy boy.

make a snare loud and proud, make it louder than everything else. make it twice as loud as everything else. it will sound funny as hell until its slammed, then it will sound just right! just be weary of weird snare tracks, sometimes it will sound HORRID. this usually only works if your snare track is so clean that if you solo it, it sounds like you're sound checking the snare drum.

 

[Kenny Lee]

Here man. This plug-in is not only a must have and also very good at what it does.


IT'S FREE!!! GET THIS! It'll help you to mix your master pieces well enough to translate great on all systems! It's NOT a one in all/ end all plug-in. It just helps tremendously!







GORILLA

 

[Salvation 13]

The mix is really bass heavy. I'd suggest hipassing the whole mix at 40-50Hz to get rid of the boominess and maybe cut some mud of 200-300 Hz too. Or you could just turn the bass guitar down.

 

[Opethian666]

since you already have a Line 6 Toneport, why don't you buy the Sonoma Wireworks Riffworks Standard program. I used it to record this black metal instrumental (it also has Instantdrummers which are like slightly adjustable drum loop packages). Check it out at www.sonomawireworks.com.

 

[BrandonS]

Sounds interesting, but I don't have a budget! The toneport I got was free for a 'journalistic' purpose.

I'm gonna check out this Inspector thing Kenny Lee posted aboot. Is it just a graphic display of the sound the song is making, or does it edit the mastering too?

I use Adobe Audition 1.5, is there a way to apply this to the whole project before exporting the MP3, or do I just apply it to the song after exporting it, and then mastering?