Getting everything to sit correctly in the mix - help!

[cvdpoel]

Okay, so I've been working on music for awhile now and I always have issues with this. So I'm gonna ask a couple questions for you guys and I wanna hear your different opinions on what works best for you!

1. Do you mix vocals into a stereo mixdown of the instrumental, or just into the original mix?

2. How do you get all your instruments to fit right - so everything can be heard and nothing is louder than anything else?

3. How do you get your vocals to sit IN the mix? (Not in front of, behind, etc.)

I'm really looking forward to hearing your opinions and getting help! Thanks in advance guys!

 

[CameronS]

Try to give each instrument its own frequency range in the mix, like find which frequency each instrument sounds good at, boost it a little and take a bit of that frequency out of anything that might be fighting it. For example, if my kick and bass were fighting each-other i might boost 70hz and cut 90hz on kick, then do the opposite on bass(boost 90 cut 70).
For vocals I always have them in the original mix, you would miss out on opportunities to ''glue'' it to the other tracks if you mixed them into a stereo mixdown. To get it to sit right in the mix the same general principle applies. If my vocals aren't fitting in, it's usually because there is too much high end in the instrumental (especially too much 2k in the instrumental will mess with the intelligibility of the vocals), or the vocals were too dynamic and they needed more automation & compression. If you have to keep turning them up to hear the quiet parts, the loud parts are gonna stick out pretty badly. Hope this helps.

 

[cvdpoel]

Two clips of a song I'm working on for a friend's band:

https://soundcloud.com/cvdpoel/hourglass-clip

https://soundcloud.com/cvdpoel/hourglass-clip-2

Comments?