Mix this, female fronted power metal. Rate my mix too.

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padr81

Member
Feb 27, 2010
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Hi guys recently recorded a new song. Its a power metal song with female vox. Have a listen and lemme know what you guys think of my mix. Im pretty useles but lemme know where you think I can improve.

Hear it here... http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4996715/Better Off Alone (D20CTP2J's conflicted copy 2011-04-12).mp3 with a new fixed link.

I tracked guitars with an Ibanez Jem into a Line 6 toneport for the DI's. I than used the following on the guitars. Tss-Lecto-LeCab using the onpres8 impulse and offpres8 impulse. I than clone the track and removed Lecto and replaced it with Tse-30. Same on both sides.
Bass is a cheapy Yamaha bass into said Line 6.
Drums are Steven Slate using the Black Kit from the metal and more expansion, step recorded using a keyboard so as to get more humanised velocities.

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And now for you guys mixing pleasure or torture, Im uploading all the files to drop box atm for you to mix.
Get them here... http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4996715/Better Off Alone Di's.rar and is uploaded now.

What your getting to work with is
-1 vocal track, 1 harmony track.
-2 rhythm guitar di's.
-1 bass di
-Seperate wav files for kick, snare, toms, hats and cymbals
-Seperate wav files for Violins, Violins2, Cello's and Double Bass.
-1 midi files containing 1 track for all drums and 4 seperate files for the string parts.

All recorded in 16bit i'm afraid, i tend to get errors at 24.

For those of you who do download and have a crack at it, it would be much appreciated and if you could let me know what i need to do to improve my DI's I'd be extremely grateful.
 
Hello, thank you very much for this awesome song! It's relaxing to mix.

I've done 2 versions: in the first one I've used your drums, and in the 2nd one I've replaced kick & snare. I'll upload them tomorrow after listening to them again with fresh ears ;)

Concerning your mix, I think the drums should be louder, as well as the bass. Or consider adjusting the guitars to a lower volume. Tonewise I like them very much, they are raw and suit the genre pretty well. Vocals are top notch in my opinion, and I haven't been able to replicate the sweet settings you've used, especially on the harmony track...

I'll reply again when my mixes are online. Apart from louder drums & bass, I've tried to achieve a crunchier tone with more mids, 80's style, but the tradoff is a lack of grind then :erk: It should be heavier, I'll see if I can improve this. I'm using Revalver HP btw.
 
cool stuff Unf I'll look into boosting drums and bass a touch. Thx for the feedback. Tbh I think my guitars might be lacking a touch of gain too.

Looking forward to your mixes.
 
Yes it's always hard to figure out a good guitar tone. Imo, post-EQ is almost as important as good gain settings... For your song I've used some Revalver stuff usually made for ultra death metal :) So... Most funny thing is that I didn't have to lower any settings; I just added some mids and voila, 80's metal... EQ on drums help a lot also, for instance high frequencies do have an influence on the whole song.

Guitar and pickups play a huge role, too. Your DI's have a lot of bite and sound crunchy already before amplification. It's the opposite of my setup, as I've used a fat Dean 79V with huge low mids when I tweaked Revalver. But it's cool to hear that these presets fit nicely with a softer guitar, even with lots of gain. But of course it's a matter of opinion, I'm also wondering if I can get a heavier tone, with more power. Not 100% satisfied too ;) Btw your tone is fine.

Oh, just an advice, you should lower your output volume a bit when recording DI tracks (maybe input too). The soundwaves clip sometimes. It's not a big issue though. Tonewise they're rich and OK for me.

Well here are the links:

- Version 1, with your drums. Haven't EQed them, just made some volume adjustments between 4 tracks. Each guitar is processed through 1 6505 track / 1 JSX track (Revalver HP sim version) and panned L-R. After amp sims I've done reductive post-EQ to get rid of nasty frequencies, plus a slight mid-boost. Bass is played through Acme Bar Gig. Strings are unchanged (wonderful btw) and vocals sound "live" because I've used roomy reverbs (maybe too much).


- Version 2, with new kick / snare samples. Haven't changed strings and guitars, but overall I've been searching for a dry tone, "studio-like", compared to the "live" v1. I've used softer reverbs and EQs for vocals and drums.

- In case you'd like to play with my stuff, here are the V2 stems. This can be also handy if you think I've been too hard on the limiter when doing the mp3s ;) Snare hits are a bit muffled because of the limiting so here you can listen to the pre-mastered 24 bit .wav tracks.

Hope you enjoy! Cheers. Feel free to tell if you think it sucks :kickass: I'm far from being a professional.
 
UnF said:
Yes it's always hard to figure out a good guitar tone. Imo, post-EQ is almost as important as good gain settings... For your song I've used some Revalver stuff usually made for ultra death metal :) So... Most funny thing is that I didn't have to lower any settings; I just added some mids and voila, 80's metal... EQ on drums help a lot also, for instance high frequencies do have an influence on the whole song.

Guitar and pickups play a huge role, too. Your DI's have a lot of bite and sound crunchy already before amplification. It's the opposite of my setup, as I've used a fat Dean 79V with huge low mids when I tweaked Revalver. But it's cool to hear that these presets fit nicely with a softer guitar, even with lots of gain. But of course it's a matter of opinion, I'm also wondering if I can get a heavier tone, with more power. Not 100% satisfied too ;) Btw your tone is fine.

Oh, just an advice, you should lower your output volume a bit when recording DI tracks (maybe input too). The soundwaves clip sometimes. It's not a big issue though. Tonewise they're rich and OK for me.

Well here are the links:

- Version 1, with your drums. Haven't EQed them, just made some volume adjustments between 4 tracks. Each guitar is processed through 1 6505 track / 1 JSX track (Revalver HP sim version) and panned L-R. After amp sims I've done reductive post-EQ to get rid of nasty frequencies, plus a slight mid-boost. Bass is played through Acme Bar Gig. Strings are unchanged (wonderful btw) and vocals sound "live" because I've used roomy reverbs (maybe too much).


- Version 2, with new kick / snare samples. Haven't changed strings and guitars, but overall I've been searching for a dry tone, "studio-like", compared to the "live" v1. I've used softer reverbs and EQs for vocals and drums.

- In case you'd like to play with my stuff, here are the V2 stems. This can be also handy if you think I've been too hard on the limiter when doing the mp3s ;) Snare hits are a bit muffled because of the limiting so here you can listen to the pre-mastered 24 bit .wav tracks.

Hope you enjoy! Cheers. Feel free to tell if you think it sucks :kickass: I'm far from being a professional.
Click to expand...

Love them both mate. Mix 1 is a bit more old school I think. Kinda remind me of late 80's/early 90's powermetal.

Mix 2 is much cleaner and more modern. I have to save I love it. Really, really nice sounds and your drums seem to be way clearer and leave more space than mine.

I'd kill to be able to mix like either of the above but the 2nd one really is top notch stuff and exactly how i pictured the song while recording.

I think for the vocals on my mix, i used cakewalks vintage channel on the fat vocal setting, just that and cakewalk reverb.

Lead vocal was all preserts from sonar. sonitus multiband on female rock setting, vintage channel on fat vocal, g-compressor and a touch of eq in the high end. again cakewalks own reverb.

I'll try and track the di's 3-6db or so lower from now on. Thx for the heads up. Might invest in a guitar with more bottom end too. Atm Im tracking with an Ibanez Jem with Di Marzio evo pickups which are really "lead guitar" pickups. Maye a set of D-Sonics are in order. Could also finally tempt me to pull the trigger on another guitar with a set of emg81's for rhythm tracking.
 
Thank you very much! Glad you like it. Was a real pleasure!! I'm getting more experienced but I'm still doing this as a hobby, without real amps, mics etc. This forum is so great, and so is your song! It's always better to learn mixing with cool tracks ;)

In fact, drums in 2nd version are not that different, I've only replaced kick and snare. Toms, overheads etc. are yours. But it shows how drastically it can change the overall feel of a song. When you listen to these samples, they're not appealing... they sound a bit flat, unimpressive. But once in a mix they're richer and modern. I've noticed this many times, for instance when listening to some famous master tracks ripped from Guitar Hero on youtube: separate instruments are not flattering to ears, but once mixed, they sound great because the careful individual amounts of FX, EQ etc. blend nicely together; while richer separate tracks with lots of impressive reverb etc. are misleading. They'd rock on their own but suck when blended cause there is too much information. Sound is polluted and it turns into noise.

Remember you can dl the stems so you can mix them to your liking: the link is now working (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14886940/BOA_UnF_v2_Stems.zip). I can also send you the drum samples if you want.

In short, it's always great to learn and your feedback is very welcome. Now I know that moderate mixing lead to cleaner stuff ;)

P.S. I enjoyed the "human" drums but imo snare and kick's velocities were too uneven, so I adjusted them. Maybe you should set all velocities to maximum after quantizing, then randomizing again (velocities and timing) but this time more sparingly, using your DAW's "humanize" feature.
 
UnF said:
Thank you very much! Glad you like it. Was a real pleasure!! I'm getting more experienced but I'm still doing this as a hobby, without real amps, mics etc. This forum is so great, and so is your song! It's always better to learn mixing with cool tracks ;)

In fact, drums in 2nd version are not that different, I've only replaced kick and snare. Toms, overheads etc. are yours. But it shows how drastically it can change the overall feel of a song. When you listen to these samples, they're not appealing... they sound a bit flat, unimpressive. But once in a mix they're richer and modern. I've noticed this many times, for instance when listening to some famous master tracks ripped from Guitar Hero on youtube: separate instruments are not flattering to ears, but once mixed, they sound great because the careful individual amounts of FX, EQ etc. blend nicely together; while richer separate tracks with lots of impressive reverb etc. are misleading. They'd rock on their own but suck when blended cause there is too much information. Sound is polluted and it turns into noise.

Remember you can dl the stems so you can mix them to your liking: the link is now working (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14886940/BOA_UnF_v2_Stems.zip). I can also send you the drum samples if you want.

In short, it's always great to learn and your feedback is very welcome. Now I know that moderate mixing lead to cleaner stuff ;)

P.S. I enjoyed the "human" drums but imo snare and kick's velocities were too uneven, so I adjusted them. Maybe you should set all velocities to maximum after quantizing, then randomizing again (velocities and timing) but this time more sparingly, using your DAW's "humanize" feature.
Click to expand...

Hi mate got the stems. gonna have a blast with them and see how i get on. Thx a bunch.
 
RevoltStudios said:
Here's my try on your song. I'm usually paid to do remixes so I didn't spend too much time on it hence the odd sounding vocals and snare not having enough roomy sound. But yes. If you are interested though, I'd love to really mix this stuff for cheap!

P.S. This was mix/mastered to TAPE

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3566975/Female%20fronted.mp3
Click to expand...

wrong song/band my friend. thats the band from szymons thread. Although your mix is excellent.
 
Ok guys heres the deal. im getting no where fast so we've decided we're going to pay the best mix and the winner will probably get an albums worth of work out of it.

If you guys could post your mix here and when you do. p.m. me your prices per song for the following. Mixing only, mixing and re-amping, editing, mixing, re-amping etc... (so all your different levels of pricing).

the entire album will be 10 songs for those interested.
We do have a budget but i may be able to stretch it if the right guy comes along.

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btw if a mod could edit the title to say this is now a paid service it'd be greatly appreciated.
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