Mud City - help

[coreyb]

You know when you return to a mix feeling fresh, pick out all the things you know you need to fix, DO it, then listen over just to realise its WORSE??

Yeah, that. With this.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28049727/French Kiss My Fist (Sample).mp3

Found myself in mud city, thought "yeah walk in the park, just go to town processing this sh**ty bass tone"...went backwards, now it's worse and I'm stuck.

It's my first time with real drums too so that could be making it harder for me, but just want to know..

..how can I get unstuck?

 

[Ascendant]

Snare sounds pretty muddy to me and could use some more processing in general (eq, comp, reverb). The toms sound like someone's beating on pillows, cut out some lows and/or low mids and compress and boost the high end so they can cut through at the very least. Guitars sound a bit harsh in the high end, maybe try using less gain if it's an amp sim or if you can reamp. Check out this excellent guide on how to process high gain guitars.

As for the bass, I don't necessarily think it sounds bad. It's just kind of "there" like a lot of bass tones on professional recordings, try looking over the low mids if you're uncertain, I can't really judge since I'm listening on cans. If you want it to be more audible try making a second track (copypaste the same DI) with distortion and a high pass and low pass filter at ~700hz and ~2khz respectively and tweak from there.

To be honest it sounds to me like the vocals are causing a lot of mud, they sound extremely dry and unprocessed, again eq and compression until they sound punchy but don't cause mud, then add reverb and a touch of delay. That should add some clarity to the mix. Something I always like to do is to make a bus for every reverb so I can hpf and lpf them to taste, usually anything <400hz and >3-5khz just to prevent build-up.

 

[noktem520]

Yup fixing up the vocals would definetly help the mix a lot. do what ascendant said and repost.

 

[coreyb]

Tell us what you think of this improvement...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28049727/French Kiss (progress mix 3).mp3

 

[coreyb]

Bump, only got 2 days to have this finished

 

[coreyb]

desperate

 

[kaomao]

biggest problems on this is drums, why don't you use some sample on snare/kick consistency? too natural for this kind of music

 

[coreyb]

snare is 80% replaced, kick 95-100%...heavier processing maybe? its already really verby, maybe more drastic EQ & comp?