My first mix...what do you think?

[For Reasons Unknown]

Hey guys,

I´ve just finished the mixing process of the first song of my band For Reasons Unknown and I´d be really glad to get some feedback on how the mix can be improved. I´m always struggling with the lowend in particular so any advice is highly appreciated.

Listen for yourselves:



Drums were recorded live but I sampled snare and kick drum as I didn't achieve the sound that I desired with the recorded signals. The string instruments and the vocals were recorded with a Scarlett 2i4 at my flat.

Any feedback is appreciated!

Thanks
André

 

[WalhallaM]

Well for first mix it's solid ,biggest mistake is guitar is centred,if you double tracked guitar pan them left and right 100% or whatever sounds good to you , you'll get more space for bass guitar and you can work on low end. Screaming vocal are bit loud and drums sound of tempo not to much.

 

[kapu]

Some subjective observations: For me the guitars seem to have width, but can't say if it's genuine double takes or some type of haas pseudo stereo or multimiced amp. Anyways, the guitars feel 'large' enough and the vocals are cutting clearly through. I'd say the low end feels prett ok to me.

I'd still work on (edit) the musical performance of the drums (some parts feel a bit off time), but the biggest issue for me would be the snare. It seems to be tilted towards the right channel, and it lacks body. Are you using a snare sample from the live recording? Are the samples triggered based on the recorded performance? In any case, you should probably check and adjust the phase and/or time alignment between the snare sample and rest of the 'real' kit, notably the overheads and possibly the hihat if it a lot of snare bleed. If hihat has lot's snare, then center it. I'd start by taking all the individual drum channels down and cleaning the channels, and then bring up the sampled kick and snare to desirable level panned dead center. Then, panned dead center, start bringing up the overheads. If you start losing 'power' or 'body' on the samples, then try flipping the phase of the overheads and/or adjust their timing by a +/- few ms. Probably the most effective way of doing this is to find a relatively sparse drum section with good separate drum hits, and loop over those individual drum hits flipping the overhead phase and adjusting the timing position. And, of course, if the snare has top and bottom mics, they need to be set in opposite phases first and then check their sum phase correlation against the overheads. Anyways, I'd first try to get as much of punch as possible from the mics and/or sampleds blended together in mono by testing phases and/or alignment. Then start cleaning up the sound first from the drum bus with vague eq and general tightening compression, and in an subtle iterative manner work towards the individual channels to maintain healthy overall phase response for the drums. Or take the option B, and completely replace the shells with samples and blend them with overheads. All this being said, the overall sound feels ok and there isn't anything really wrong with it. ^_^

 

[For Reasons Unknown]

First of all: thank you a lot for your valuable feedback! Good to hear that I´m on the right track

Regarding guitars: we double tracked all guitars and panned them. One guitar 100% r/l, the other one 60% "to fill" the panorama

Regarding drums: timing really seems to be an issue (not the first time I hear this). That´s why I will go through it with the drummer of our band, to fix inaccurate parts.
I am not using a live recorded snare sample, but one from the Slate Library. I wasn't even considering that there might be any phase issues due to mic-bleeding. Thank you for this advice, I will try to proceed as described and let you know, whether it helps improve the snare sound.

 

[WalhallaM]

You are, but spreed guitars evenly since this sounds a bit strange and it confusing , to give you quick example of 100 % panned guitars and benefit for whole picture here is my recording ,jut couple bars

Also I have listen to it through headphones and definitely those triplet bass drum hit's are of sync, mis-triggering sample or it's not on grid with bass guitar so take everything sounds off. Make sure that drums are aligned properly , you'll save yourself of hassle and trying to figure out what's wrong and here is something useful for editing drums . It doesn't matter which daw you use it's probably possible in any daw.

 

[kapu]

First of all: thank you a lot for your valuable feedback! Good to hear that I´m on the right track

Regarding guitars: we double tracked all guitars and panned them. One guitar 100% r/l, the other one 60% "to fill" the panorama

Regarding drums: timing really seems to be an issue (not the first time I hear this). That´s why I will go through it with the drummer of our band, to fix inaccurate parts.
I am not using a live recorded snare sample, but one from the Slate Library. I wasn't even considering that there might be any phase issues due to mic-bleeding. Thank you for this advice, I will try to proceed as described and let you know, whether it helps improve the snare sound.

Hmm. The technically correct term would be deconstructive interference instead of phasing, if the mics and samples are (even partly) cancelling each other out, because there is no direct phase correlation between them. But the principle is the same. The snare being drawn to right could indeed come from hihat mic bleed or imbalance between overheads. A very good (and unintuitive) way to mic the hihat is to aim the mic (usually cardioid small diaphragm condenser) directly at the snare drum, and the position the mic so that the hihat cymbal sits directly between them blocking the snare from hihat mics 'view' entirely. The hihat cymbal in itself will then function as 'filter', because it has the surface and mass to reflect and absorb high frequencies and it is large enough to diffuse the shockwave blast coming from the snare. Even if the hihat mic is pointing away from the snare, the side of cardioid can pick up the transient of the snare which can then cause all sorts of trouble during mixing. Or like when sometimes the floor tom mic picks up loud snapping from the ride cymbal being played. ^_^

 

[For Reasons Unknown]

Hi guys,

I´ve tried to incorporate all of your feedback into my mix. Here`s the result:



I personally like this version much better as it sounds more "cleaned up". What do you think?

I also tried to fix the timing issues regarding the kick drum. Do you still hear any inaccuracies that need to be addressed?

Thank you again for your feedback, this helps me a lot!
André

 

[kapu]

Hi guys,

I´ve tried to incorporate all of your feedback into my mix. Here`s the result:



I personally like this version much better as it sounds more "cleaned up". What do you think?

I also tried to fix the timing issues regarding the kick drum. Do you still hear any inaccuracies that need to be addressed?

Thank you again for your feedback, this helps me a lot!
André

Sounds better, and the drums have now more focus. Although it's now cleaner, for me it sounds like you've done something 'not-so-good' with the low end. You might want to do some more tweaking there. ^_^

 

[For Reasons Unknown]

Good to hear that at least something got better after all!

Regarding the low end...what I did:
- separated bass guitar and bass drum frequencies with more EQing (slight boost at 70hz and minor cut at 100hz for guitar and vice versa for kick)
- added another sample for kick drum to give it more aggressiveness
- added saturation on bass guitar

What do you think needs to be revised? I personally did not hear any issues with the low end.

Thanks a lot for your support!

 

[kapu]

Good to hear that at least something got better after all!

Regarding the low end...what I did:
- separated bass guitar and bass drum frequencies with more EQing (slight boost at 70hz and minor cut at 100hz for guitar and vice versa for kick)
- added another sample for kick drum to give it more aggressiveness
- added saturation on bass guitar

What do you think needs to be revised? I personally did not hear any issues with the low end.

Thanks a lot for your support!

I think in the first version the kick low end already sounds more complete with right balance between fundamental sub oompf (~50) and first harmonic punchy aggression (~100). Rough estimates. The later version has more 'hard knock', just as you intended, but it went too far (subjective opinion). I personally wouldn't let the guitars go too much under 100 unless the source sound is very consistent and the performance super tight, and would let the bass do the work there. ^_^

 

[For Reasons Unknown]

I hope I´ve managed to fix the low end issue and had the song mastered in the meantime, so here`s the final result:



Thank you again for your valuable feedback!
André