Need opinions on this mix - Killswitch Engage - A Bid Farewell Cover
- Thread starter JayB
- Start date
Hi! The 3-5 KHz area feels very crowded. This type of sound was common in the 90s (Pantera etc.) but it might feel a bit outdated, or at least too different compared to contemporary releases. Listened the Killswitch Engage release from 2004, and it already has a more 'muffled' overall sound compared to releases from 90s. In the end it's up to you if you wish to recreate the Killswitch Engage sound, or go with the 90s sound. Balances between instruments feel ok, and the drums have good transients. Nice work! ^_^
Dystopian Order
New Metal Member
Thanks for the feedback man! Yeah I was watching some tutorials and trying to take the bass out of the guitars and have the actual bass take up that frequency range, but yeah I feel the same way, the guitars are too thin and trebly.
Thanks! I'll redo the guitars on this. I'm glad it's the guitars and not the drum and bass that are the problem, because those are usually what I have trouble with lol.
Dystopian Order
New Metal Member
How did you take out the bass exactly? Did you just turn it down on the amp? Or did you highpass them? I feel like it's important that your guitars still have a good amount of low end. In the mix, a highpass filter anywhere between 90-170 hz will do the job and help gel the bass and guitars.
Well, it's hard to say. The toms have also relatively harsh upper mid transients compared to kick and snare. I'd recommend first rework the drums and bass. I'm guessing there are no miced drums, only samples. Try to make sure your drums and bass overall sound is very 'boring' and Totoishly clean. If you wish to add some 'grit' to sampled drums, send your drum bus through amp sim or something, and blend it back just a hint to make the drums a bit more messy. Then bring up the guitars to fill the gaps in the sequence with frog DNA.
Hard to tell what kind of frequency balance the source guitar tracks have, but in the beginning aim for pink noise type of spectrum. A slow RMS spectrum analyser will help, of course. But let your ears be the final judge. Now the guitars will most likely sound muddy and mask things too much. You can now clear up things with cutting the low mids with broad eq or maul-the-band compression. And slighlty boost upper mids in same manner. Filter out lows and highs if necessary. Setting your low cut filter too high will give you boxy or thin guitar sound, and leaving too much 'air' in the guitars will mess up your stereo image. For the main 'guitar wall' low cut around 100-200 and high cut 4-6k. It might also be more helpful working the hard panned left (or right) guitar first (or through a separate true mono monitoring speaker), and then duplicate the settings for the opposite panned second guitar, as spotting the problematic frequencies is a bit harder from the 'phantom center' of the guitar wall due to the strong decorrelating nature of the 'guitar wall' sound.
Adee
Member
Hi dude,
It doesn't sound good to me. Not acceptable at all. You need to work hard on your mixing skills. What is your equipment? Headphones, monitor speakers? You should start here then after being happy with the gear - start mixing.
It doesn't sound good to me. Not acceptable at all. You need to work hard on your mixing skills. What is your equipment? Headphones, monitor speakers? You should start here then after being happy with the gear - start mixing.
Well damn. No monitors right now. I have audio technica MTH-150s, don't use em often cause they're uncomfortable to me. I'm remixing it tonight and I'll take all these opinions into account. Can you give me any kind of helpful info, like what exactly you don't like? Certain frequency ranges that need to be tweaked one way or another? I'm all for constructive criticism but simply "I hate it, you need to be better" isn't very helpful
Thanks, I'm opening the mix now with my good headphones on and I'm gonna take another crack at it with these notes in mind!
Btw, are you saying to low cut the main guitars at 4-6K? That seems SUPER low. Most people I know do it around 8 k, which I did in this updated mix
Hi! Took a listen at the later version, and for me it sure sounds better. The drums also have nice punch.
About the guitar filtering. I tend to use gentle slopes for low pass filtering the high frequencies. Meaning 12 dB/oct, so the filter point can be lower and not causing so much resonance below the filtering point. Of course gentle slopes aren't as effective, but for me it sounds more 'transparent'. Should have been more specific on that. When filtering at 8k with steeper (24 dB/oct) filter it's most likely that the audible effect people are after is the boosted presence (5-8k) caused by filter resonance. You can always boost that area with a bell or high shelf with more gentle low pass filter slopes. But there are of course many different eq methods.
The overall frequency spectrum is still very 90s smiley face, and if you're genuinely happy with it, you should stick with it. It doesn't sound bad. ^_^
Dystopian Order
New Metal Member
Yeah, this is definitely better. Still feel like the guitars could use more midrange, but if you prefer the kind of sound you went with, go for it!
On a side note, did you edit the guitars or not? They do not sound tight. Getting them tighter will also help make them sound "bigger".
On a side note, did you edit the guitars or not? They do not sound tight. Getting them tighter will also help make them sound "bigger".
Found some stem pack for the song. Tried making own version. ^_^
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0xe30mj4ke7e76v/killswitch.m4a?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0xe30mj4ke7e76v/killswitch.m4a?dl=0
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