...and the band you are mixing want certain colours. Guitarist like this guitar tone, drummer likes this kick and that snare sound. You might say 'that's usual, everyone wants to sound the certain way',
Sure, I agree. It's just happens that those colours tend to be:
guitar sound is scooped, bassy guitar; snare which tone is all beef (around 150-170hz approximately), and the kick is around 120-150hz (there's just no room for bass guitar!). To spice this shit up, they 'don't like clicky kicks'. Oh yeah, and they use growl too. It's all crammed like in bass-low midrange region.
I did one pre-mix, where I tried to maintain some balance, so that you can hear everything, and I did it decent. They don't like it at all. It's also worth noting that recorded guitars are muddy, so when you add that to their preferred scooped sound, it's next to impossible to make guitars prominent in the mix...
Sure, I try not to be preset guy, I go for whatever songs need. But see, they are not black metal dishwashwer kind of band. They play brutal tech death metal, so it should be relatively clean production imo, not sterile, nor muddy.
But, there's just no space to carve out for all the instruments, when everything happens to be in the same region.
I was being thought about balance, that you should have one thing to counter the other. That this should be small, so that thing next to it would sound big. But, when you jump into something like this, it's pretty hard to wrap your head around it.
What would you do? Is it possible at all to have beefy snare (there are lots of blasts and fast 32th kicks), beefy kick, bassy&scooped guitars, and growls all over it, all at the same time?
Sure, I agree. It's just happens that those colours tend to be:
guitar sound is scooped, bassy guitar; snare which tone is all beef (around 150-170hz approximately), and the kick is around 120-150hz (there's just no room for bass guitar!). To spice this shit up, they 'don't like clicky kicks'. Oh yeah, and they use growl too. It's all crammed like in bass-low midrange region.
I did one pre-mix, where I tried to maintain some balance, so that you can hear everything, and I did it decent. They don't like it at all. It's also worth noting that recorded guitars are muddy, so when you add that to their preferred scooped sound, it's next to impossible to make guitars prominent in the mix...
Sure, I try not to be preset guy, I go for whatever songs need. But see, they are not black metal dishwashwer kind of band. They play brutal tech death metal, so it should be relatively clean production imo, not sterile, nor muddy.
But, there's just no space to carve out for all the instruments, when everything happens to be in the same region.
I was being thought about balance, that you should have one thing to counter the other. That this should be small, so that thing next to it would sound big. But, when you jump into something like this, it's pretty hard to wrap your head around it.
What would you do? Is it possible at all to have beefy snare (there are lots of blasts and fast 32th kicks), beefy kick, bassy&scooped guitars, and growls all over it, all at the same time?
