'ello!

New band I've been recording, this is my first and slightly rough mix of one of their songs.

There are some issues I need to tidy up, just wondered what you lot thought about it so far.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/10e6d3aa-1956-4edb-ac29-f08f0bced3f7/Filthy-roug h-mix

Hope you all like it! Let me know your opinions.

Jim

wrote a big f*ng essay on this and posted it but its not showning for some reason!! probably my fault though...

anyway to sum it all up.. mix seems good to me, nice and clear, although im not an expert when it comes to really technical analysis of mixes. good clarity on all instruments. vocals nicely to the front but possibly could they be blended in a little more?? with compression maybe?

a nice lack of reverb in there overall which i like, but thats a taste thing of course..

and finally, as you can imagine, knowing my stuff, im not a huge fan of the song itself or the style, would much prefer your own stuff by a mile - but i know i know, work is work and were lucky to have it right?

cheers
D

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http://www.myspace.com/planetdoezer

the mix is great but i have to agree that the music is not my cup of tea, also a small thing i noticed and im not sure if its suppose to be this way, but the drums sound out of time at the start.

mix is great though :-) i wish i had your ear for it.

When Mysticjim puts his latest studio sessions on the forum I never know whether I'm supposed to comment on the bands/performances or the recording/mixing.

Lately I'm not finding anything to say about the studio side because it's usually OK. Do you ever get situations where the band want something mixed in a certain way which you disagree with because you know it won't show them to their best advantage? Is the customer always right?

I didn't go for this track at all. It's a musical style that I can't get to grips with. The thing that struck me most is that the vocalist sounds as if he belongs in a band playing a completely different style of music.

PS It's a damn fone "rough mix"



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www.myspace.com/conory
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=804557

Hi guys, thanks for your comments.

DoeZer, glad you like the production, although, ironically, the snare and toms are totally spattered with reverb! I went for a slightly experimental method of drum mixing for this session, although I messed this mix up - I managed to somehow bury the sound from the overheads too much, hence the drummers hi-hat is strangely missing! I've since fixed it for the band, they'll be putting a few other tracks from the session onto their myspace, so I'll pop a link in once they're uploaded. - And - there is some news on my own music. I've finally begun work on a my next song, I may even have time to finish next weekend cos I've no bands coming into the studio! If all goes well, I'll give it a 'premier' on here, stay tuned! Unfortunately, I'm then fully booked out with recording until October, so make the most of it, its going to be ages before you get another one!

Adam, glad you also liked the mix, but sorry the music doesn't ring your bell! As for the drums, I agree the fill at the intro is a little random, and the drummer does tend to cram is 6 beats on the kick every now and again when 1 would probably have done the trick! Also, the band have only just recruited the bass player, and they threw him in at the deep end and made him play a lot of the guide tracks, so if the timing wonders a fraction here and there, its probably just one half of the rhythm section trying to figure out what the other half is about to do!

Conroy, cheers dude, thats good to know you've liked my recent mixes (even this one with afore-mention hihat issue!) Its interesting that you should mention the bands input at mixing; ironically it has caused a few problems recently. Some bands totally go with the initial mixes I play them, but others often want to tweak the sound a bit, and as you said, the customer is technically always right. I don't let the bands mess around with my panning, compression or EQ, ever, but I set up lots of group channels and actually let them adjust levels themselves, usually its just a case of 'vocals up a touch' here or 'a bit less bass' there. I find bands like doing this, it gives them a sense of really being involved in the mixing process, and most are sensible about it. Its not always like that though. One band a couple of weeks back, in my opinion, ruined a mix of a song. They recorded a good lead vocal plus a very tight doubletrack for the chorus', then the guitarist asked to do some backing vocals on the chorus' aswell. He did a fine job, we recorded a pair of nice backing vox tracks for each of the three chorus' in the song, then I mixed the lead vocal upfront, obviously, then the backing vocals, panned sweetly either side of the lead vocal and set back further in the mix to bolster the overall sound. Guitarist wasn't happy with this, suddenly they weren't backing vocals anymore, he decided that he was singing 'joint lead vocal' - a term I believe he'd just invented! I said that I didn't think there was room in the middle of the mix to move his vocals centrally, what with the lead vocal doubletrack, anymore stuff in that area and the drums and bass would start to get submerged. He opted to simply raise the backing vocals to what he felt was the correct level. I felt he'd overdone it completely, cos now the track was very vocal heavy, they were totally swapping the guitars and cymbals, totally taking the edge of the mix. but that was his choice, and the band rest of the band let him do it. To add insult to injury, they posted the track on myspace using a very poor quality MP3, it must have been converted at well under 196kbs cos it sounds bloody awful! Unsuprisingly, I didn't post a link to their page on this forum, in fact I completely disown those mixes altogether! I don't mind getting crit for mistakes I've made in a mix - and if you check back through my previous posts, I'll admit I've submitted some shockers that were totally my fault and its good I can unbiased feedback on here about them so I can put them right, but I hate making excuses if its something the band has done! Thankfully, that kind of situation doesn't come up very often!

Good post there Mystic, it's great to have an insight into how things came about during a recording. I'll confidently wager that one of the greatest assets a recording engineer/producer can possess is patience.

Keep up the good work

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www.myspace.com/conory
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=804557

It's a good sound Jim - love the drums, love th lead vocals, did find the guitars a touch thin - personally would have liked them to have a little more lower down frequencies in them. On the plus side it does give the bass lots of room.

Love the vocalist's voice. I'm not sure the (small amount of) reverb helps keep the vocals in hte mix too well - the voice sounds a little 'on top of' the music but that maybe what you were going for. I may have tried a small amount of quite long delay (500ms neck of the woods) on a track like this, so that just small resonants of delay can be heard after each line the vocalist sings.

But hey, overall this is a grea mix.

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What it says on the tin...

cant wait to hear one of your own!

id love to have your talent for mixing, i really start to dislike the mixing process, mainly cause im not good at it, but also for the amount of times i have to listen to the song, at the start when im building the song it sounds good, after recording it without mixing it sounds a mess, and by the time i have finished mixing (well i say finish i mean give up with it) iv heard it that many times i dont wanna hear it again lol.

Hi dudes

Thanks for the further comments, just give you taste of some of the bands other stuff, here's their myspace page - http://www.myspace.com/madeleineblack - The first song was from a previous session, and the latter 3 are from the latest one.

And Andy, try not to lose heart in the mixing. Its a long process, not everything fits together properly right away, concentrate on getting the most important elements in your mixes working together first. For example, as you can tell if you have a look at that bands myspace page, the song Peace of mind from the previous session, I messed that right up by making the guitars so big that they dominate the drums. So to try and avoid that mistake this time, I started mixing the new songs by balancing the bass guitar and drums first, then placed the vocals, then finally brought the guitars up into balance. Last time I did drums, bass then guitar then vocals, and by the time I'd got the vocal sounding right, the mix was a mess. Basically, sometimes changing the way you do things helps, for me on these new mixes, the drums established the low end, and the vocals gave me an upper ceiling, so I knew the guitars had to fit neatly between the two. Definately a technique I'll be using more in the future.

Hey Mysticjim,

Had a listen to the song whilst reading everyone else's comments. Do you have a more recent version for us to hear?

I think I would agree that in this version that the guitar does seem thin but the vocals are very clear. How did you do that?

As for the style of music and the song itself....its not my thing and for me the drums don't do it justice (they make me cringe at times...but then again I cant play them!). This is probably more the drummer than the mixing though I would think.

....listen to me pretending I know what I'm talking about

Your mixes sound very clear. What equipment do you use?

Very keen to check your own stuff out. Do you have a myspace page?

Hi dude,

for more recent mixes, check the bands myspace page - its in a comment earlier within this thread.

As stated, the drum sound on this mix is mostly my fault, it has been fixed a little since, and the drums on their other songs aren't bad at all.

I'm glad you think the mix is pretty clear, I think everyone when they first start out seems to get muddy, crowded mixes and as they learn things over time, so the production and the final sound gets more defined. I hope to continue the trend!

Clear vocals are pretty easy with a good condenser mic, a decent pop shield and a trained vocalist, as this guy is. He makes mixing his vocals very easy, and he doesn't like too much reverb on his voice, which I must admit I often use too much of sometimes.

In my studio I use Cubase SE on a 3ghz PC and an RME Fireface800. I've one really nice Neuman condensor mic that I use for vocals, guitars and ambient mic'ing of drumkits, but the rest of my gear is pretty low budget. Pretty much all of my processing plugins are freeware, but I use T-Racks for mastering, cos its the 'Daddy!' For my own music, check out the other post near the top of the forum list (its the one about zombies) - its got a link to my myspace page for my own musical project.

Not being funny but it seems that the drummer is playing a different song it is to busy for what is basically a slow rytm riff.

Song is ok and the recording seems fine but the drums are way too high in the mix in my opinion.

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The Photographers

Not much wrong with the mix but the drummer and the guitarist need to sort our just who is leading who..This sort of music requires the rhythms to turn on a sixpence and everything to mesh together so stops are actually stops , not just a random , anyone fancy a rest?

One of the problems mixing this sort of genre, is that, they are obviously looking for that *massive sound* but you can't do that when no-one is actually sitting down and saying .."Look sort it out who does what?"

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nibbled to death by an Okapi http://www.soundclick.com/tubilahdog