Advice on this mix lads

Fingers Mcginty

Finally met up with a decent bass player and we've recorded this original on my PC at home. What do yiz think of the mix?

myspace.com/jugglinwolves

Paligulus

Good stuff chief!!!

I'm no expert on this kind of stuff so I wont be able to offer anything to groundbreaking!!!!


-I suppose my first suggestion would be a bit of advice that somebody gave me here. Dont use MySpace!!! MySpace seriously reduces the quality of your MP3. So if your song is 6MB, it will be hosted as 3mb (Correct me if I'm wrong please people). So maybe try Artistserver or irishmusicians (I'd recommend this as it allows you to host more songs and its a good site!!!!)

-Secondly I thought the song was very good and the mix was good too, but I suppose there's always room for improvement in that side of things.

-In my opinion you are lucky, because you got the vocal sounding very good, which is easily the hardest part to get right (I suppose it helps you can sing!!!)

-On the acoustic side of things I think its slightly too boomy. I presume you are used to playing solo as this is the kind of sound you would use when you wanna cover a lot of freqs when your playing on your own. You could probably cut a lot of those freq's (i.e. everything under 200hz). From my own (limited!!!) experiance I found that I had to make my acoustic sound far more brighter than I normally would (sometimes in a big track-heavy song it would be almost to the point where it sounded almost too bright on its own). But before you go mad with high-pass filters and the like I would prob and try and get this guitar sound before you start recording (on some of your main rhythm tracks at least). I think this is kind of essential cos at the moment you will be wrestling for those lower freq's.

Dont take that as criticism cos I'm only talking about a slight cut in freqs here!!!!

I better get out of the way here and let the pro's take over!!!

I remember I posted a similar thread awhile ago and I got some great pointers!!!

What gear are you using to record this?

Cheers,
Dave

TelePaul

Actually MySpace doesn't seem to have killed that mix TOO much, but the poster above is dead right, streaming reduces the quality alot. His comment about boominess is also good, this could be down to the proximity effect or just the style of guitar or pcik preferences! I for one have a mahogany Martin dreadnought and I have to work to make he top-end sparkle. I think the dark sound contributes to the songs vibe though.

The centre guitar is kinda dry...maybe add a dash of reverb? You've done a nice job of the stereo image of the muted strumming though. It's a cool little riff!

The thing about the song is that it gets a little bit repetitive...it's not really a criticism...but maybe you could achieve a layered effect without even adding instruments...you could try experimenting with a fade in coming up the chorus...I try anything and everything to change the dynamics of a song...delays and verbs can add alot of space to a mix. And generally make it sound more involved than it actually is. I have an idea for the chorus vocals even if you just want to experiment...you isolate a vocal track, reverse it and add a TINY amount of reverb. Then re-reverse it so it plays normally...you get this kinda strange pre-reverb, and if you mix the wet track with a dry vocal track it can sound, well ineresting. I use it on guitar solos.

Good mix though, definetely a very good mix. The problem with it is that the song has minimal instruments or changes so the challenge is getting it to stand up by itself by keeping the listener interested.

Fingers Mcginty

cheers for all the inputs me ould chieftains!...i just thought the vox was a little bit out front?

TelePaul

Fingers Mcginty wrote:

cheers for all the inputs me ould chieftains!...i just thought the vox was a little bit out front?

You could compress them a little more if you wanted...but really when a vocal performance is good its hard for it to be too up front.

Paligulus

TelePaul wrote:

You could compress them a little more if you wanted...but really when a vocal performance is good its hard for it to be too up front.

I'd agree with this. But I suppose when its your own voice your listening to it can seem like it is too upfront in the mix!!!

That's a good tip about the reverb-reverse trick. I've noticed that some reverb plug-ins allow you to reverse the reverb also...

Fingers Mcginty

i take everything on board. I'm a musician just trying to get the levels right.
Have another song up there on the webpage if yiz wanna check it out.
I'm thinkin' of getting a drummer on board also.

Carrigsound

I dowloaded Secret Lady and loaded it into Nuendo.

I like this, fine guitar playing. You obviously work hard at your guitar.
The bass player is really tuned into your rhythms, great stuff.
The intro and outro both run to about 40secs which is a bit too long when all
thats happening is the rhythm.

The techy bit. Everything above 10khz is sheared off here, so it makes whole thing sound dull (frequency wise) This isn't your fault, such are the perils of mp3 conversion and myspace. I just thought it was worth pointing out.
The vocal was a little harsh sounding for my liking,a small boost at 250-300hz
warms it up though.
A low pass filter at100-150 tames the bottom end of the guitars. A lift at 1500hz brings out the sound of the strings nicely, take it easy with this one though, you can make it sound harsh if overdone.

Just some thoughts

Good luck

Liam

TelePaul

Carrigsound wrote:

I dowloaded Secret Lady and loaded it into Nuendo.

I like this, fine guitar playing. You obviously work hard at your guitar.
The bass player is really tuned into your rhythms, great stuff.
The intro and outro both run to about 40secs which is a bit too long when all
thats happening is the rhythm.

The techy bit. Everything above 10khz is sheared off here, so it makes whole thing sound dull (frequency wise) This isn't your fault, such are the perils of mp3 conversion and myspace. I just thought it was worth pointing out.
The vocal was a little harsh sounding for my liking,a small boost at 250-300hz
warms it up though.
A low pass filter at100-150 tames the bottom end of the guitars. A lift at 1500hz brings out the sound of the strings nicely, take it easy with this one though, you can make it sound harsh if overdone.

Just some thoughts

Good luck

Liam

Wow great advice, were using a spectrum analyser?

Fingers Mcginty

Liam,
you sound like you know what you're talking about. Cheers!

judas101

sounds great except i think i can hear the click track

Fingers Mcginty

Indeed you can. My recording setup/technique is very rudimentary. Maybe i should invest in higher quality headphones so there won't be any leakage.

TelePaul

Yeah get some good closed back monitoring phones.

Carrigsound

TelePaul wrote:

Wow great advice, were using a spectrum analyser?

Thank you
When I first listened to the mix it sounded dull, so I ran it through a
spectrum analyser and then through a analogue eq to confirm what I was
seeing. I don't totally trust spectrum analysers as you could run the same
thing through 5 different ones and get 5 different readings.
Bottom line I suppose is it's what it sounds like is what counts, not what it looks like.

Fingers, if your ever doing a gig down in Cork let me know I would to hear you live.

Cheers

Liam

Fingers Mcginty

Cheers Liam,
Yeah if i'm ever down that direction i'll let ya know.
I'll be honest when it comes to mixing i ain't got much of a clue. I rely mostly on compression to get vocals to sit in a mix better. I'd love to hear what you could do with the final mix as is. I suppose i could upload it to a server where you could download it and work your magic on it if you wished?

red_ice

*edges up his first and pinky finger*

I think its great, good voice, and great sound overall for the group. Very listenable overall. I like the overall progression in the song, and where it goes...

The only thing im not mad about is the lyrics.. sounds like something i've heard before with those lyrics... dont know what it is

Fingers Mcginty

red_ice wrote:

*edges up his first and pinky finger*

I think its great, good voice, and great sound overall for the group. Very listenable overall. I like the overall progression in the song, and where it goes...

The only thing im not mad about is the lyrics.. sounds like something i've heard before with those lyrics... dont know what it is

cheers for that Red. I have always been the lead guitarist in bands and have struggled to find decent singers who would sing my songs my way. On a whim i decided to give it a bash meself. Have gotten good feedback which is nice. I'm still lacking a bit of confidence in my new position but it's definitely progressing.

Carrigsound

Fingers,

Sorry for the very late reply, I've been away for a few days and just getting back into things.

No problem, I get people who are curious about what they're music sounds like mastered, and what I do is I master half a song for them. It's enough
for you to hear the difference between before and after.

If you want you can load it up to my FTP site and I'll collect it from there.
Just let me know if you want to go for it and I'll PM you the details.

Cheers

Liam