[Jay Kahrs]

Making a mix come alive is about more then gear or technique. Really, it goes beyond individual instrument sounds. It's about the whole package.

What does the SONG want? What does it need? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Find the good parts and push them to the forefront while turning the unimportant & otherwise bad things is pretty important, if not the most important thing but you need to have the distance and objectivity to recognize those things and act on them.

Building a mix or a record is like building a house…the foundation needs to be solid before you add the trim. If the foundation isn’t solid and you don’t have a mix that kicks in the ‘static’ state then no amount of rides, effects, compression tricks etc. are going to save and inject life into it. Just like if the foundation of your house is crooked, slanted or otherwise not kosher then all the fancy molding, paint & marble floors won’t make up for the fact that the house isn’t level and is sinking into the ground. Beyond that, you need to understand the mix fashion for the style of music you’re working on and know how to build an appropriate mix for that style so it conforms to the fashion of the genre and doesn’t sound out of place to the listener.

The first thing that hit me was that this tune sounds like it was mixed by a guitar player...the drums should be way more out front. The drummer sounds like he’s killin’ the kit…but I don’t hear it and more importantly I don’t FEEL it. Parallel compression won’t really help that because it’s a fundamental mix issue. Nor will riding things in this case…there are too many other things that are outta whack and need to be addressed first. Riding vocals or pushing the kick & snare up 2dB in the chorus can put some life into a song, but in this case it would be like adding icing to a burnt cake…underneath it all the cake is still burnt LOL! I’d agree with Rush…pull all the faders down, take off all the plug-ins and start again from scratch. Get the mix to slam and THEN add the stereo enhancement and blah & blee to juice it.

Peace,