need some advice/comment on a pop rock mix

[aramism]

hey i recorded a one song demo for this band on a rush in one day, well two with vocals but still. didn't have much time to collect my thoughts lol and just took a few hours and put this mix together. i'm not a huge fan of the genre so the only stuff i had to reference were the only relative cds in that genre i own -> fall out boy infinity on high, folie a deux (neal avron), paramore riot (not sure ME), armor for sleep last 2 albums (machine)

had a problem with some pickup wiring on the guitar so i was working with a somewhat whacky source signal i didn't realize so i had take some time to reamp with some of my own amps to somewhat balance it out...

listening to it now the main stuff i hear is some sort of unfocus in the mix with the upper mids. i think the guitars are somewhat loud during parts and it buries the drums especially the verses.

i only did 2 automation passes for now so a few words get buried here and there and some other stuff i wanna do but my notes revolve around just lowering the guitars a bit perhaps thinning them out and some vocal rides as well as other rides particularly with the guitars and cymbal hits.

this is not mastered i think i have the mix peaking at -3.5 db sometimes but mostly it hangs around -4.5 to -4.0db

oh yeah kick snare are samples the guy didn't have the best of drum kits as a matter of fact it was pretty bad.

ps - i also attached a vocal and drum version since i printed one to listen to for myself so it gives you an idea of the song of the song without gtr/bass. i could live with it for one song demo rush job with minimal mix time. just gotta spend a little time with those guitars and clearing up the mix.

a few vocal lined need some melodyne as well i'll do that after the fact mostly on female vox (band has 2 singer M and F)

thanks!





full mix on top drum/vox on bottom - make sure drum and vox don't autostart it does that sometimes and both of them sound weird at the same time

[ohmicide]

this sounds pretty good

a bit weird when the snare roll snare without the sample kicks at in though but i like it haha

what drum samples did you use?

[aramism]

hey thanks... still wanna get it better though.

i don't mind the snare thing i hear it a ton and i don't have the time to manually trigger in ghost notes so i just rolled back and chopped up the sample track and tried to blend it in. it's hard to hear in the full mix and even if you do i don't mind that much. as far as the samples they were steven slate samples i forgot which ones though...

[tigheguy]

I think it has a lot of potential to be a cool sounding song. For me it's fun to mix out of my "comfortable" genre. I started mixing stuff like this early on but just got thrown into a sea of hip-hop mixing at the moment. I think by getting out of the comfort zone it helps because you have to do things that you normally wouldn't. I've actually learned some things doing hip-hop that I now apply to rock. Anyway, you've already mentioned some things that you would change that I agree with. Just think of which instrument you think should be "saying" the most at each particular part and you should be cool.

[Revren Jesse]

My first impression is that the vocals are a bit unintelligible and sometimes (usually) overshadowed by the guitars, as you said. I dislike the reverb on everything; the decay is too obvious. The female BGVs need to come up also. Try a different snare sample... maybe a few notes higher. Maybe the kick has to come up in pitch, also, if you do that?

I think you need to show off the female harmonies mostly. You're going to tune them. They're inaudible in your mix, but it's all the song has going for it. I guess you're not going to spend much time with it... print it and move on.