Pls Critique my mix - 90's seatle style. Heavy.

[Chrizcol]

Please lend your ears to this:

http://www.taitaialibi.com/music/LIY_oct3.mp3

Whatcha think of the mix?

Will say my opinions after........

Thanks very much for your time/ears!

[Elvis]

nice song. two things that jumped out at me - snare sounds boxy and vocals are too loud

[Chrizcol]

Cool thanks. Had a hard time trying to seperate the bad sounding hats from that one badly placed snare mike.... good practice though..

thanks for the listen! (checking my email for notifications like a madman right now!)

[Michael Zick]

Everything sounds really cramped and kinda mono. All instruments need some beef. Very garage-y. I'd like to hear a little more space as well.

[manuelitros]

I think the snare has way too much reverb, and it is not too tight (I like tight and punchy snares).
Guitars need a little more eq, they sound a little dull and need some more presense.

[guitarwes]

ditto for everything.

Needs some sparkle and polish. Don't be afraid to soundreplace the snare and kick. What's in the chain?

Overall, great song. I'd be willing to buy it!

[Chrizcol]

Totally right about the snare. Lowered verb.
Yeah boxy too.

Problem I'm having is when I shelf the highs on the snare... the horrible hats come back.
Especially during the verses where i've had to carefully gate the snare to stop the hat spill dominating.
Any tips?
Have tried de-esssing and standard multiband compression. I think this is probably the best way but i'm finding it hard getting the right setting.

Will tackle the general dullness.

Cramped and mono.... assuming this is to do with panning?

[guitarwes]

Yeah, don't worry about panning yet. Get a kickin' mono mix before you even touch the pan controls, and constantly revert back and forth for mono compatibility. Listen to some of your favorite recordings in mono: still sound pretty good? Probably.

Since you can't re-track drums, you could either reamp the snare (speaker playing solo'd snare track on a snare, do a search) or mix in samples to soundreplace with. You could even use a sample from the recording you're working in. I totally know how you feel about that damned hihat bleed.

Cut low-mids on alot of stacked tracks. It'll help reduce boxiness without the need to add too many highs.

[Chrizcol]

Originally Posted by guitarwes

Yeah, don't worry about panning yet. Get a kickin' mono mix before you even touch the pan controls, and constantly revert back and forth for mono compatibility. Listen to some of your favorite recordings in mono: still sound pretty good? Probably.

Since you can't re-track drums, you could either reamp the snare (speaker playing solo'd snare track on a snare, do a search) or mix in samples to soundreplace with. You could even use a sample from the recording you're working in. I totally know how you feel about that damned hihat bleed.

Cut low-mids on alot of stacked tracks. It'll help reduce boxiness without the need to add too many highs.

Thanks for the tips. I'm just getting into doing mono-mixing... can see why it would help.

Tricks:

-Tried de-essing. multi compression. Took all the snap out of the snare.

-I tried copying the snare track, high passing and flipping the phase to blend...worked . OK... not great though.

-Sample replacement. Will try now but the sample I got has crash spill on it too.

I'm thinking... hire better engineers next time! Get quieter hats. Ask the drummer not to hat bash!

[guitarwes]

here's a thread:

Free Snare Sample

[Audio Hombre]

Originally Posted by Michael Zick

Everything sounds really cramped and kinda mono. All instruments need some beef. Very garage-y. I'd like to hear a little more space as well.

i've got to agree with this chap. there's a high level of congestion and for this kind of music and the vocal wouldn't normally tower over the track like it does here. i could always hang on every word layne sang, but the track would be crushing over top of him.

the kick is what i found to be suffering the most. sounds like the compressor settings might be a bit extreme in the attack / release. just sounds pretty slow overall to me in the transients and too fluffy. replacing this might be a solid option.

i agree that the verb on that snare might be a few cents too many and would start with a bright plate with a shorter return.

there's some pretty serious timing gafah's in the bridge that weren't easy to ignore.

i like the singers voice and the song tweren't that bad either.

[Chrizcol]

Originally Posted by Audio Hombre

i've got to agree with this chap. there's a high level of congestion and for this kind of music and the vocal wouldn't normally tower over the track like it does here. i could always hang on every word layne sang, but the track would be crushing over top of him.

the kick is what i found to be suffering the most. sounds like the compressor settings might be a bit extreme in the attack / release. just sounds pretty slow overall to me in the transients and too fluffy. replacing this might be a solid option.

i agree that the verb on that snare might be a few cents too many and would start with a bright plate with a shorter return.

there's some pretty serious timing gafah's in the bridge that weren't easy to ignore.

i like the singers voice and the song tweren't that bad either.

thanks for advice. This whole EP was an experiment for me really. We tracked initially with V-drums & bass with a room mike picking up gtrs and vocals. Then went about overdubs of guitars and vocals.
THEN decided the v-drums (20-tk no less) were holding the tracks back... So have and are still in the process of over-overdubbing acoustic drums on top.
This process has left the groove a bit shaky in places.
Will fix the guffahs! I appreciate the music ears! :P

I've taken on everyones advice and will be posting the mark2 version soon.

Thanks again all. I'd really like to get great at this art/sciene and "y'all" are helping me a tonne!

[Chrizcol]

The v one is with boosted vocals.

http://www.taitaialibi.com/music/LIY_oct7.mp3
http://www.taitaialibi.com/music/LIY_oct7v.mp3

[camerondye]

I don't like the boosted vocals myself, the other sounds better to me. The snare might still need more love but it definitely is a lot better. The mix also may be a little light on the lowend, I'm not positive on this one but it seems like the bass is a little too hidden. The bass thing might be the mp3 encoding also...who knows. You have obviously worked hard and it shows...great job.
cam

[Chrizcol]

Originally Posted by camerondye

I don't like the boosted vocals myself, the other sounds better to me. The snare might still need more love but it definitely is a lot better. The mix also may be a little light on the lowend, I'm not positive on this one but it seems like the bass is a little too hidden. The bass thing might be the mp3 encoding also...who knows. You have obviously worked hard and it shows...great job.
cam

:P

Now if only I could get my band mates to agree......

[guitarwes]

Beat them until they agree!

This mix is much better, even though at the moment I'm only listening on laptop speakers. I'll be able to critique a little better later when I can hook up to studio monitors.

Which trick(s) did you use to fix the snare?

[Chrizcol]

Originally Posted by guitarwes

Beat them until they agree!

This mix is much better, even though at the moment I'm only listening on laptop speakers. I'll be able to critique a little better later when I can hook up to studio monitors.

Which trick(s) did you use to fix the snare?

Got 4 fairly clean and varying samples from the track.
Gated the track. compressed. and fed through drumagog with a blend of 80% for subtle timbral variations.

Drumagog output ->Boosted high shelfing and a select area of the mids that i liked... bucket area.
mildly compressed and choose a different plate setting with more predelay and less tail. more highs in the verb.

blah blah :P

Thanks for having a listen. Got some timing issues still to resolve but i'm getting there i think....

[Elvis]

I'm not listening on studio monitors right now either, but I can say this definitely sounds much better. Snare has improved dramatically. I like the non-boosted vocal but still think they could come down a little bit. good job