I would love feedback on this song I'm working on. Feedback in the past has been super helpful so thanks in advance to anyone who contributes. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

 

I like it very much, you have a very good voice. I will leave you my constructive point of view I think the mix has too much compression, you can notice as soon as it starts that the guitar sinks due to the over compression The drums have a strange arrangement in the snare, in the part that you do fill Maybe I would put more stereo in the battery. I can't perceive the bass well, I think it lacks prominence. The rest is great for me Well it's my humble opinion. I hope it works for you.

 

Sounds like your using samples on the drums with the trigger threshold not set properly. The singers slightly off pitch. Reverb tails too long.The songs just needs some glue I guess. By that just my personal opinion. Other than that, great effort!!!

 

@Ryck

I've gotten that before about the compression. Not sure how to approach fixing that.. I could of course back off of the compression some, but that interferes with the struggle of getting it competitively loud.. a conundrum for me.

Not sure what you mean about the snare.

For the bass, it isn't doing much.. I tend to treat my bass the way that a lot of Nu metal/hard rock bands do and let them play static notes to just hold down the low end (unless there is a particular part where the bass is actually playing a riff). But I will keep that in mind.

Thanks for taking the time to listen and give feedback, truly appreciate it!!

 

@Havana

The drums are SD3 samples and are set up via tweaked preset... not sure why they sound that way, I didn't even notice.

I am the singer, and I can assure you that my pitch is not an issue, I always loop my vocals with a tuner placed on the tracks, and if anything is not in tune, I sing it again haha.. so I'm not sure what you are hearing.

Reverb tails too long? Do you mean on vocals? Artistic preference I guess... I don't know but I will definitely keep that in mind, thanks!

 

I would tell you not to get carried away by the sound war. I messed up a lot of songs by over compressing them and thinking that I would like them more because they sound louder. Today I hate those songs and I don't want to listen to them again.
What you can try if you want more volume and without destroying the audio are the Clippers. It will give you more gain without destroying the dynamics. Also the harmonic distortion works very well.

 

I do not think there is too much compression. But the reverb is an argument.
Background vocals sounds like they are a big hall while the instruments are super dry. One can do this but then I think that the background vocals are still a bit too upfront. Reverb in general fits in here but I think the percussion needs reverb as well. But one has to be very careful here.

But I am a fan of reverb anyways. So, one can argument that it's a somewhat biased opinion .

 

@Ryck

I have experimented with clippers, I actually have them on a few tracks throughout the session.

My only concern with the "loudness" war, is that (if by happenstance) one of my songs ends up on a playlist (lets say Spotify or something), and it goes from a commercial track which will be super loud, to my track and mine isn't as loud, that will stick out like a sore thumb and could possibly be detrimental causing someone to see it as "not professional", and skip it. Or cause it to be rejected from a playlist all together. Like I said... it's a conundrum haha.

But maybe I need to try implementing clippers even more? I'll have to experiment. Thanks a lot!

 

@Lieglein

Ok I guess the compression is a subjective matter and not a one way street. I love to analyze tracks from my favorite artists and I notice a lot of them squash their tracks immensely. Probably has grown on me and led me to do the same.

I also love reverb, which stabs me in the back sometimes, because I always end up using too much, especially on vocals. I actually went back in after seeing your reply and dialed the reverb back about half on both instance (main and background) and it sounds much better, so thanks a lot!! I try to keep it in mind while mixing, but man, I just love reverb.

 

First of all, you are the creator, and you will be the one who decides how your music will sound. Mine is just a suggestion. Having said that. Listen to the intro between sec 5 and 6, you stop playing the guitar and the sound drops very noticeably. And it comes back when you start playing, I call this over compression, then you hear it in various parts of the song. IMHO, if you fix that, it will sound better. what I think is happening there, is that you are not giving the compressor time to recover, and I imagine that you have it in the mix master, because I can hear how it affects not only the guitar, but the whole song So what you could try is, lower the realease, or not put an attack so fast, because the transitors are being killed there. You could also try a 30% attack and a 30% release as well. I mention it this way, because each compressor varies the ways of requesting the attack and release. I insist, it's just my humble suggestion, you are the creator, maybe you like it that way and that's great too. Art has no rules. Much success!

 

Good material and you've certainly got the voice. Nice one.

Compression is your enemy here. Lacking in dynamics.

There are some pretty good Youtube tuts on mixing stereo distorted guitars and finding that sweet spot between the guitar and Vox frequencies. Also, the drums are a bit thud. I assume you're going for that Bush/Nirvana-ish sound? If so, the kit for you is (IMHO) Modern and Massive with some mild compression and open up the studio mics. Much better transients.

Dynamics.

Dynamics.

Dynamics.

 

@Ryck

Thanks again! I will for sure keep all of this in mind in future projects. I personally do like how things sound (which will most likely change in the future) but I love hearing what others think as well it helps me see things from angels I wouldn't seen them from before.

I'm a little confused on what you mean by the example of the intro. I stop playing and the sound drops.... that's because I stopped playing right? haha. Sorry, genuinely don't know what you mean by that. If mean the guitar doesn't sustain, I muted the strings so that it didn't ring out. If that's not what you mean then I am confused haha.

Thanks a lot! Great feedback.

 

@garfinkle

Thanks for the feedback!

As for the dynamics... I guess a lot of that comes from my taste in hard rock/metal, to me, some of the most sonically pleasing music to me has always been super loud and huge sounding mixes that aren't too dynamic. For instance, I've always thought (production wise), Linkin Parks first two albums sound amazing and how I would want my mixes to sound, and they are far from being dynamic. Other bands who've I've always admired their production, are the same.

As for the drums sound, I have never really aimed for any particular sound in regards to other bands, I've always just loved hard smacking drums, if I would claim any inspiration toward drum sounds, it would be hard rock/metal bands like Breaking Benjamin, Staind, Seether, Shinedown, Skillet... that more modern in your face genre/era sound, I don't think Nirvana/Bush drums hit hard enough for me haha. What I'm currently using is The Rock Foundry Drums for SD3, I really like the way they sound. After mixing for a few years and learning to listen to music from more of an engineers perspective, I'll listen to some of my favorite albums and think of how I would have done the drums differently and more hard hitting and in your face like I like to produce mine (so personal taste/preference I guess haha).

I'll definitely try to improve on makin my mixes more dynamic, I'll keep that ijn mind in the future, thanks a lot!

 

look to understand me better record something.

This guitar has a delay a reverb.
It's all very exaggerated, but it's to explain myself better.

Note that when I'm playing the guitar, the delay and reverb effects go back, but when I stop playing or release the strings, the effect returns, this happens when there is a lot of compression. I also put an exgerated compression on the battery.
But as I told you before, it's a matter of taste.

 

I would love to have an album of your music man, this is crazy good!

 

A good song doesn't need to be loud on LUFS to be punchy and professional. Eye of The Tiger was mastered at -17 LUFS, and it doesn't take out it's impact because the song is good and the dynamics are well worked. If your track sounds "weak" it's not because it's not loud, it's because you didn't work the dynamics of the song in a proper way. Maybe, let me guess, it's sounding weak because youre aiming for mesured loudness and forgeting about anything else, as OP said, lack of glue, lack of groove and transients. This makes your track sounds powerful without even being loud.

And a clipper is not going to help. A loud bad mix it's just more annoying than a quiet bad mix. Not saying you're mixing is bad, it's a good track, but you need to figure out that other things can make a track sounding powerful without squashing it.