I feel my tracks end up sounding kind of muddy or too "bassy". I don't know if it's because the sounds and instruments I pick or it's just bad mixing.
I would appreciate any advice on this.

I've been playing guitar for a long time but I'm new to producing.

If you have enough time as to check my individual tracks, this is the link for this song:
https://we.tl/t-Xln4RokMlA

Thanks in advance!

 

Sounds alright on a phone speaker. Keep it up you have something going there try and get it to the 3 minute mark. Can definitely see a re work of it ending up in a crime drama movie set in the 50's. But if thats the case their is no need to make it longer.

 

If you want a less bassy sound, you should lower the bass instrument by >3db.
The bass instrument is very upfront here.

 

you are letting too many sounds eat up too much space as high frequency. your midrange sounds are suffering from it.

it's the mix to me. none of the sounds are "bad" on their own. the bass and the flute over it. compression, de-essing. high cut filter. etc. if you want a loud bass, use compression and saturation to get there, not high freq's.

 

I don't know if I would worry so much about the "Bright". More about the mix. I think you should work on the acoustic instruments, like the bass, I feel like it's too front, and it might have a little too much bass. The acoustic guitar that starts in the middle of the song, I feel it's very muffled. I think if you focus on working more on the acoustic instruments you will get a better balance, then once you have a balance in the mix between natural instruments/virtual instruments. Then you could look at putting in some exciter or harmonic distortion to give the overall mix a little bit more presence.
Just my humble opinion. I hope it helps.

 

Man, you're amazing!!! That's how I want my mixes to sound like. The snare and kick have so much more presence now.
https://ibb.co/PWcqPx8
I don't know if you can see this image but I've been comparing both waves and yours is much more compressed and sharp.
I will keep practicing.
Thanks a lot!

 

It improved a lot, but why is the kick heard on the left side?

 

I agree here. Your track sounds fine. Just lower the bass instruments a little. Very nice track.

 

The HH is causing this effect, the kick itself is straight centered.

 

Without trying to sound too harsh, and having listened to the sample that you've posted, I'm not too convinced that you're anywhere near the point in your musical journey where you really need to worry about eq decisions. As my granny would say, don't run before you can walk.

1) You need to hone your songwriting/melodic skills until you have things down
2) You need to develop some production chops to figure out arrangements where the instrumentation complements what you've written
3) Worry about how best to mix it
4) Worry about how best to master it.

Intended as good advice, so please don't take offence & good luck on your journey.

 

totally agree with @Colin
I didn't mean to sound harsh either. But if we are here it is to help us move forward. And yes, I think glitter is the last thing you should worry about. There are things in the compositing and mixing that you should work on first.

 

Number 2 is where I'm struggling the most right now : )
Even if I great arrangement comes to my mind, it's difficult to fit it in my track correctly.

Thank you for your honest feedback! I do appreciate it.

 

share with us your doubts, I mean, upload your audios, your doubts, and between all of us we will give you an opinion. I always try to propose this, let's not stay in the dark, let's share and learn together. I mean, if you are making a guitar, bass, drums and you have doubts, upload your audio and we all learn together.
Go for it!

 

Customer with flat tire: " I need to get this fixed".
Random person: "Maybe you should go back to driving school".

Real helpful. Great use of oxygen.

 

you mean constructive criticism?

 

Let me add to what has been said in the hopes of being just as helpful.

Overall impression. Good dynamics, good intro, good dynamics in the middle, the track goes somewhere. The end, however is hesitant and stumbles. The idea of the end is good, it’s just the execution that could used some work. As for the intro, the drum levels could come down. I think the keyboards carry well enough and they should be the focus.

As far as more brightness, Drake and his collab Noah Shebib have made a career out of making backing tracks lo fi so there’s plenty of room for the top line, be it vocals or whatever. The bass is too much, but the idea of having a bass where it is is good. You could roll off the highs and see if that works and season the volume level to taste.As it is, rather than providing a dynamic, it’s a distraction. If you’re looking to make beats for vocals on top, I’d leave that acoustic guitar alone, you’re vocalist will thank you.

I like what you did and keep grinding.

Finally, here’s an example of what can be done without too much brightness but with good fidelity.

The Soul of Carmen Miranda - Eno and Cale
https://g.co/kgs/u3Wwzf

 

I also believe that there is something else important that has not been mentioned here. And that is the issue of how you want to transmit your sounds, and the frequencies in this influence too much, at least for my ear.
Let me explain this with an example that happened to me once.

I had a song where the guitar had a very important role, in the chorus, almost crying to the soul. But then I saw that the song had a lot of "Mid" and to my ear it lacked "Bright". So I started to equalize the guitar where I had more harmonics in the mids. But what did I end up doing? I killed the emotion of the song, it was already transmitting me what it was transmitting at the beginning where the sound of the guitar with its harmonics in the mids, was "telling me a story".

Do you get the point? I think that many times by focusing on the EQ, we end up missing harmonics that were essential to what we wanted to transmit.
A lot of us here can tell you, take the bass out, turn this down, etc. But look, you are the one who transmits the work, and you are the one who must convert that essence, and not so much look at whether it sounds too low, or too high.
In conclusion, don't lose the essence of your song by paying attention to whether it sounds more or less bright.