Hey everybody! Better late than never right lol? (for the ones in the community that saw my video using this track a little while back)

And just as a disclaimer upfront as usual, I’m doing this 100% on my own. Writing, tracking, production, mixing, the lot. I started the mixing/engineering side of everything about four years ago so there’s still an ocean of knowledge that I don’t have yet but I try my best.

Not calling it done but close enough to share and get ideas/critiques. Not totally sure if I’m sold on the drum intro or first verse vocals but I’ll see what you guys think. Definitely needs more mixing (I literally always feel like that with every track though so..) but I’ve gotten a bit Snowblind and I feel like I’m polishing it into the ditch at this point so feedback from some unbiased ears mix wise is definitely welcome.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ehe9ufueo27fmy6/vacationsongretakes 26.wav?dl=0

 

These are my 2 pesos:
-The first 5 secconds are too quiet, in most listening enviroments it's probably going to sound like awkward silence.
-You're at -6.7LUFSi and it's not even mastered yet. That is way too loud my dude, it might be okay if you were not distorting too bad, but you are. 0:30-0:45 in particular is a mess.
-Check the clicks at 1:23-1:26

The song is really nice, can't say a lot about it structurally basides that i like it, noce job there, it has that nice sad but uplifting thing to it. But the mixing is not there yet, it's just too distorted and harsh (probably because it's distorted). The problem is, if you lay back on the limiting to make it distort less, it may reveal more issues or actually reveal all the goodness that was below it, it's a bit of a gamble.

 

Mix is not very good. First of all, it seems to be clipping. I hear quite some intermodulation distortion, that's not your guitar drive.
There is no room for vocals in the instrumental part, so you had to make them louder than anything else to be intelligible. This does not resolve the frequency masking tho, but rather makes the mud louder. Especially the backing vocals. Reverb and delay you've used also create more mud.
Drums are barely there.
The track overall is very flat. I agree on loudness. It should not come in expense of dynamics.
Nice rhythm guitar tone tho, I'll give you that.
Can't hear much more right now, it's 2:20 AM in my timezone and I listen through headphones.

 

How would a midwife say 'congrats, it's a distorted brick'.

Seriously, get rid of the limiters and clippers, check if anything is still clipping and fix that, clean up the mids, reduce the boominess, bring up the low end <100Hz and don't make the cyms sound like noise.
The mix for this song should probably have ~ -12LUFSi @ -1TP.

 

OK, I definitely hear what all of your saying. Honestly I am thinking it may actually just be the Lurssen mastering desk plugin I’ve got on the Master buss. Since mixing is so much to learn Just in itself I think I started relying on that plug-in for mastering a little too heavily early on for and while it’s great for mojo/color it’s definitely easy to overdo it with that plug-in. It has a tendency to max the shit out of everything right up to just barely not clipping. It’s probably why the wave form is pretty much a solid black bar lol. I’ll experiment without dialing that in this evening when I get home from work or just take it off all together and see.

 

I really love the song. I just want to go back in time and listen to linkin park now. It feel like 1998 in my Honda CRX on a rural road going 100 mph half drunk not sure if Ill die or not.
Bring up that drum a bit and let the mix breath and you're good.

 

I like the song! Reminds me of Finch a little bit. The transition to undistorted guitar is great.
I'm a newbie to mixing, the only thing I can hear is drums being too quiet.

 

One more thing I noticed now, is how something sometimes just BELLOWS at around 80-100 Hz. And sometimes falls off from there completely. Might be that bass and guitar go completely in phase on certain notes and it gets amplified.
Frankly I think a guitar should not reach that low. This is a bass territory. So the best solution is to cut the bass freqs on a guitar.
Too much overlap between instruments, voice, effects, and whatever. Hard to even tell where the issues are.
But hey, you'll figure it out at some point. My first year or so of mixing wasn't any better, and then I started to gradually improve via accumulated knowledge and ear training. As some people say, the only way to make a good mix, is to make a hundred of shit mixes.
Don't press yourself too hard, that's what I'm saying. Move at your own pace. And if you absolutely need the quality mix here and now - better ask a professional.

 

Would you be willing to upload the track without master buss fx?

If you can, do it in two versions, the last ver and the one close to the beggining(slightly mixed). It would be a much better way of hearing the track in my opinion.