Started working with this track a few months ago and feel I'm stuck going further. I know there is a lot more to squeeze out of the arrangement, sounds, automation, the mix, levels e t c - everything needs more polish and it can and needs to be improved. The version below is the one that I think sounds best among all I have exported. The vocals are from a sound-library which is a bit restricting, but I like them.

Help me with advice how to go further.

 

What you're doing wrong, is thinking you're doing something wrong.
Imo, It's about to get a great track! Okay, it's too bad that the vocals are pulled from a library.
But it's not easy to find a singer like that - and make great recording.
Level wise, right now the vocals are drowning in the instrumentals, but that could be solved with some ducking, try the Wavesfactory Trackspacer plugin for that.

 

I agree, you are not doing wrong here.
The one thing I am missing, are some sort of clear drum patterns. It almost feels like a drumless track to me.

 

Leave it aside for some time and come back to it with a clear mind.You say a few months and i think you just tired from hearing it too many times.

 

I think that everything in the mix registers in the upper-mids/highs and this creates a bit of a mess. When the vocals are "alone" in the mix, they sound too loud. When the other instruments come in the mix the vocals get lost in there. What I would do:

• Low pass everything that can be lowpassed
• Make room for the vocals by creating a dip on the instruments' eq and/or sidechain them with the vocals
• Boost the kick's transient either by compression or by a transient designer
• Automate channels' volume

Those for a start

 

this is all things that you know about. it's good, you just have more to do like you say.

for me, it is rather bright. maybe it is not too much, just something to watch. the sequenced filter synth is another spot you can hear brightness. Did you saturate many of these parts? I think you might benefit from a nice thin coat of multi-band tape saturation on some things (like from the Saturn,Satin,etc.).
Your Toms fill is sparse on the drum hits and short, so you could consider some more hits in the fill.

The synth you have at 1:30 seems like it has a compression artifact causing a tiny click. The big supersaw lead comes in and runs over everything in its path, like your kick. I would probably sidechain a bunch of channels to a 1/4 kick using an enveloper to move some stuff off the kick. Nothing wrong, there is always more you can do.

 

Last edited: Feb 23, 2023

I can't hear the transients of the drums, i think the bass/kick relationship can have more dynamics; It's a bright song, i don't see a problem with it. But you really should sidechain the high mids of the vocal with the other melodic instruments, because those frequencies are already fatigating to the ear, when you have a bunch of them it can be agressive. A little bit of equing and reducing the tails on the reverbs on the vocal can be interesting also to not waste space.

 

Open it up and let breath.

 

The problem is normally with using vocals from sound libraries/sample packs that if you wait to long, someone else will release a track with the same vocal. Could be a problem for sertain labels (and Shazam xD)

 

I think you're facing the same problem as I did a while ago. Also couldn't really put my finger on it. It helped me out to use a reference track, and compare the differences when something like this happens.. Anyway, I'm sure adding a basic drumloop like a hihat + clap will solve your problem. It runs like a thread through your track by serving the listener the tempo/groove even when there is no notable singing or melody instead of the constant feeling of waiting what's coming next.

 

Briefly, otherwise I'll write a novel? The vocals are stepping on everything enough so that I feel like the music is getting shoved down.
It's not a bad mix, overall, but the part @2:28 feels like the only section where the vocals are actually sitting in the same area as the music, with the music bolstering it instead of fighting for space with it. This seems to have been covered by others though, but I'll add that what often times solves issues like this for me is panning (even if it's only the reverb,) and depth—my go-tos aren't unknown, stuff like Boz Digital Labs Pan Knob, Schoeps Mono Upmix, Nugen Audio's Stereoizer, etc.—though I'm not sure how much that would help your mix. I also agree wholeheartedly on Boomoperator's Wavesfactory TrackSpacer push; that plugin is more than just a kick/bass tool.
But, 9ty mentioned the drums. Normally I'd say to bring them up in the mix, thicken them up, or carve a space for them or all of the above, (in one of a hundred ways,) but the parts where they come in don't actually need them, in my less-than-humble opinion... least not those drums. In those parts, I heard larger, less complex percussive hits in wider stereo, sitting around the vocals... think that Florence + The Machine cut "Big God" @3:20, but larger... that's just what came to my mind.
Do with that what you will, just my two-cents.
Oh, and I'm a huge fan of letting music sit for a while before the mixing stage. I'll do a rough mix to get an idea of what I want to do while I'm creating, make sure that I'm sectioning the instruments off enough in their own zones and not overlapping too much, but I don't actually start a proper mix until at least a week after I make something. Besides fresh ears, this also serves the purpose of giving me a perspective on whether I even want to keep the track. I've come back many times to find that a track I liked before wasn't actually anything that 15,000 other people haven't made before, more or less, to whatever degree—a lot of my music gets tossed if it isn't interesting enough.

 

Woah! That is way too loud! My ears are bleeding! I hope I can still have kids!...

 

Sorry, your song is good! The problem is in the mixing.

 

-

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 28, 2023

Many videos out there
Bobby O
Andrew S
MixBusTV
Recording Revolution (5 minute mix tuts are a good start)

 

Too much of everything all at the same plane and distance from the listener. Too much congestion at mids and high-mids (and too much high-mids in general), not enough subs and worst of it you don't give yourself enough space to fix any of this.

To answer your question shortly, what you're doing wrong is you try to make it sound loud before making it sound good. Dial the volume way down and/or remove any maximizers you have on a mix bus, cut 1-3 kHz by 1-2 dB on each instrument (or rather remove the boost, as I suspect there is a boost), then work on the *depth*. Figure out what instruments go front and center and leave those as intense as they are. Cut away others to make more room for your foreground, also cut highs and lows a bit. Pan your background plane wider, add delays and reverbs.

Make more space for things to happen. The mix feels stifled.

Also there's no movement in your sub. It feels more like a monotonous hum, as stifled as the rest of the mix.
Yet again, dial the loudness back. Seriously, it's better to settle at -8 LUFS than go for -5 and kill the track's life, and at least right now these are your two options, unless you give your track to a professional.

Weirdly enough, it's the third time I tell somebody to dial the loudness back. I think I start to understand where all the "Loudness war is bad for music!" comes from.

 

Last edited: Feb 23, 2023

I am overwhelmed by everyones response and also beginning to grasp and understand what most of you are referring to as the flaws of the mix ing and also your suggestions on how to address it.

Thank you!

Will review all track-channels and reconsider pointless effects i have inserted on many tracks and groups and also the levels and automation (or lack of it). Also reconsider what I have on the mix-bus chain.

To be honest this is a general problem for me, not only on this track but on all tracks I make.

I tend to insert too many effects with factory presets aimed for the type of sound, effect or type I'm looking for and as I only can monitor thru headphones (Sennheiser HD 598) I guess it does more harm than improves the overall mix.

As a hobby musician/producer sometimes I make 1-2 songs a week on my spare time, all with the same flaws as this one. Need to take a brake and try to compile all your advice and adapt to a new workflow when it comes to mixing.

Thanks for listening and all great input!

 

I mix on a pair of AKG 240 Studio, which aren't as high-end as yours and, my advice? Try out Toneboosters Morphit ($40/$30 on sale / demo restrictions: Can't save preset or state,) set to "Correct" for your Sennheisers HD598, and Airwindows Monitoring ($0 on Chris' Patreon page,) on the "Cans B" setting.
Knowing my headphones well enough to *roughly know their inconsistent points amongst the frequencies, and having to try and compensate for that in every mix was murder; finally bringing together this two-plugin setup helped my mixes immensely.
And, people will argue over which is better, Morphit or Sonarworks, and debate on curves, phase, frequencies, and whether or not they even do the same thing (they don't, not exactly,) or whether Company A's crossfeed plugin is more realistic than Company B's version, but at the end of the day, it's up to your ears and what you find translates your mixes the best to other systems in general—I found that less is more, forget the bells and whistles. Give it a go, maybe it'll help your music out.

Sincerely,

Some Random Asshole Who Mixes *Constantly On Headphones

https://www.airwindows.com/monitoring/
https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_morphit_v1.html

 

Nothing wrong with it, move on to something new.

Oh, one thing, but that might be a matter of taste: I personally consider the vocals a little over excited.

And not only the s-sounds, so I would do a little more deessing and after that I'd give it a smoth 6db/oct treble roll off.
So dial in that 6db slope and move the frequency down until the vocals feel warm without being dull.

After that you might have to give the vocals one or two db boost on the louder parts of the song to make them cut through.
But besides that it's all fine and remember:
perfect is the enemy of done.

//edit// do the roll off first, maybe the deessing dosn't need to be changed after that

 

Go hire a real vocalist in sites like fiverr