Hi all,

I am a hobbyist musicmaker who has been making living room recordings for the past year. I love 90s rock and recorded this song out of love for the subject matter: Sweeney Todd. It was tough to get it all together. Let me know what you think! I still have time for more revisions before it goes to mastering.

Beware, the levels between verse and chorus are off. I'm leaving that fix for mastering.

JAN 21 EDIT: I've been reworking the mix. Here is the updated track:

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2022

Hello @jonathan marck, great potential to be raised. Feelings and power are slumbering there and pushing into the public eye.
You have talent, a very exciting song. I hope that your song will be mixed into a real experience during the mastering.

 

The kick requires more punch (you can also cut some subs from bass guitar for this), the vocals require, well, to be intelligible more than only half the time.
I like your wall of sound very much.

 

I'm not an expert on this but for me the drums/percussion section is a little bit too much, tried to find some reference track for ex.

althought it comes from 87, listened on Genelec 8030CP

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2022

Thanks, I had already side-chained a compressor from the kick to the bass, so today I increased the ratio on that. Then I automated the transient shaper for the kick to give it more punch for the chorus. Do you know of any other tricks?

How should I increase the intelligibility of the chorus? I keep boosting the 2-5k range, but I don't think that's working.

 

As I said, cut some sub off the bass guitar. You can also compress the kick. Should aim at a more pronounced click (15-20-ish ms attack) and consistent body (release roughly matching decay time). FET compressors work best for drums due to their feedback architecture (i.e. slow-ish attack and program-dependent release) and a specific character that field effect brings. On such compressor you can even dial in a faster attack, it'll pass the transient through anyways. Regardless, tune it by ear and don't forget to listen in a context of the whole mix!
You can then even put a gate after a compressor ("compand") the kick so the body is consistent, but the muddy release tail doesn't get in the way. Fastest attack possible and fast-ish release. If your gate has internal sidechain filters, set them so it reacts to something above 100 Hz only. This way the gate will shut faster after the initial "punch" had passed.
Also you can just make the kick louder. But that's no fun.

That's the tricky part. You have to make more room for the voice by detracting ever so slightly from other instruments. And perhaps re-record it also. I can't exactly tell, but it feels like you recorded verses and choruses in different environments. The female vocal parts sit great in the mix, were you the one mixing them too? Try to do the same to your own voice.
Also don't be shy to use Melodyne and other pitch correction tools. Just do it by hand. If applied discriminately and with moderation, they can only benefit the vocals. After that, cut off any breaths, sibilants and clicks by hand and compress the vocals a bit more aggressively, then increase the make-up gain so the peaks are back where they were.

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2022

Lots of subby stuff going on, particullarly on the kick. I don't know if that's the sound of the kick itslef or you did some cuting, but i really miss some harmonics. Since you like 90s, i'd say you'll want to do some squashing on the master, so you probably want to move all the lows a bit higher to allow you to limit more with less distortion while still having some room to boost those instruments if needed.

If you want numbers, the 100Hz area is usually a good replacement for subs if you don't want to cut the balls off the song, if you can move what's happening between 50-70 a little bit more to arround 100-120 it would realy help. I think there's still some room on that area to do this, but be careful with how the snare reacts to it.

I'd go with saturation on the kick, bass and (possibly) the snare, then some low shelf or low cut near the fundamentals to compensate for the increase in level if needed and to push the snare a bit upwards so you don't en up in a sea of mud. Gating the snare and kick is also a good idea for extra clarity. Alternatively, if you did some cutting you could lay off said cuts to have those upper harmonics without the need of saturation, but i think saturation would be nice to have either way if you're into 90s rock.

For the chorus vocals i think the "johaaaaaannaaaaa" is a bit too upfront compared to the lead vocal, and almost as wide. Nice voice, there's some Muse-ish stuff going on. I personally think that type of singing (specially the way you prononce "where did") doesn't benefit a lot from a wide stereo image or obvious time effects when there are distorted guitars on the background. Try drying up the lead a little and raising the level, you may need to lay back the EQ a little bit on the 2k area, but could be what you need to improve intelligibility.

Very good song by the way, congrats.

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2022

Thanks a bunch for the reply!

I've been working on the mix all day and I have a new version uploaded to Soundcloud. I've updated the embedded link above. I think I got rid of the sub problems, and I used your suggestion for saturating the kick and snare. Let me know what you think!

 

Firstly, well done for writing a song, as opposed to the usual basic quantized midi or strung together sampled things that appear on here!

Secondly, with a pro/mix mastering it would definitely pop in the right places and sound more polished.

Thirdly, a decent producer would have a fairly easy job to add more polish to the arrangement.

Reminded me of 80s music (Latin Quarter? anyone remember them?), before launching into the chorus section.

Lastly, once more, well done! ... keep it up

 

words, melody & everything! ... is this a 1st on here? lol

 

Thanks! In all honesty, it's my friend's song. I just reworked it! The original is here:

 

A little too bright, but the kcik and bass sit in a way better place now. I'd say it's workable if you want to fix things in the master, but if you can spend more time, definetively check how's the ballance in broad terms, you could use more 80-200Hz and 700-ish, just to make it fit more with the genre.

Also i still think it needs more saturation overall for a 90s sound, but it'll probably destroy all your progress and may not be really necessary. Keep that in mind for mastering though, might want to try a clipper and push it, or even get the limiter to distort a little.

 

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind.

 

IMHO voice (except the chorus) seems muffled and overall "thin" sound. But nice tune and keep it up!