Hey guys,

I'm just about to drop my second band production and I'd love hear your opinion about the mix!
Is there anything you would change about it? Any element too quiet? Vocals too distorted? Snare too punchy?
Just anything you can think of when hearing it for the first time!
What should I care about when mastering the track?
Also it would be pretty interesting for me to hear one of you guys mastering the song. If you'd like to give it a try, just write me a pm and I'll send you the mixed track as a WAV file or even all the stems (drums, bass, gtrs,vox). Curious to hear your opinion



All the best

Josh

 

Reminds me of a rock version of maroon 5's early stuff. Cool. Theres something annoying with the looped guitar on the intro, or its really fast tapping, but im not sure if its intentional. The drum splash on the right seems too artificial, and doesnt have enough release. The low end seems to be missing from the vocal, and sounds a bit tinny, i think i get what you were trying to achieve with the distorted vocals, but i dont think the implementation fits. It might be an idea to put a 320 or wav up because as you probably know that sc shits on the bitrate so we are missing some audible frequencies. I think the drums could be improved a bit with some parallel comp or some small transient shaping too. Thats what i got from a few listens :D. I think some flanger/chorus effects on the 8's before the chorus could really make it more vibrant. That could give it an incubus vibe.

 

Thanks for those great tips, SyNtH! Really never thought of Maroon 5, that was a huge one, gave me a total new view on the song
"It might be an idea to put a 320 or wav up because as you probably know that sc shits on the bitrate so we are missing some audible frequencies", could yo further explain that? Are you talking about the conversion from wav to mp3?
Also, when you're talking parallel comp/transient designer on the drums, what do you miss? More ring/sustain? Or more punch?
Thanks a lot

 

when you export from your DAW, you are probably exporting at a decent quality in an mp3 or wav, something along the likes of 320kbps/44.1kHz or 48kHz, which is great! But when you upload to soundcloud, they rencode your mp3/wav to make it faster to stream and what happens is they down the bitrate to and sample rate to 128kbps, so you effectively dont hear any frequency above 15Khz. The human frequency hearing range on is usually between 20Hz and 20kHz so technically there will be some audio information missing from the high end of the file that you could potentially hear. What you could do to check this if use some sort of soundcloud downloader, and use a program called spek to look at a spectrogragh of the track, and open one fresh from the DAW export and you'll see the difference im talking about in missing information.

And with the parallel comp, i think a bit more punch would do it wonders, but not just purely from compression alone, hence that why i mentioned parallel comp/transient shaping. The punch/sustain from the natural drum transients could be brought to life more by this i think, although again this could be due to listening to it on soundcloud. I think there was a post recently about A/D converters that had some recent activity on this forum. There was a good video on there explaining bit rates/sample rates and all that other good stuff.

 

I like the song, but need a lil lows pushed up on 2buss.

 

It's cool. I miss a little spatial depth. It's very dry. I think the cymbals are too present. Maybe thin them out and sften them with a reverb.

 

I think it sounds great. But I do agree about the cymbals. They fade to artificially soon, missing some 'ringing out.'

 

Well that makes up my mind, there`s no way I`m putting any of my stuff up now :/
Very nice, I think any input I may have is covered above except i would perhaps... no, I`m listening again and forget it
Perhaps a bit more width on the chorus to make it stand out.

 

Great idea and track. Maybe another type of distortion on vocals it's conflicting a little bit with guitars imho

 

Wow thanks for all your valueable comments!
Big Thanks @SyNtH. for your further explanation on the exporting and uploading topic Tried a lot to make a parallel comp/transient designer work on the drums but couldn't manage to integrate it. Any specific advice on plugins? I tried the SPL Transient Designer in conjunction with an 1176/API Bus Comp, neither did work :/.

@noise.maker I obviously agree on the low push, thanks.

@5teezo nice one Do you have some tips on how to give it a more spacial feel? My intention was to clearly seperate the verse and chorus in terms of depth, trying to keep the verses rather dry and clean. Maybe some more ring/sustain/verb on the snare? More Fx on the vox?

@lexeed definitely gonna try this Any reference song idea referring to the cymbal ring out? Generally more ring/ring out on the drums could also give the track more depth! Very nice stuff

@Ain Om really interested in your stuff! Do you also produce rock songs? Thanks for your compliment, also really good idea on the chorus widening Would you apply it on the whole track or rather on certain instruments?
more spacial feel? My intention was to clearly seperate the verse and chorus in terms of depth, trying to keep the verses rather dry and clean. Maybe some more ring

 

@mail22 yeah that could solve the problem with the vocal integration! What distortion do you typically use on vocals? Very curious about that

 

i use shaack audio's transient shaper, with just like 5-10% on the attack, and a small amount of gain, you can add some distortion if you overkill the gain, which wont fit your track imo. I rarely change the release amount, as it shapes the drums very harshly. Try experimenting with different slope types if you use that plugin too.

 

Nice track! Vocals could be pushed a little harder in the mix. Intelligibility of the drums needs a little work. Overal, love it unpretentious, catchy. Nice!

 

I wasn't speaking of any particular reference as much as the way cymbals sound on any normal kit. As already suggested, maybe loosen up on the release and allow them to fade naturally. The quick cut off makes them less realistic--even if they were real.

 

@Ain Om really interested in your stuff! Do you also produce rock songs? Thanks for your compliment, also really good idea on the chorus widening Would you apply it on the whole track or rather on certain instruments?
more spacial feel? My intention was to clearly seperate the verse and chorus in terms of depth, trying to keep the verses rather dry and clean. Maybe some more ring[/QUOTE]

lol, wasn`t fishing for attention or whatever - i was very serious, any of the hints/tips above apply x10 to my stuff which sounds really thin and weak in comparison. I listen to stuff like Tool, try to sound like Biffy Clyro and when I put stuff up for peer-review on ReverbNation it got likened to Duran Duran :/
I was thinking widen the guitars in the chorus though another thing i try is to widen the drums/drum ambiance, to as you say, make the chorus stand apart ( I use TT superior drummer and there are several room mikes and i would perhaps bring in the widest set just for the chorus for example ). For your track I think if it were me I`d have another guitar come in for the chorus, strummed with plenty of distortion and width, just loud enough to add that width and movement, rather than move the guitars you`ve got - although I invariably end up with too many guitars in my tracks because i can`t commit!

 

Don't send every stem for mastering. Just mix it to your best potential, then send him the melodic instruments on one stem the, drums on another, kick and bass on one and vocals on one. It helps the ME create a better image for your song during his/her process. IMO song sounds great. Once the ME starts running those stems through Manley MUs, Bax EQs, and SSL X racks. You're going to hear shyt corrected and depth added that you probably couldn't even hear.

 

Needs some eq and level adjustments before mastering.Master with Acustica to get more high end sheen,weight,dimension and tame those digital harsh transients.

 

Send the song to mixing not mastering. That type of mastering is like sendtoMEtomixthesongthenmasterhismaster.

 

OP please DON'T master your own work at home unless you have the right treatment and dedicated hardware rack systems for compression, and equalization. I've had the opportunity and privilege to watch experienced MEs in action. If you're serious about your music, invest in having your music mastered.

 

FYI, a mastering engineers job is to mix. Referencing different monitors to create balance is still mixing. Trouble shooting mix issues is still mixing. I don't know where people get the idea that a mastering engineer doesn't mix music. It's asinine.