please listen to my song..... help with mixing/EQ tips?

[COLUMBIA_05]

http://bryson.dmusic.com

"Columbia" is the song i would like input on.. it is the first one i've recorded with my new equipment... (the other ones are mostly acoustic w/ some electric overdubs)

"Columbia" is just an instrumental, but the other ones feature vocals...

if you can give me any advice on how to improve the mix, i would appreciate it, as i basically don't know what i'm doing right now


cheers

[waytogodave]

What are you using for the drums? The guitars should be mixed down quite a bit. They are very over-powering. I noticed some clipping. If you can, run a compressor on the guitar tracks. I usually use a 6:1 ratio and experiment with the threshold. This is a lot easier if you're recording in a software environment with all instruments on different tracks. I'm also not hearing any bass guitar or kick drum. This could be because they don't exist, are mixed too low, or you have too much low end on the guitar. Wait, I think I might be hearing the bass guitar, but i can't tell if it's a bass. Info on how you recorded it may help. I usually use a 10 or 12:1 ratio compression on the bass. You may have done this already, but make sure that the EQ on your guitars is rolled off on the low end. I usually use a high-pass filter at 200Hz.

If your overall mix seems too soft when you turn the guitars down, don't worry. Just turn your speakers up and concentrate on getting a good mix. You can compress and limit later to get the volume of the mix up.

I hope this helps. I'm somewhat of a noob myself, so I hope I'm not giving you bad advice, but it all seems to work for me.

Oh yeah, and give us some specifics of what you're using to record so we can give you more information.

[waytogodave]

Oh, and if you use compressors, don't go overboard. If your music starts "pumping," reduce the amount of compression.