That buzzing effect at the start sounds like its a little too loud...IMO it sort of masks the drums and bass when they come in.

Drums sound a little thin and set back in the mix from my end...sounds very compressed

- But everything is subjective I suppose.;)

Honestly, it was pretty hard for me to listen to. I can appreciate you wanting to paint an audio mosaic as an intro to set up the song, but so much of it falls within the "pain range" for me that I found it very difficult to get to the meat of the song - which when I did, sounds very compressed, and thin, and I don't believe that your bass playing style has anything to do with that.

It's an all-round frequency and compression thing. The lower end that is there lacks definition and comes off as more muddy than anything else. There's very little clarity in the top end on the vocal track, and your doubling of that track detracts from the clarity and detail even more.

I'm gonna stop there, though. In an effort to be fair to you, I honestly don't feel as though I'm the right guy to critique this one, so I'm gonna recuse myself from further comment at this point, and let others here weigh in, who are perhaps more familiar with this style.

Accordingly, take what I've mentioned above with a grain of salt. ;)

-d.

CrazyLuke, post: 435832, member: 48048 wrote: Here is another crazy tune called Jet Surfer. It uses a picked bass for the bass track, which sometimes lends itself to a deficient bottom end, but let me know. There is an effect in the beginning of the song (don't let that scare you off), then just guitar and drums before the 1st verse, which starts at about 0.31. Let me know how all the instruments are sitting in the mix.

[MEDIA=audio]http://recording.or…

I'd be curious what your reference mix is here --- I'd like to throw out a few suggestions:

The first three feature idiosyncratic singers like yours so you're dealing with similar challenges on mixing that unique voice with the guitars. Hear how they handle it:

Autograph: Turn up the radio

White Lion: Any

Prism: See "Spaceship Superstar"

And for Bass check out how the Bass anchors the thinner guitar sounds of "shyboy"

Good call on these reference mixes. The lead vocalist on my tracks employs similar stiles as David Roth, Rob Halford (without the vibrato), as well as the lead singers of Autograph, Quiet Riot, and Krokus, among others.
I thank that the fix for this song is to....
1) Remove the overly-compressed aspect of the drums
2) Re-track the guitars with less gain
3) Level-out the bass freqs
The references mixes above all have the rhythm guitars under the lead vocals, and that's the key - to make sure that, even while they have that sweet distortion for rock, every note in the chord is distinct, so as to be heard in the mix at low levels.
Thanks for your response, DOL

I also thought a little bit about this Canadian band - particularly as it relates to the chorus mix and again your vocalist - I like the idea of less gain and clarity on the guitar as well as reworked frequencies on the bass. I think Billy was uysing a pick on Shyboy and his bass had great clarity and punch on that and really anchored the song.

Trooper: Raise a Little Hell