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Hi, people. this is my first song that I have mixed for an 8 song Rock CD that I am producing, and my first posting here. I need your feedback on all the elements here, as this will be somewhat of a "template" for the other songs on the CD, once I've got this one sounding good.
Most of the songs on the CD were tracked with the same instrumentation, vocal crew, virtual instruments, etc., with a few variances.
[MEDIA=soundcloud]devon-vonmonster/away-from-it-all-review-mix-1[/MEDIA]

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anonymous Sat, 07/19/2014 - 06:30

You've got a kind of Nugent thing happening here that's cool...

I like the guitars, nice tones... Vocals are somewhat unintelligible though, I think they could come out front quite a bit, and particularly around 1:00 where there is an obvious effect of some kind laid-in with the lead vox (Autotune? Melodyne?) it's very hard to discern what he is singing. Also... the lead vox sound off-center to me... was this intentional? Is the lead vocal a stereo track? Or was it at anytime converted to a stereo track?

Now... my disclaimer here is that maybe this vocal level is an "accepted" mixing style for this genre these days - laying the vocal in and tucked way back like that... You would know better than I.

Personally - and this is just my own preference so take it for what it's worth - I prefer there to be more "open-ness", more "space" on tracks like this, as opposed to everything up front and in your face... particularly with drums. There are some awesome fills in there, al'a Neil Peart, but they sound "canned" to me, and lacking the space and "live-ness" that you can get with a nicely tuned and mic'd up kit, with nice overheads grabbing the combination of drums and room - The trick there though, is that you need a good-sounding room, with a pleasing natural reflection, to get that - although it's not impossible to come close with the "right" digital reverb.

So I guess, my two cents ... I'd like to hear those drums "open up" a bit with some room reflection. If you don't have a room that could support that sound, you could try simulating it using a nice reverb, maybe even a convolution reverb with a "room" impulse file. You don't need to swamp it or anything, just add enough to where the drums open up a bit sonically.

On that note, are you using, or do you have a convolution reverb shell like "Perfect Space" (Sonar) "Convolution Space" (Kontakt), "Pristine Space" (Voxengo) or any other convolution reverb "player"? If you do, I have several pretty nice drum room and drum chamber impulse files that you might find useful, and that I'd be glad to send you... and if you don't currently have a convolution program, you can get them very cheap, some even for free.

EDIT:

As I listened through again, I'm hearing phase - related issues happening on the crashes and the ride. Were these triggered samples? If so, you might want to go back to the raw tracks and take a listen... you've got quite a bit of what Chris ( audiokid ) refers to as "swirl" happening on those parts.

It may be that this "phasi-ness" resides in the original sample itself, or... it may be something that you added along the way, or as the result of summing or track combination, or combinations of different reverbs or other effects, or even as a result of re-triggering, perhaps?

You should go back to the earliest version of this project, mute everything except the drums, and remove all effects/processing, stripping them down to the original source(s) recorded. Have a listen and see if it's there...
If it's not, then you know that somewhere along the way, you did something that resulted in this problem. If it is there, then you know that it's indigenous to the original sound recorded.

(If I was convinced that you used real drums on this, I'd say that you might have picked this up as the result of an improper multiple mic array on the overheads... ?)

Have you checked this current mix in mono?

IMHO of course... ;)

d/

PS...Contact me via PM if you are interested in those impulse files. These are fairly small files that would be easy to either email or dropbox.