Guitar/Indie'ish tune (sort of)... any mix advice?

Sounds like way to much compression on the final mix. Nice song, just needs some tweaking. Merry Christmas !!
 
Peace and Blessings, John

not bad:) wish i could give you advice but sadly i am trying to get some myself:( sorry
 
Merry Christmas!

I like this song, and the mix is very close to being right on.  The overall sound fills the room and has presence.  As has been suggested, back off the compression just a bit to give the song more dynamic range.  But, not too much.  I like your voice in this, and I hear texture more than distortion, which is fairly common for this genre.  Good effort, and HNY!

Lynn
I like this song, and the mix is very close to being right on.  The overall sound fills the room and has presence.  As has been suggested, back off the compression just a bit to give the song more dynamic range.  But, not too much.  I like your voice in this, and I hear texture more than distortion, which is fairly common for this genre.  Good effort, and HNY!

Thanks (and happy new years to you too)! Yeah, I think I went a little too hard on the "loudness" thing. I already made a different mix that shows a lot less compression just haven't uploaded it yet (family in town for the first time in forever). And yeah, the vocal distortion is sort of on purpose. Singing is definitely not my forte! Thanks again!

 
 

chrisby

dcumpian
The tone of the mix is pretty good, I like the guitars. There are two things I would suggest:
 
1) Add some separation to the various guitars. They currently share much of the same tone and get sort of squashed together. Some of that is being caused by the compression, of course, but I'd suggest making each guitar part sound a bit more unique unless you are layering to beef up a single part.
 
2) I'm hearing a touch of distortion on the vocals.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

Thanks for the input and taking the time to listen...  So by separation you're meaning tonally? Not in the stereo or eq field (which I guess is sort of tone)? The three guitar sound heard on their own actually do sound quite different but maybe that's just not coming through for some reason.  The main two parts are by a bright jag and a heavier/more distorted lp. Though neither are the "real deal"  so maybe that has something to do with it.... 
 
Ps - just tried to check out your tune from today but can't from tablet for some reason (but will later when I get home)...  I miss Hawaii, lived there a few years ago.... 

Those differences aren't coming through, and I'm listening on pretty good cans. How many guitar parts are there altogether? Maybe some spatial separation would help.
 
Don't worry about "real deal" or not; you can do a lot in the mix to make anything sound good if it is played/recorded well. I like what I'm hearing, it just isn't very clear what each guitar is doing, if you can understand that better. :)
 
Regards,
Dan
 
 
 
 

Nice song with good dynamics.The production reminded me off Radioheads Pablo Honey,especially the guitar sound. Not sure I have any criticisms of the mix. Maybe sometimes the vocal sounds a bit too dry and upfront ? I would put some reverb or delay on it and maybe make it wider. Other than that,I really liked this song and mix.Happy New Year !! 

dcumpian
 

chrisby

dcumpian
The tone of the mix is pretty good, I like the guitars. There are two things I would suggest:
 
1) Add some separation to the various guitars. They currently share much of the same tone and get sort of squashed together. Some of that is being caused by the compression, of course, but I'd suggest making each guitar part sound a bit more unique unless you are layering to beef up a single part.
 
2) I'm hearing a touch of distortion on the vocals.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

Thanks for the input and taking the time to listen...  So by separation you're meaning tonally? Not in the stereo or eq field (which I guess is sort of tone)? The three guitar sound heard on their own actually do sound quite different but maybe that's just not coming through for some reason.  The main two parts are by a bright jag and a heavier/more distorted lp. Though neither are the "real deal"  so maybe that has something to do with it.... 
 
Ps - just tried to check out your tune from today but can't from tablet for some reason (but will later when I get home)...  I miss Hawaii, lived there a few years ago.... 

Those differences aren't coming through, and I'm listening on pretty good cans. How many guitar parts are there altogether? Maybe some spatial separation would help.
 
Don't worry about "real deal" or not; you can do a lot in the mix to make anything sound good if it is played/recorded well. I like what I'm hearing, it just isn't very clear what each guitar is doing, if you can understand that better. :)
 
Regards,
Dan
 
 
 
 

Got it (I think). Obviously from the other comments it seems to be a definite issue so thanks again for pointing it out. I had had more stereo seperation of the guitars originally but then running them all through a common reverb bus brought them back to the middle a bit I remember and I never readjusted. I'll revisit that during the next week (I have family in town until then) and put up another mix.  Again,  really appreciate you takingtime to comment! 
 
Oh yeah,  three guitars...  Two pretty constant and the most heavy distorted one only coming in occasionally. 

kev11111111111111
Nice song with good dynamics.The production reminded me off Radioheads Pablo Honey,especially the guitar sound. Not sure I have any criticisms of the mix. Maybe sometimes the vocal sounds a bit too dry and upfront ? I would put some reverb or delay on it and maybe make it wider. Other than that,I really liked this song and mix.Happy New Year !! 

Happy new year to you too and thanks for the comments. Agree about the vocals. That was one thing that really stuck out more on my home system vs my monitors. I plan on doing more mixing next week (house guests at the moment) and will jump between the two systems and see if I can get a happy medium on the vocal levels. In terms of "making it wider" is that done through reverb and/or delay?
 
Thx... and glad you liked it!

chrisby

kev11111111111111
Nice song with good dynamics.The production reminded me off Radioheads Pablo Honey,especially the guitar sound. Not sure I have any criticisms of the mix. Maybe sometimes the vocal sounds a bit too dry and upfront ? I would put some reverb or delay on it and maybe make it wider. Other than that,I really liked this song and mix.Happy New Year !! 

Happy new year to you too and thanks for the comments. Agree about the vocals. That was one thing that really stuck out more on my home system vs my monitors. I plan on doing more mixing next week (house guests at the moment) and will jump between the two systems and see if I can get a happy medium on the vocal levels. In terms of "making it wider" is that done through reverb and/or delay?
 
Thx... and glad you liked it!

Hi !
To make the vocal wider 
 
1 Clone the vocals twice
2 Nudge the clone copies by 10 ms forward (so they play 10ms after the original vox)
3 De tune the copies by a couple of cents
4 Pan them left and right to get the desired width
5 Maybe EQ each clone differently. Take of some of the highs from one of the clones,boast the mids in another. Try to create a stereo image.
 
Have fun :-)
 

kev11111111111111

chrisby

kev11111111111111
Nice song with good dynamics.The production reminded me off Radioheads Pablo Honey,especially the guitar sound. Not sure I have any criticisms of the mix. Maybe sometimes the vocal sounds a bit too dry and upfront ? I would put some reverb or delay on it and maybe make it wider. Other than that,I really liked this song and mix.Happy New Year !! 

Happy new year to you too and thanks for the comments. Agree about the vocals. That was one thing that really stuck out more on my home system vs my monitors. I plan on doing more mixing next week (house guests at the moment) and will jump between the two systems and see if I can get a happy medium on the vocal levels. In terms of "making it wider" is that done through reverb and/or delay?
 
Thx... and glad you liked it!

Hi !
To make the vocal wider 
 
1 Clone the vocals twice
2 Nudge the clone copies by 10 ms forward (so they play 10ms after the original vox)
3 De tune the copies by a couple of cents
4 Pan them left and right to get the desired width
5 Maybe EQ each clone differently. Take of some of the highs from one of the clones,boast the mids in another. Try to create a stereo image.
 
Have fun :-)
 

 
Thanks for the tips. Definitely needs something on the "dooot dooo dooot dooo" part but couldn't get it to sound good so will give this a try for sure. Thanks.
 
In my head I'd liked to have had a sort of Bilinda Butcher (My Bloody Valentine) female harmony going for that part but don't know any singers, plus it's just for fun anyway. But I'll definitely give your suggestion a go. Thanks again!

jamesg1213
I like the guitar tones, really nice. The guitars are treading on the vocals here and there though, I would spread them out wider to give the lead vocal some space. Good song too btw.

Thanks! And yeah, that's my plan at this point... 1) separating the guitars, 2) less compression on the whole mix, 3) work on the vocals. Thanks for the input, comment, and listening....

And thanks to everyone that commented. By the time it got to where it is I think I'd lost all objectivity and the input provided was pretty much along the lines of what I'd expected (actually not near as critical... kind of thought I was further off than it sounds like I am maybe). Anyway, now I have a plan of attack....

speedtom

chrisby
 
 
Thanks for the tips. Definitely needs something on the "dooot dooo dooot dooo" part but couldn't get it to sound good so will give this a try for sure. Thanks.
 
In my head I'd liked to have had a sort of Bilinda Butcher (My Bloody Valentine) female harmony going for that part but don't know any singers, plus it's just for fun anyway. But I'll definitely give your suggestion a go. Thanks again!

 
just for the fun of it...if you like to have a female backing vocal, why not experiment with some formant changing plug-ins? there are some free pitch-correcting plug-ins, like the kerovee, which have presets like "male to female" and female to male".
 
these effects can be fun to mess around a bit, but I must stress out that they will surely not work for a lead vocal, but maybe for backing vocal mixed way down to hardly audible!

yeah, I actually did give that a go with the Melodyne formant tool but didn't really get such good results. I didn't give it a whole lot of effort though honestly and basically just tried to apply it to the existing track. I though about maybe redo-ing it with some softer less "manly" (for lack of a better term) takes to see what happens. I have a good bit to tweak over the next week or two with all the other suggestions but might revisit this as well. Actually kind of busy time at work presently so hope to have some time in the evenings....
 
Again, thanks for the suggestions, would you think I would get much different results from kerovee vs Melodyne?

Freddy J
Very nice number indeed!  Great vocals, performance, and arrangement on this.  This number presents a lot of emotion and from my stand point I wouldn't do much to affect the general tone or arrangement.  It has a nice sort of introspective or melancholy sound that the single vocal portrays nicely.  You got lots of good advice above and I would agree with maybe trying to separate the guitars out a bit so that the vocals come out a bit more. 
I really like this!

Thanks! And thanks for taking the time ti listen/comment. It great to get all the advice (really) but also great to hear someone likes the song. Most songs I do (the few I finish) seem to live and die in a vacuum so glad you liked it! Thanks again!

rebel007
Good tips from everyone here, My initial thoughts were that everything seemed to overlap a little too much. By that I mean every instrument including the vocals need their own place in the stereo field and well as front to back. You can achieve this with different EQ spaces and bringing instruments to the front or sending them to the rear as they come into or out of focus in the song. Volume automation is a simple but very effective way of doing this.

Thanks... yeah, I've been trying to get the sounds more separated but it seems that if I make it more clear on speakers it starts sounding weird in phones. I have made some changes, especially in the outro, but they are not super major as the more I pushed it the more other weirdness started coming in. I'll probably have an updated version up in a few days. Basically it's a learning experience and unlike my usual MO I'm going to start another right away so hopefully the I can carry some of the lessons forward and get it closer next time. 
 
Again, thanks for listening and especially for taking the time to comment...

bapu
The guitars seemed to close together. Almost mono (to my ears).
 
The vox seem kinda megaphone sounding. Maybe that's what you wanted?
 
I did like the song.

 
Thanks! Yeah, the vox is on purpose. I'm definitely no singer.... as far as the spread of the guitars in the stereo field I did finally work something out last night. Probably a very novice mistake but not something I'd realized until trying to get better separation. Long story short I have sort of a "global reverb" bus that everything runs through. I was running the mono guitar tracks to that bus but then losing a lot of the pan control. A simple solution was to run the mono signals to a stereo "guitars" bus and then send that to the reverb bus. I had a bunch of vol/pan automation I need to redo but it does seems to give a lot better control of the separation (and a little less control on the reverb send amount, but a lot less critical).
Anyway, I have a new version uploaded with other changes but hope to have a better one with the guitars more separated out up in a few days. Again, thanks to all for the input/help....