a tough mix for me - "Secrets"

Personally, the lead vocals are a little shrilling to me.  Creatively, that lead vocal is dying to be put through a unique vocal effect.  Everywhere your vocals are wet on this mix they sound great.  Otherwise, the rest sounds bad ass and ready to ship, ha ha.  

Well I didn't read the comments until now, but this is what I was going to post which is kind of similar to the above.
 
Your music always blows me away so I never have much to comment on. However I think the vocal here could use some help because it sounds a little thin or something.

batsbrew
i could eq it to death,
and maybe it wouldn't matter.
we'll see, i'll F with it some more......

 
The actual quality and performance of the vocals is great, but I do think it is EQ that is the issue here.
 
I tried boosting the "presence" range at around 1.5K, along with a bump at 300Hz as Sean suggested. I also boosted the air at just under 8K to counteract any honkiness caused by the 1.5K boost, and Lo-passed to remove the harshness. Finally, a high pass filter to remove stuff you can't hear anyway.
 
This sounded much more natural to me:
 

 
Note - this is the EQ applied on top of the EQ you've already got, so you could either adjust your existing EQ accordingly, or it may be easier to just send your existing vocal to a new bus and apply this EQ to the new bus.
 
Obviously this was applied to the whole track, and although I tried to ignore the other instruments, they no doubt coloured my ears/judgement here... so your version of the EQ might well be less drastic.
 

this is a collab with a net mate of mine, who wrote the synth parts....
i got to thinking about aboriginal beats, for some reason....
something in the music that alan offered up, drew me to this....

anyway, i found an aboriginal story, that has a tie-in to telling stories thru songs and dances....

the aboriginal people have this thing they call the dreaming:
 
The Dreaming-- also means to 'see and understand the law'
they believe that the Ancestor Spirits came to the earth in human form and as they moved through the land,
they created the animals, plants, rocks and other forms of the land that we know today.
They also created the relationships between groups and individuals to the land, the animals and other people.
Once the ancestor spirits had created the world, they changed into trees, the stars, rocks, watering holes or other objects.
These are the sacred places of Aboriginal culture and have special properties.
Because the ancestors did not disappear at the end of the Dreaming, but remained in these sacred sites, the Dreaming is never-ending, linking the past and the present, the people and the land.

one of the most famous of these stories is the wagilag sisters....

The Wagilag Sisters
The story goes that the two Wagilag sisters, one of whom was pregmant, were fleeing their home and were being followed by clansmen. On their travels they come across many animals and plants and brought them in to life by naming them. Eventually, the Wagilag sisters set up camp beside a fertile waterhole at Mirarrmina. There, one of the sisters pollutes the waterhole and the pregnant sister gives birth, which causes Wititj the python to wake up angry and insensed. Wititj creates a storm on emerging from the waterhole and attempts to wash the two Wagilag sisters in to the well with his downpour (the first monsoon). The two Wagilag sisters dance and sing sacred songs in an attempt to diffuse the situation and keep them safe, but when the sisters become too exhausted to continue, the python is able to swallow them up (including child and dog)! However, soon after, Wititj develops stomach pains and groans skywards above the land where he attracts the attention of other great snakes who also rise up in to the sky. The great snakes talk and they discover they all have different names but they wonder why the python is ill. Realizing he made a mistake, Wititj lies about what he has just eaten but the pain becomes so unbearable Wititj falls back to the land and vomits up the sisters who regain their life from the stinging bites of caterpillars. Undeterred, Wititj beats them with clapsticks and eats them again. Later, the Wagilag sister's clansmen, asleep in the hollow left by the python's fall, were visited in their dreams by the sisters who revealed to the clansmen the secrets of the songs and dances which had been performed in an effort to stop the rainstorm.

which all leads to this:
"the secrets of the songs and dance"
 
2 sisters, 1 with child
runs away to trees and water in the wild
birth of a child brings out the snake,
and both their lives it will take
rain and song to no avail, both are swallowed inside the tail
snake does lie about the meal, the caterpillar bites to heal
eaten again, and snake is gone,
the dreams reveal before the dawn---
the secrets of the songs and dance...
secrets of the songs and dance...
the secrets of the songs and dance.

Bat,
 
Very cool song..  I think as far as the mix is concerned, some EQ on the Synth parts will clean it up immensely.   There is too much going on in the lower mid range (IMHO), you can either EQ them or just play with the filter on the Synth parts (if you have the MIDI and VST Instrument)   Sometimes it works out better to tweak the synth settings in the mix rather and then print them rather than EQ them after the fact. 
 
Other than that, you have a really solid song/mix.    Once you get the synths dialed in, the bass may or may not need a little EQ to pull a little lower mid as well.   I suspect if you mute the synths, the mix sounds pretty good so a little cleanup should work wonders.
 
Regards

msmcleod
The actual quality and performance of the vocals is great, but I do think it is EQ that is the issue here.
 

hey MS, thanks for the suggestions,
i took them,
and played with the individual vocal tracks to dial in some clarity, dial out some harsh, dial in some meat, and those changes helped a lot.
i'll post an update soon
 

markno999
Very cool song..  I think as far as the mix is concerned, some EQ on the Synth parts will clean it up immensely.   There is too much going on in the lower mid range (IMHO), you can either EQ them or just play with the filter on the Synth parts (if you have the MIDI and VST Instrument)   Sometimes it works out better to tweak the synth settings in the mix rather and then print them rather than EQ them after the fact. 
 
Other than that, you have a really solid song/mix.    Once you get the synths dialed in, the bass may or may not need a little EQ to pull a little lower mid as well.   I suspect if you mute the synths, the mix sounds pretty good so a little cleanup should work wonders.

hey mark, good idea on continuing to tweak the synths.
they are a bit wild.
i wanted to stay as true to the original mix of the synths as possible,
but to get it to mix with everything else, i'm gonna have to get medieval.
 
heheh
 
i already have them high passed and a low shelf, 
but i may actually choose to use a linear phase multiband on them, as a big "EQ"
 
i also have a limiter on them so when they ramp up and get real intense, the limiter holds them in the mix where i want them.
 
the synths are audio, so no editing the actual source sounds.
 
 

i don't want to get an infection.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Freddy J
Absoflippinlutely excellent Bats.  ...... Later she realized that what he meant was that personality, interpretation, emotion, and selling the song were just as important as perfection.  I think that you managed to include all of these factors in this song.

hey thanks freddy!
i think here, is more a case of mix engineering, and me not having enough experience (yet) of discovering how i like to treat synthetic instruments..
 
for the most part, i use mics on everything,
and use acoustic samples for all my drum work.
 

Missed it again