Hi Chad,
 
Not quite given up just yet...
 
Would you mind if I posted a link to my attempt here, rather than creating a new topic? I'm not in competition with you by the way, but I think it would be a waste of a post seeing as it's the same song.
 
I won't post here until you give me the thumbs up 
 
cheers
 
andy

No worries at all Andy. It's all about learning and sharing. Please go ahead and post it.
 
Cheers

Here is a piece I did for a video that might help you get a clear idea of mixing.
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12472879  "Waiting For Love"
I use Izotope Ozone 6 for most of my editing and mixing work. I create special presets for each piece and the wonderful thing about this software is that it has special algorithm technology that let you use a learn the algorithm of the song and then save it as a preset. You can do this in many aspects of a song or on a track to track workout. It is always re-adjustable and there are many choices for your use with this software and is for me the best choice for an easy learning tool for anyone wanting to mix great music, with little skill. Used in conjunction with the many other mixing and editing tools I have makes my sound bold and epic when necessary and mellow and precise where needed. A great value for everyone in this forum and works with all editing tools that are Cakewalk based, such as Sonar  products.
 
Good luck and try a free download of the Izotope Ozone 6 and link it to Sonar or Cakewalk products.
 
Peace and Blessings, John
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

god-z
Please go ahead and post it.

 
Thanks Chad,
 
And here it is:-
 
https://soundcloud.com/synkrotron/preachrighthere
 
I actually like this song, but after much googling I cannot find out much at all about this band and song.
 
I've listened to my mix along with the reference mix on the CMT site, and I'm probably a bit too close to the original. But I didn't want to do something different with this, just mix what was in front of me.
 
I excluded one of the bass tracks, because I just didn't like it.
 
There was a lot of hiss on some of the tracks so I basically cut up a lot of the tracks in order to eliminate as much noise as possible.
 
What I didn't do was attempt to fix any of the minor timing "issues." I don't have the time for that I'm afraid...
 
cheers
 
andy
 
(I'm off to bed now... been slaving over a hot DAW, on and off, for much of the day)

theguitarplayer
Good luck and try a free download of the Izotope Ozone 6 and link it to Sonar or Cakewalk products.

 
Hi John,
 
Someone else mention Ozone here recently. I had a look at that tool then and it looks great. The problem for me, at the moment anyway, is it's outside of my budget. Perhaps in the future I may seriously consider this tool. In the meantime, I'm making an effort to learn the tools that I do have, like Pro-Q 2 and Pro-L, which is what I am mainly using at the moment for mixing and mastering.
 
cheers
 
andy

Thanks for sharing John and Andy.
 
John, your mix sounds very professional. Every instrument stands out clearly. Very well done. I love Ozone. I had tested Ozone 5 before. I would love to get Ozone 6 Advanced but I could never justify that price tag. I would get the non Advanced version if it goes on sale. I recently bought Alloy 2 on sale for $99, which I use a lot for mixing now.
 
Andy, your mix sounds pretty good to me. I like the way your vocals  sound better than mine. I also didn't use that bass track. I didn't fit at all. I didn't think the SFX tracks compliment the song so I didn't use them. I thought the BG vocals didn't work so I cut them too.
I did tighten the timing to the drums because some notes were way off.
I am curious what you did with the drums. You did a great job with them. I couldn't get a good sound so I used drum replacer to trigger AD2 to get drums that I liked.
 
Cheers.
 

god-z
I am curious what you did with the drums. You did a great job with them.

LOL! Pure fluke I'm sure hehe...
 
Well... I did play about a bit with the drum tracks provided. What I did straight away was create a buss for the drums, and I output all of the drums to to that first.
 
I stuck an instance of Pro-Q 2 on each effects bin, including the Room track, and I messed around with the EQ of each, removing high frequencies, or low, and sometimes mid, where I didn't think they were needed, and so made room for other "things."
 
Panning wise, I left Kick, KickSample, Snare, SnareSample, Overheads and Room in the centre. Tom1 I took to 40% right, and Tom2 to 20% left, and I did this to match, as much as possible, the sound of the toms coming from the Overheads.
 
Level wise, I wasn't 100% happy with the Kick and Snare tracks, and so brought them down to around -7.5dB but left KickSample and SnareSample up at 0dB. That was because there was too much carry over of the other kit elements for my liking... Unavoidable, of course, bit seeing as they provided the KickSample and SnareSample tracks, I decided that I would use those upfront, but still leave enough of the original recorded kick and snare in the mix to "keep it real," if you know what I mean.
 
I lowered Tom1 and Tom2 to -4.4dB and the Overheads down to -3.1dB. But I lowered Room down by quite a bit really, to -18.3, which is not much at all. I did this because I'm not experienced in using room mics in a production. But, again, I left some in because I thought it might add something to the mix, even if it wasn't all that obvious.
 
Of course, those levels are further effected by each track's EQ settings, which is a bit too much to go into here methinks...
 
At the drum buss, I added an instance of Pro-Q (again) and used its "out of the box" drum EQ setting, which I tweaked a little. I also added an instance of Pro-L, which also has an "out of the box" drum preset, which, again, was tweaked, mainly to boost the level. It might be the limiter (Pro-L) that you are hearing... I'm not sure.
 
I had created a stereo buss which I use for reverb (Breverb 2) and that was set to Ball Room, with the dry setting set to off. I added a send on the drum buss to the reverb buss, and set the send level to around -2.9dB. I tend to lower all the sends like this, bit more so with the drums, and the level of the reverb buss is dropped a tad too, so that it is not too overwhelming. I love reverb, and it is so easy to over do...
 
I think that just about cover it. And reading back kind of shows me how much time I've spent playing with this today 
 
I hope that helps some... Although it's more luck than judgement on my part haha! I just mess around until I think I like what I hear.. And when I hear the real thing it's back to the drawing board..........
 
cheers
 
andy

Nice Andy. It's interesting to see how others end up getting their sounds. You ended up with a good drum sound. I hated the samples of the kick and the snare. I didn't think they sounded realistic to me. I wasn't getting a decent sound from all the drum tracks. You shown me that it could be done though. But my way allowed me to try the new Drummer Replacer and use it to trigger AD2 which is pretty cool. I did use the Overheads track which does add to the sampled drums.
Have you tried Drum Replacer yet? When or if you do, let me know what you think of it. It's a another great tool.
 
Cheers

god-z
Have you tried Drum Replacer yet? When or if you do, let me know what you think of it. It's a another great tool.

 
Hi Chad,
 
No, I am currently on Sonar X2 Producer and at the moment I am reluctant to upgrade because a) my set-up is working fine and b) it's just more money that I would rather spend on other things.
 
I remember, some time ago, doing drum replacement for the band I was in at the time, and I did it the hard way. Even though, at the time, Drumagog was the thing to use.
 
I'm surprised myself how good my drums have worked out, relatively speaking. I mean, I sure they could be improved upon no end by someone who knew what they're doing. I've just pumped that mix of mine through my TV surround sound system and I really do like my kick, for some reason. Okay, not the best sound system in the world, by a long chalk, but that kick does, erm... kick LOL.
 
I know what you mean about the sampled kick and snare though. I wasn't too sure about using them myself at one point, but it may be that, with the combination of a bit of the recorded drums, along with the samples, and then some overheads and room on top, has worked. As I said earlier... more luck that judgement.
 
cheers
 
andy

Hello god-z,
 
Looks like you're making progress and so are some others! I don't think your mixing situation is an exception...probably the rule for setups like this.From what you've told us, I am fairly certain that your room is throwing you off. You can try putting an eq in your master set up to deal with the bad room. I would start out by rolling off anything below 50hz ( high pass filter) and then try taking away 3 to 5 db in the 250 range with a fairly wide Q. Most rooms in residential homes built to typical dimensions have issues in those areas. This won't entirely eliminate the problem...it's kind of a band aid approach. The lower the volume the less the problems...so mixing at 6db or less is usually best. You can tweak that recipe until you have a final mix that gives you what you want. It is a work around and it isn't perfect but it can help get you there to mix better bass. The only way to know when you've gotten it right is when you play the track in a known good neutral listening area and it sounds like a good mix! The headphones can help, but they can also make the bass seem like it's more than it really is when listening to open air monitors.