Thanks for the vote of confidence Ralph!
 
Bapu- Thanks man. I value your comments. Just that one comment has to be worth at least a t-shirt or two ;)...seriously thanks.
 
Some mixes come easy. I had to fight this one tooth and nail. I used Studio Drummer this time instead of BFD2 and it seemed to be a little tougher to make sound the way I wanted. Probably because I'm more accustomed to using BFD2. The original drums ended up being over compressed so I remixed the drums completely and made a lot of midi changes in the drum parts. I re arranged some of the song itself. I changed the plate reverbs and ducked the bass. I wanted the feel of the song to be present yet still have a dreamy feel to it. I hope I ended up somewhere in the middle. I removed the vocal harmony line I sang and added a synth choir instead. I had an IK SVX bass plug-in on my bass part and decided to simply adjust the bass with my channel strip and EQ. 
 
I dropped everything on my first gain stages a few db. and reduced all compression. I did pump it up some in the mastering stage so it will still be a hot mix in terms of loudness I think,hopefully not too hot. It sounds best on a better system. I tested the mix on lappys and small cans and It doesn't quite deliver the same but seems to hold up fairly well although looses some of the bass.
 
https://soundcloud.com/starise/tragedy

a fine tune but you need to bring the vox up. WSS

Steve- Thanks for your input. I'll look into raising it some.
 
I noticed two other things and I wondered if they jumped out at anyone else.
 
The bass although in the right range seems muddy. I have worked with  EQ and it still seems to have less sheen than I wanted. I'm open to any suggestions on how I could make the bass powerful yet clear and defined. It might be a slight clash with the Rhodes.
 
The vocals come in a few milliseconds after the intro . Is this noticable? Would you change it? If so How? I haven't used the stretch functions in Sonar to any large degree. I noticed it and it bothers me.
 
 
 
 

Tim, I think you have a good foundation here, starting with the vocal performance; you have a great voice. Some mix and timing tweaks should really help bring it together. I'm no mixologist, myself, but this is what I'm hearing:
 
- The bass, kick and snare all need to come up, and the piano and cymbals (especially) need to come down.
- The kick might need some fattening - hard to say until the level is up.
- The piano rhythm might be stepping on the bass and kick and need to be syncopated a little to make room. 
- The vocal could also come forward a bit.
- The cymbal timing is a little shaky, exacerbated by being so prominent in the mix.
- I think the issue with the timing of the first verse is that "Really" starts on the second beat (as it should), but there's no strong hit on the downbeat before it from any of the instruments to establish the start of the bar. Based on what comes before an after, I'd expect to hear a strong piano chord there.
 
- Also, there's some meter weirdness between :53 and 1:02, starting with an early piano hit on the last 8th of the bar that should have been the downbeat of the next bar, and everything after that being early for a couple bars as a result. You might want to count through the whole thing, and see if that happens anywhere else. The phrasing of the lyric might need some adjustments in places.
 
Hope that helps. Good stuff. 
 

Brundlefly- thank you for your very detailed analysis of the mix. I'll follow up on your suggestions and be back with something else later based on your comments.

 
Thanks again guys.
 
I re recorded the vocals on this.Went to a different microphone. Sidechained some of the stronger instruments to compression mildly during vocal parts and changed a lot of levels.I also improved some of the timing.
 
Hope this is slightly better.
 
https://soundcloud.com/starise
 
 

Nice job Tim.  I listened to this last week and wasn't sure how to reply, then got busy and didn't reply.  I think this new mix is much cleaner.  I like this one. :)
 
A couple of suggestions, if you're interested... your vocals are excellent (as usual), and could come up a bit in the mix.  The main piano rhythm seems a bit too hot and could probably come down some.  Also, the drum fills in the 2nd half of the song seem to have some slight rhythmic issues here and there, so could use a bit more editing.  Just my $0.02!

great message Tim. Vocals are believable and well sung. Nice one mate

I didn't listen to the earlier version - this one is pretty good.  Great song and I love the words you find to rhyme.  Not the usual suspects.  I think the piano part (which is great) needs to be ducked  via automation.  It still covers the vocals at times and seems louder than the vocals.  A very subtle thing, but makes it more difficult to understand the lyrics when that happens.  Also, the piano seems bunched in the middle of the soundscape, where the vocals should be.  If it were my song (I wish) I'd try the channel tools to spread the piano a little.  And automate the volumes, esp when piano slides into the vocals, and visa versa.  I think getting that perfect would clear up any other soundscape issues. 
 
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+1 on the good stuff.  Piano is still too hot imho.  Everything behind the piano sounds more balanced.