Hi,

I've been working on a track for the last 5 weeks and I think my ears have heard it far too much now. I've done my best on mixing it but I can't tell if it's as good as I can get it or not!

I can't even tell if the problem is down to EQ or stereo positioning :-(

The track is called Crossing The Mountains and it's one of my 'experimental' tracks - i.e. it has a mix of real bass and electric guitars together with VSTs and orchestra.

https://soundcloud.com/purplerhapsody/crossing-the-mountains-wip

Thanks in advance,
Terry.

I just played this back on my new Rokit 8s, and it sounds like the opening of a Cecil B. DeMille movie.  Your experiment sounds better than most finished products.  You have blended live instruments and MIDI together seamlessly.  No easy feat.  I could go on and on, but I'd rather listen to this again.  Cheers!

Great piece for sure. Now as for the mix. I can only give you my approach to what I do in mixing, so I will give you my formula and this has to be done first track by track, then also in the final mastering. 1. preparation and arrangement of each track, including panning into their own space, they can't share space with anything else, 2. noise reduction of each track and proper beginning volume levels, 3. enhancements that you may need for each track such as harmonic exciter, stereo imaging, eq, dynamics, reverb, post eq, maximization and dithering, 4. Now is when I apply my compression and fine tuning to each track, 5. here is where I check for all clipping problems and fix them on all tracks, 6. Now is the time for bringing  each track through a limiter and get the sound I'm looking for just right and, 7. Referencing your mixed tracks and making sure they are comparable to other recordings that are in similar genres to what you are producing. After you mix it all together to a wav. file, then you need to go through the list again and do all your final tweaking so everything sounds like it should. This is my method that I follow and it requires a  lot of time and concentration and it may not work for you, but it is worth the effort, for me. I haven't gone to school for this but just seems be the way things work out for me, so give it a try.

Anyway, you asked, so I shared, free of charge. Very dynamic and epic hike, just needs some tweaking in spots, but I really enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing.

Peace and blessings, John

I think the mix sounds good. If i was mixing it i would probably make the drums bigger but thats just me! Great song!

Thanks to everyone for listening and huge thanks to those that have commented.

Lynn - wow! I'm chuffed that you enjoyed it, and thanks for the compliment!

John - thanks for the tips. I do want to clean up some areas of the mix so I'll give your method a go (problem for me is finding the time, but I'll make time)

Chris - bigger drums are very tempting but I'd worry that everything else would be swamped. I might turn up the compression on them a bit to enable me to bring them further forward in the mix. Thanks.

Thanks again,
Terry.

Beautiful orchestration, highly effective staging of the musical moments one after the other. Very visual music (now that you've tipped us off, but still), like a grand film score.

Not sure what "problem" you're thinking of. On my [mid-quality] earbuds, it sounds to me like the bass owns a lot of the mix--too much?? Part of that is the arrangement, with the bass often playing high, but I do think you've got some room to give with EQ.

I think I would like the entire mix a little more crisp, a little more presence--dialing back the bass just a tad might help with that.

One problem I've run myself into is that, under Master-Bus compression, bass energy eats up a LOT of the power in the signal. I've made the mistake of backgrounding some of my upper-freq material, because it has to compete with the bass energy in the compressor.

These are just ideas, pointed at a feature that might disappear entirely when I listen again on the nice monitors at home, so take this with three grains of salt. :)

This is epic...quite dramatic... I wouldn't presume to advise... 
very enjoyable... 

Thanks UMS - it is the "crispness" that I'm trying to get, but maybe my ears just got fuzzy after lots of different approaches.

Frank - glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for listening.

Cheers,
Terry.

Awesome just as it is to my ears. Mixing is all subjective. Great stuff you did here!

Great work.

I have no suggestions. But...good job.

sja