Hello,
 
After living with this song for a few weeks, there were a number of things that bothered me that I just had to "fix":
 

• The beat from the bass and kick wasn't hitting hard enough. I slapped Renaissance Bass on the drum kit bus and swept the Freq until I could feel the kick better. Also, mixed in another kick drum and ducked the bass about 3db on every hit.
• Fattened the snare a bit. It felt a little thin.
• Overall, pumped up the drums in the mix.
• Reprocessed the tribal drums to change the compression and reverb. The original processing I did made them big, but they weren't sitting well in the mix when played on various systems.
• The bright synth pad had a random pan that bothered me the more I listened to it. I used Channel Tools to sum L+R and placed it slightly left of center to balance the lead guitar. I then sent that track to a bus with a ping pong delay and faded the delay in and out to taste using automation.
• The bass was big, but not well defined. It is a busy bass part in spots so I wanted it to be clearer. I cloned the existing bass track and ran it through GR5 and gave it a slightly wide chorus with some top end pluck. I blended this in with the original bass track into a bass bus and compressed it. It now sits better in the mix and isn't so boomy.

That's all I can remember...it was a long day.
 
New mix: http://www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=12138353&q=hi&newref=1
 
Original: http://www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=12101343&q=hi&newref=1
 
Hope you enjoy the new mix and I am particularly interested to hear from those that listened to the original mix to see if my changes are improvements or not.
 
Best Regards,
Dan
 

Wow, that's a lot of hoops to jump through, but you landed on your feet and have given us a lovely instrumental.  It builds up nicely, creates a mood, and then brings us back down gently.  Well conceived and recorded.  Good job.

Lynn,

Hey, thanks for listening again. Did you think the changes improved the mix any?

Regards,
Dan

I think the new mix has more depth and dynamic range than the first mix, but not by leaps and bounds.  They're both good, but I do like the new one better.

Hey Dan...I enjoyed this a lot...one of the better instrumental pieces I've heard on this forum.  Any crits I would have would just be my own preferences...what you have done is really well done.  Glad I listened :)

Allan

Excellent!! I was not expecting the harder edge when it came in.

No crits here.

Very well done!

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Unless something truly stands out, I'm thinking I'll put this one down before I mess it up. Off to stare at a blank project...

Best Regards,
Dan

The acoustic in the mix sounds a bit brighter in the beginning (not that it sounded bad before?)

Overall, I really enjoyed this the 1st time, I don't know that I can really appreciate the improvement without an actual "OK Here's A" and "Here's B" literally at the same time? Back and fourth. 

It sounded good then? And it sounds good now :-)

The Band19


The acoustic in the mix sounds a bit brighter in the beginning (not that it sounded bad before?)

Overall, I really enjoyed this the 1st time, I don't know that I can really appreciate the improvement without an actual "OK Here's A" and "Here's B" literally at the same time? Back and fourth. 

It sounded good then? And it sounds good now :-)

Thanks Robbie!
 
Regards,
Dan
 

Very nice. Well Done. Good Job. Pip Pip.