We are encouraged to give critics to the mixes, so we can get different views on our work and probably learn from them. I have been listen to your mix and here are my comments based on my taste and my preferences, others may differ. It's perfectly fine for you to disagree.Dreni wrote: ↑Sat Feb 18, 2023 13:05 CETHi guys,
This was a fun song too mix, and a bit out of my "comfort zone" as this is not the usual type of music I get too work with every day unfortunately.
And I actually had quite a hard time figuring out what direction I wanted too take this song in. But in the end I decided to do a kind of top down way of mixing, and looked for inspiration at bands like Incubus and RHCP as those where the only bands I knew that were closes to this kind of music.
1. The mix is somewhat thin in general. Eg. try an EQ on the overall mix, from 250 Hz to 1.7 kHz(+ 2.6/3 dB, 500 Hz center, wide Q) could be elevated a bit and some reduction from 2 kHz to 5-6 kHz (- 2.6/3 dB, 4 kHz center, wide Q)
As for my mixing session it looks like this:
- All tracks are routed to individual seperated master auxes, which than are routed directly too the mixbus.
Drums & Bass = D&B Master
Guitars = GTR Master
Keys & Synths = KEYS Master
Vocals = VOX MASTER
On each Master Bus I do some light compression with usually the Plugin Alliance SPL Iron Compressor, Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor or the Lindell 254E. Followed by a tiny small amounts of tone shaping EQ with Plugin Alliance Amek EK200 or Lindell TE-100 or Millenia NSEQ-2 (just to remove or add what I know I will want less/more of as the mix comes along). And than finally just adding a tiny bit of console emulation, harmonic saturation or tape with Plugin Alliance Neold Big Al, Lindell Bus 80 or 50 channel, or Acustica Audio Taupe.
So I use a mix of top down mixing and direct track and aux mixing as the mix comes along.
I usually always start with the drums and bass as that is always the fundamental in my mixes. And than I add the guitars and keys. And I sort of play around for quite some time with levels and balance of the instrumental of the song before I than add the vocals at the end on top of everything - as vocals always get the main stance in my mixes.
Here is the link for my mix-challenge entry:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3clpizh0n005b ... i.wav?dl=0
Hope you guys enjoy it and feedbacks are always welcome! :-)
2. Think about placement in the nix. To me it's a bit strange to have a upfront rhythm guitar(panned left in the start) and the solo guitar that makes the melody far behind. Same when the rhythm guitar plays along with the vocals, the guitar is upfront in my ear and the vocals are in the distance. An approach is to think of a "room" and where to place every sound source in relation to each other left/right and in distance or dept. What are the goals or achievements to place'em where they are?
3. The acoustic rhythm guitar have some rather annoying chord change noises. Some are so loud that they need some automation to be reduced eg. at ca 0:28:22 and ca 1:08:08 Some noise are natural, but it must not be to annoying. This needs to be done for almost every other mixes in the competition as well.
4. Have you found any nice spot or hooks that need automation to stand out to the listeners?
Keep up the good work
Steinar :-)
Edit: corrected clock in 3.
). Maybe you're right about the hihat panning, but I think we just respected the overhead track to pan the drumkit (drummer point of view). Nevertheless I found your comment very interesting, and I think I will try to keep an audience point of view for all my next mixes because it is a natural panning in a live situation (we just hear what we are looking for). 
) 