Excuse the missing plugins - for the screenshots, I opened the project on my laptop which doesn’t have a lot of the plugins used for mixing, which I do on a desktop in the study.
Anyway the idea behind this tune was that I wanted to do a really simple upbeat pop song featuring that simple Secret Machines drum beat and a meaty riff and some melodic vocals for a change, which I’m not very good at.
The lyrics were only half-written - at the breakdown and in the last section of the tune, I just went rogue and improvised some words and melody during vocal recording. Completely off script.
I plan on putting a 9 song album together and releasing it once I recover from this summer cold virus thing.
Good Grit indeed! I love the drums. Reminiscent of the video overture to Michael Jackson’s “Black Or White”, the ONLY tune of his that I like and NO offence meant! I always loved the part when the kid shouts: “No I wanna listen to it, it’s the best part!” while playing Luftguitar… happy days.
You certainly succeeded!
Well I do disagree, you know that, but have it your way. For what it’s worth, your other work shows that this is far from “for a change”.
The drum sounds kill and what a great self-propelling groove! The guitars are nicely layered but something is stepping on the vocal, I’m not sure if it’s some of the watery modulation from the guitars but I’m used to your vocals absolutely slaying and something here is taking the intelligibility away from hearing the lyrics. While it’s true I’m an old man with moderate to severe tinnitus I think there’s more to it than just that.
Ah thanks boss, I appreciate you listening and sharing your thoughts Cheers!
Thank YOU, Glen, for having a listen and kindly posting some feedback Really appreciate it, cheers.
Aye I see (or hear…) what you mean actually but not sure what’s causing that really (and I don’t care enough to investigate )…! As far as I can remember, the tremelo and chorus in the guitars were baked in to the sound via the NUX Cerberus on my Sansamp pedalboard setup, and reverb was minimal. Maybe the verb on the snare is getting in the way of the vox or something I used that magical EHX freeze pedal again on the guitars so maybe that’s getting in the way a bit.
Or maybe it’s just because I didn’t sing aggressively / bellow fuck outa my lungs and throat like I usually like to do Like I’m just stepping on my own voice a bit in an effort to actually sing in tune Either way, thanks for pointing that out, Glen I’ll be mindful of that on my next bunch of tunes.
Of course you can always leave the mix as it is. This mix is cool. Nothing realy bad with it, on the contrary. I like this song the best of all your songs until now. The guitars have their memorable lines, vocals also…an all-around good song, congrats!
And nothing ever realy need to be perfect, and perfect sound mixes, when it comes to music, are the new boring stuff - in my opinion.
On the other hand, if you’re so eager to waste even more of your life …
When it comes to vocals i suspect it’s few small things that that prevents vocals to be more clear.
It’s a dense mix by nature of the song - self explanatory, no help there
Levels - since drums and guitars are so active, vocals need to be a little more slammed into the master limiter to take a litlle bit more space in the mix. Basicaly, you’ll distort it, but as long as you don’t actualy hear it, it’s all good (terrible advice, i know ) .
Frequency balance - i feels like you should examine area beetween 1khz to 10 khz to see what to cut and what to boost in vocals to make them more clear all the way until they become harsh, and then back up a little. Maybe also use a more agressive low cut compared to now, to free up more dynamic space.
compression+level automation. Feels like compression does better when it comes to periods when vocals are in better percived loudness position (when singing higher notes, with same dynamic range and level you achive higher percived loudness) but when you sing lower notes and especialy if that’s happening at the end of the phrase, you need to adjust the level using automation-push it louder to stay at the same percived level).
And then, maybe, if still needed, eq cut a bit from guitars and drums to remove masking and give vocals more space.
But then again, you must do all of this in small increments…ahh…it’s boring as hell phase , and whenever it’s not too distracting i disregard all of this too .
Massive thanks for listening, Ljuba And for providing some feedback and ideas for improving mixes…! Really appreciate it.
I do a lot of mixing in mono (Airwindows Monitoring3 on the master is great for different mix perspectives and troubleshooting) which really helps focus on frequency masking and conflicts etc but I honestly can’t remember how much time I spent doing that on this mix… Perhaps I just rushed this one a bit because and spent less time on getting the parts to sit together, or even focused too much on getting the guitars to eat your ears up, or something.
I can’t remember anyway but it doesn’t matter now - you’re spot on with the need for more surgical EQing between channels on a busy / loud mix So thanks again for listening and providing some tips / feedback
Cheers!
)…! As far as I can remember, the tremelo and chorus in the guitars were baked in to the sound via the NUX Cerberus on my Sansamp pedalboard setup, and reverb was minimal. Maybe the verb on the snare is getting in the way of the vox or something 
I used that magical EHX freeze pedal again on the guitars so maybe that’s getting in the way a bit.
Either way, thanks for pointing that out, Glen 
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