Mixing and Mastering Advice

[stephen1977]

The latest track from one of my bands, Mudsoul Slave is ready for slaughter.By NO means is this a hit.. ..basically an album filler. But we are fighting between one another about the over all mix and mastering.Advice? We need some unbias ears to lend a hand! If you really want to take the time.. ..listen to a few other tracks to compare in production because we just can't seem to match them up! The song is called, "Seasons Sigh" and is located here:http://www.audio-village.com/kickapps/_ ... htmlThanks in advance guys and let me know if I can return the favor!

[zoom]

Hey Stephen!I'll just spout out a few things that I'm hearing....The drums are compressed waaaaay too hard -- it sounds flat and dead, and it sounds like the crash gets crushed in the process. Especially in the toms you can feel the compression more than you can hear the drum (if that makes sense). The only thing that sounds good in the drum track is the ride IMO. I think once you get that cleaned up, you'll notice a BIG difference in the rest of the mix.Also, some of the acoustic guitar tracks may be a bit bass heavy -- might need a little more EQ help on that. Though, with the drum issue I may be misreading it a bit. In general though you may want to look at the range below 500-600Hz or so and see what's going on.HTH and good luck on getting it fixed up!

[stephen1977]

Oct 24, 2008, 7:26am, zoom wrote:Hey Stephen!I'll just spout out a few things that I'm hearing....The drums are compressed waaaaay too hard -- it sounds flat and dead, and it sounds like the crash gets crushed in the process. Especially in the toms you can feel the compression more than you can hear the drum (if that makes sense). The only thing that sounds good in the drum track is the ride IMO. I think once you get that cleaned up, you'll notice a BIG difference in the rest of the mix.Also, some of the acoustic guitar tracks may be a bit bass heavy -- might need a little more EQ help on that. Though, with the drum issue I may be misreading it a bit. In general though you may want to look at the range below 500-600Hz or so and see what's going on.HTH and good luck on getting it fixed up!Thanks Zoom and yes you are right! The drums have been an argument of mine during this whole process. I'm not hearing what you are suggesting with the guitars, but I will have a closer listen with what you said in mind.Thanks for the advice man!

[davekershaw]

Oct 24, 2008, 3:44am, stephen1977 wrote:The latest track from one of my bands, Mudsoul Slave is ready for slaughter.By NO means is this a hit.. ..basically an album filler. But we are fighting between one another about the over all mix and mastering.Advice? We need some unbias ears to lend a hand! If you really want to take the time.. ..listen to a few other tracks to compare in production because we just can't seem to match them up! The song is called, "Seasons Sigh" and is located here:http://www.audio-village.com/kickapps/_ ... htmlThanks in advance guys and let me know if I can return the favor!Yeah, production sounds good to me Stephen, but others know more in that department than me.Some nice guitar work!

[bigbluebarry]

I'll second zoom's thoughts on the drums, they are WAY TOO compressed. - Big Blue

[davekershaw]

Oct 24, 2008, 9:43am, bigbluebarry wrote:I'll second zoom's thoughts on the drums, they are WAY TOO compressed.I rest my case!

[mazz]

Hi Stephen,The drums are overcompressed and also they just don't sound very good, IMO. I think someone got "creative" with the sounds and put some distortion on the drums and also made them sound like they all belong to different drum kits.I suggest that the drums be revisited altogether with a more natural sound that will support the vibe of the song better. The drums seem like they're from a different song. If you had room mics, start with those, bring in the overheads and then bring in the individual mics as needed. Watch for phase issues, the snare sounds phasey in the chorus, probably because the overheads or room mics are out of phase with the snare mic. I'd turn down the snare mic to start with and see if that helps. Also, parallel compression might be the way to go here. Run the stereo drum mix through two busses and compress one buss and don't compress the other. Mix to taste. This will help with the punch and will also help the drums sound like a real kit instead of a box of tiny toy drums like it does right now.I also hear a very slight bit of a nasal quality to the vocal. I think if you experiment in cutting slightly somewhere in the 500- 700 Hz range, the vocal will sound a tiny bit brighter and will sit in the mix even better than it does right now.The mastering compressor could be messing up your drums too. If the kick is triggering the compressor, your whole mix will get squashed the same amount as the kick. I don't think that's what you want. Less is more here.Overall it's a good mix with the exception of the drums.Just my 2CMazz

[billg]

Mazz beat me to it . . . I was going to say that it sounded to me like the kick drum was hitting the compresor too hard, at least that what it sounds like to my tired old ears.

[aubreyz]

Yeah-- pretty squashed overall. IMHO (though it's hard to tell with a web stream) There's too much low <100hz in both the kick and bass and so they are making the compressor slam too much and sucking the life out of the mix. I would either roll of the bass (most likely) or kick so that one of them is dominate in that area, but not both. Try listening to the mix with a sub and I think you'll hear it.A couple of other things that might help -- Use just a touch of compression on individual drum elements if needed, then get a decent mix of the drums and buss that mix to two different subs. On one of the subs, compress the heck out of the drums, then set the fader volume at zero (with the duplicate sub set a few db below the final mix level). Slowly bring up the compressed buss until the drum sound gets fatter. That's a great way to get a bigger sound without getting that squashed over compressed thing.Another thing, overall the mix doesn't sound glued together as a cohesive unit. I like to use a pretty transparent room or hall reverb with a send on every channel but bass and kick. Turn the sends up until you just hear the verb, then back it down a notch. That can really glue a mix together without sounding over processed.And-- mixing and mastering by committee is VERY difficult. I would recommend agreeing on roles with one person having final say in those calls.Best of luck.Aub

[billg]

"And-- mixing and mastering by committee is VERY difficult. I would recommend agreeing on roles with one person having final say in those calls."That is so important! The best way to ruin a mix is to have to many "cooks in the kitchen." you can hand a song to four different people to mix and if they know what they are doing each mix will be different, but each will be good. Put those same folks in a room to mix it together and you'll likely get a pile of s&^t.