Making room in a busy mix

[TheHenryManeuver]

Hey Taxinites!

I recently submitted a track to a Schecter Guitar contest where you're supposed to play along to a backing track, but for kicks and giggles, I decided to just rewrite the song, but in doing so, my mix got kinda busy. My questions for anyone who's willing to take a listen is where can I make more sonic space? I've scooped the guitars, have mid focused leads, but that seems to have interfered a little bit with the drum mix as well as vocals. Any and all advice for where the frequency conflicts are happening would be greatly appreciated!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgafg6Cl5kk

[feaker66]

Henry

Don't hate me, but I really like the stuff you have between 1:07 and 1:15

The other super fast riffs shows how good you can play, but they just don't to add that much to the song for me. Just seems too busy???

Or is it that I'm a just THAT jealous There is a lot of great playing in there but those quick touch notes HMMMM???

I like to here power stuff in the background when you are singing. Just sayin.

Keep in mind this two cent comment comes from a 64 year old washed up has-been.

sincerely

Paul

[TheHenryManeuver]

haha the kids these days are all about that shred yo! Thanks for checking it out!

[coolhouse912]

Hi Henry,

You know how much I love your stuff. Yeah, it's all about the shred, but the mini-gun speed counterpoint is you man & I wouldn't suggest you change that ever! Of course, along with that complexity comes the dense mixes that you wrestle with.

This time around, I have a couple of suggestions. The counterpoint beneath the chorus at 2:22 is competing with the vocal. Try a compressor on your guitar track(s) there. Activate the side chain, send your vocal to it, & play with the settings. The point is not to have the compressor as part of your guitar signal chain, but only for ducking purposes. You could do the same thing with automation but side chaining will do it automatically for you. To me, the mix is only slightly off there, so mild compression ought to pull the guitar underneath (just under )the vocals with no problem.

At 3:08, I don't find the clean guitars to be forward enough. Bring 'em up a little...orrr consider ratcheting back the entire arrangement a bit more in that section and create what us synth guys call a breather. At any rate, the build to the solo is killer! It goes to exactly the right place IMO.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful and....

We don' need no steenking fog!

Mike

[Cruciform]

I don't know how to mix this kind of music but....awesome shredding, brother!

[playagibson]

I would approach it like an orchestra.
Every instrument has it's place in the stereo spectrum and you are going for that combined sound.
The bass and drums sit centre ( drums panned a little left and right ) with the bass and lead vocal dead centre.
Everything else is panned and spread out..
Sending multiple guitars to one bus will also centre your mix.
If you have multiple guitars panned differently , you may have to assign individual bus's to retain the panning ( match the panning on the bus's as well )
or pann the bus the opposite way to spread out the sound, but with a busy mix it may get too cloudy.
Use your M/S eq to spread out the sound but be subtle with it or you will get phasing.
Also , editing down and focusing on what your main element in a given section is , will help.
Sometimes one instrument says everything and that's all you use.
Queen were famous for that , tons of layering and then one guitar , drum , vocal etc.. panned and eq'd big.
Consider forking out the bucks and get it professionally mastered to get that BIG sound.
The pro's have the best gear and expertise when using it.

Rich.

[SteveJCurtis]

Henry.
Wicked!
Regards.
Steve

[andygabrys]

henry that is some wicked stuff. as is every piece you have posted here.

but I say only half jokingly.....

Mixers often reach for the mute button to help clear out dense arrangements and start things making sense.

something always has to be king.

in counterpoint, the faster moving voice always catches more attention unless its so low as to be in audible.

I think your mix sounds good, but there is a limit to how much stuff you can fit in with the note density you have unless you start doubling stuff up and panning it hard to the wings.

and since its your arrangement, why not make the guitar counterpoint actually fit around the vocal using some space instead of just running through it the whole way?

good luck either way - your track sounds 1000% percent more fun than the backing tracks that the other contestants seem to be playing to.

[TheHenryManeuver]

@Mike - yo thanks for checking it out! I'm a little confused as to how I would actually go about side-chaining the compression for the guitars, like you mentioned. I have double tracked rhythm guitars and leads. Would i have to make an aux. track for all guitars and compress it to have the effect you're talking about? Also, do you recommend any particular type of compression?

@Cruciform - thanks man! Always a pleasure to see you around the peer-to-peer forum!

@Rich - honestly, I'm not sure what would be the focus of the mix. From a song perspective, the vocals? Contest perspective, maybe the lead guitars? Could you explain more as to what you mean by "assign individual bus's to retain the panning"? In my edit/mix window, I basically have each guitar track panned either left or right, (rhythms and leads) except for the solo, before I send them to an aux channel that has an addition EQ and reverb ('cause I like to add stereo reverb to mono channels).

Also @Rich, I do M/S Eq-ing, but I might be missing the element that actually adds to the stereo nature of the mix. If you can elaborate at all on that, I'd really appreciate the help!

@Steve - thx man!

@andygabrys - thanks man! All of the guitars are double tracked and panned hard left and right except for the solo. What would you say I should focus the mix around? I usually try to focus the mix around the drums, more so because I don't know how to mix stuff around vocals haha. The lead guitar is somewhat the focus, but would it be possible to focus a mix around the lead guitar? I usually try to keep the lead guitar in somewhat of a "first violin" spot in the mix, which makes it hard to keep it in the "center" per se, since there's so much back bone that might even much more important.

Thanks again to everyone that took the time to reach out in this forum. It's been 100 times more helpful than the critiques that I get. I'll try to pay back the favor in the future, since I feel like I've received much more help than I've given.

[RockChild56]

That is an awesome tune Amigo. Turn it Up!!!