Reply To: Pensado's Place mixing competition - Nov 2016

[TobiKeymaster]

Hey Jeff,

Like the drums. Vocal tone is sounding good.

Brass seems to clash with the vocals a touch when it comes in.

Left channel seems a little lower or sat back than right channel.... just let me check my setup... setup seems ok.
Stereo seems a bit weird to me... but I've checked in mono and everything seems to be there.

Could just be tired ears... had a bizarre experience last night, where after far too many hours of mixing the stereo image kinda collapsed in on me and I felt really not good.... passed quickly enough, but... uhh.. not nice.

The tone of each of the individual instruments sounds good. There is a lot of low mids rolling around... makes the track feel nice and warm, kinda grungy - reminds me a little of Mazzy Star tracks that were always gloriously awashed in low mids.

Drums are quite sat back - which I like... the vocal doesn't seem quite connected to them - like it's floating a touch. The depth of the various instruments feels unsure of itself. The violin is really working where it is... but the brass feels too on top.

I like the direction you're taking. I think it suits the song well. It'll be difficult to pull off with so much going on in the mix. Needs a bit of refinement - particularly in how much reverb and where everything is placed in the mix.

Maybe a touch more EQ on the low mids could help... or a multiband envelope shaper can be really helpful for reigning in some of the sustain in the lows... without sacrificing the instrument tone.

Maybe try sitting a reverb 'ghost or halo' around the vocals? ...send the vocals to a channel that is routed nowhere, and only goes to the reverb. Then place an EQ on the channel to cut some of the low mids (higher than you would usually on a vocal). Creates a kind of ghosting or halo FX around the vocals. Helps them to stand out in busy mixes...

.....don't know the proper term for the technique - I just call it a halo, if I EQ the reverb bright and a ghost if I EQ it dark. ...there is method in my madness. ...followed by a deeper layer of madness. 😉

Good stuff! Coming along nicely...