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I just finished up a pretty quick mix over my lunch break of the "Rosebush" track posted (cool song by the way!). https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wkcevil0u9fu1u/Rosebush_mix1.mp3?dl=0 I'm at work, so I didn't have ANY of my plugins/modellers/etc, which I actually kinda liked as a challenge - everything was done in REAPER with its stock plugins. I went for kind of a Florence and the Machine kinda vibe, and spent some time giving the vocals lots of space and color. VOCALS: My main weapon was a slap echo with some eq carving send that I put both the main and backup vocals through, along with sending a little of everything to a short and long reverb. I also popped in a fuzz/lo-fi EQ send in the 3rd chorus to make it pop and sound a little megaphone-y. Guitars: I kept these pretty simple (especially since I don't have any of my amp/cab/effects models handy), and mostly just played around with panning everything around (I stuck with hard L-C-R panning) and gave them different amounts of reverb through the short and long sends, along with some subtle complimentary EQ on the two main electric guitar parts. I threw the two "solo" bits through a simple tremolo, set at two different speeds (one of them half the speed of the other) and panned them hard L and R. Bass: just some compression and verb Drums: A couple layers of parallel compression to make them pop, but not too much. I'd honestly like to spend more time on the drums to make them a little more present, but I kinda ran into a wall with them without all my normal VST crutches. Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?
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Sep 27, 2017 19:39
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 13:13 |
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syntaxfunction posted:Dude that's a pretty cool idea to try and mix with only stock plugins! I totally agree with both your observations! The hard-panned drums were part stylistic, part laziness - it was a quick way to get them out of the way of the crunchy guitars. The guitars in question need some more eq love too to keep them from overpowering the rest of the tracks; maybe some more compression or doubling or something on the vocals to get them to stay out front too... So.... is anyone else working on anything? I'd like to hopefully share some stems myself for mixing too so I can see where people take my tracks.
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Oct 3, 2017 22:34
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C'mon guys - let's get this thread moving! Here are the stems to an old track of mine to play around with: All Along [alternative] https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ik0zdbsbdbx1m8h/AADtXVyHZi6HUxznQxomk68xa?dl=0 My own rough mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvc6nu7wurjs40m/AllAlong_roughMix.mp3?dl=0 Notes on my rough mix: Main vocals - did a bunch of thickening/doubling with short delays panned around BG vocals - abused the SoundToys Crystalizer plugin to give them a weird ambient vibe Uke - just hard panned the 2 mics left and right and tweaked in a little complimentary EQ Guitar - EQ Bass - simple compression Drums - series compression + a touch of SoundToys Devil-Loc crusher to give them some grit and girth I'm not super happy with my mix, but that's where it is at the moment. Feel free to approach it totally differently!
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Oct 13, 2017 19:39
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Lumpy posted:Throwing my completely clueless hat into the ring. Here's my stab at Rosebush: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5goTnajm3jEYXpSYXdyYmtVNUU I like the raw/intimate qualities of your mix - it feels like a very up-close and personal perfomance in your take. It adds emphasis to 3rd section of the song when the distorted guitars come in. I would've liked to hear this leaned into even more; the guitars come in heavy but a little too mushy and stifled (against the very clean vocals). With it mixed pretty bare/raw (no added effects), I would've liked a bit more EQ sculpting on the acoustic guitar and bass too - they sound a little rubber-bandy as is. I tend to be more aggressive with EQ shaping sometimes though, so maybe it's just me. One more thing - the tracks could all use a little reverb to glue them together; the drums sound really far away because they are the only instrument with reverb on them (from the original recording), so the vocals and other instruments could use some added to push them into the same space as the drums a bit more.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:49
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Lumpy posted:Thank you both for the input! Much appreciated. JohnnySmitch, I think I see (hear?) what you mean about "rubber bandy" in my mix: what would I do to lessen / improve on it? For the "rubber bandy-ness", it really just comes down to EQ carving. When I have a track that's sounding funky or not sitting right, I usually just sweep through the EQ bands with a notch or narrow band filter until I find the frequencies that are getting in the way/sounding bad/etc. When I've honed in on the frequency I wanna carve, I start playing around with the Q control and cut it more subtly (usually no more than 6db or so) to carve it out. Usually have to repeat this a few times to find the trouble spots. As for reverb, I like to set up 2 different reverbs as send effects (a short and a long), and then send varying amounts of each track to them as needed - I like to use the shorter reverb as a 'thinckening' reverb, and the longer reverb to add space. It sometimes works fine on the master too, but then it becomes an "all or nothing" kind of effect where every track is going to get the same amount, so if the tracks weren't sitting well together to begin with, they're probably gonna still not sit together well but now with echoes. Master fader reverb seems to work better if all the instruments were originally recorded in the same space though (if they were mic'd and recorded well to begin with).
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Oct 14, 2017 23:28
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 13:13 |
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ricecult posted:https://www.dropbox.com/s/3u84h5juy6dvf16/all%20along.wav?dl=0 I like this mix! You really got the bass and the drums pumping really well together - I definitely wanna try to match what you did with the rhythm tracks when I do the final mix for this! Any specifics you can tell me about what you did here? The only thing I wasn't loving was how right-side heavy this mix was; the overdriven guitar being mixed way right (which I think I did in my original mix too) kinda throws off the balance a bit; probably mostly my fault though, since I didn't double track that part. I kinda want to go back and track a clean version of that part to blend left now...
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Oct 14, 2017 23:37
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