My Mixes Suck

Here's an example, it's about as good as I can get it at home.


https%3A//soundcloud.com/martin-john-butler/somethings-coming-12-3-real-gear-mix-example

Dont sweat it man. My mixes sucked for a long time(and probably still do compared to some of you more experienced guys). For me, it's the learning, experimenting, and improving that keeps me chasing that elusive dragon. If it was easy it wouldnt be as fun, and I wouldnt be nearly as passionate.

A few things that have really helped me:

Constantly reference mixes you like every step of the way. Not to make it sound the same, but to keep your prospective from drifting into the abyss.

Take your time introducing 1 element at a time into your mix and really listen how its working with whats already there.

Balance, balance, balance. After trying all the tricks and techniques in the book, im finding simple leveling to be the most important thing to focus on.

Martin, I share your dilemma. It's the reason I have not posted any tracks on RGO - I am never happy, I always hear my mixes as wrong, particularly in the low end balance. There's too much, or not enough. Or it's muddy. I even stopped sending roughs to my band mates a couple of months ago. I've talked myself into new monitors, to add room treatment,  but I instinctively know what I really need to do is get it together as a mix engineer. Do mixes until I start getting it right. Maybe years of playing in loud bands has effected my hearing, I don't really know what my problem is. Anyway, it's a constant struggle.

Thanks guys. Gotta run to a dental appt. now. I'll post what I think is the worst mix/production I have later, just so you can see where it's at.

I use the Warm Audio Tone Beast preamp. I installed a John Hardy opamp in it. It's warmer, but much lower in level, which can cause issues I think. I use the UAD Apollo as an interface. I have the Blackspade UM17 Blueline mic. It's the same as the Telefunken MK47 Mk II, but was handmade by Oliver Archut. I had the Thiersch Blueline cap installed by our friend Sinsay at Mic Rehab, so some tracks were without the M7, some with. It's almost a dead ringer for the Neumann m49. Then I go into Apollo, and occasionally print a pinch of LA2 to the vocal, but not always.

It's when I try to addd some vibe to the vocal with plugs it gets a little lost in the sauce, but I think my main tracking could be cleaner.

I have a few thoughts on this.  I struggled with this a lot over the years too.

I also had trouble getting tracks "loud" too.  What I figured out the hard way is that it's not about crushing everything with compressors.  There is actually a LOT more work involved in getting things loud than pretty much everyone thinks there is.  All this talk about dynamics and limiting happens, but it's all about how a mix tricks your brain into thinking it's more than it is.

I know that's not much help on it's own, but it should serve as a reminder that the final mix is a sum of the parts, and those parts have to fit together.  If your mix isn't happening at the final stages, then mastering won't "fix" anything.  Most mastering engineers do less than 2dB of any EQ moves and don't do more than 4-6dB of compression in any form.  I'm sure there are exceptions, but I think the mix should be pretty much the same when it comes back from mastering.

What I did to help me figure it all out was to do mixes, then do various levels of final limiting and compression, each on a different version of the same mix.  I'd then burn maybe 10 versions of the song to CD and listen to it somewhere I knew well.  Usually in the car and at work, where I listen to most music I'm not recording.  I started hearing the same problems over and over, which eventually led me to figure out where my old deficiencies were (I have new ones I'm working on now!).

What happens is that you start to hear the differences more clearly compared to professional mixes.  It won't be clearly audible at first, but you'll start to hear it if you study it.  

For me, in the end, I found that I was trying to emulate a hi-fi sound by having too much low and high end, which made the midrange hard to manage due being unbalanced with the rest of the mix.  Compression for loudness only made these things worse.  EQ at this point made things sound strange too.

First thing I noticed was that my low end was entirely too much on all my mixes.  It sounded heavy and thick on it's own, but compared to a professional mix it was too extended into the deep lows, and was much too sluggish.  I went to the studio, turned up the subwoofer, and then proceeded to rework the bass.  I removed a lot of EQ on the bass and kick which I thought made the instruments "stick out" from the mix more.  It turns out that they were really just masking each other when the mix gets more complicated.  

The high end was mostly too much guitar and cymbals.  Since I was jacking up the lows some, it made it muddy, so I subconsciously mixed in more high end for definition.  Dealing with the lows made the highs seem much too bright and biting.  Dealing with the highs made the mids come up and everything started working much better.  It took a few days away from the mixes for things to sound "right", since I had been listening for so long on these mixes, that the scooped sound had become the sound I was used to hearing.  After that, I realized I was dialing in incredible amounts of compression only with the intent of creating more dynamics (slow attack, fast release stuff) trying to overcome the muddy low end of my mixes with augmented transient peaks, only to try to cut them down again with compression later.  Removing the mud and fitting frequencies together better allowed me to hear the super peaks I was creating, and allowed me to get dynamics without augmenting them.

Now that the highs and lows were more "normal", I found that the compressors were working better on their parts of the mix, and I could hit them harder without harsh consequences, and they sounded better.  I also started realizing that the individual instruments weren't as true sounding in the mix as they did when I recorded them.  Trying to obtain purity of an instrument in a mix is a death sentence for the mix, because you'll obsess about keeping the "true" sound of the instrument at the expense of the others and of the mix.  Now, when I track I have the guitars, bass and drums play together for a few minutes while I listen, before tracking happens.  That way I judge the tones beforehand, rather than trying to piece them together after the fact.  The musicians will be unhappy about you tracking tones that are different from what they expect, but the mix will be better for it.  I frequently have guitarist complain about the lack of low end in the tracked guitars.  Once the bass and guitars are mixed, they are happy with how they work in the mix.  Don't let them talk you out of your gut instincts!

Bass will be much more midrange than you think it should be. Guitars will be much more high-mids than you think you need.  Drums will be much less ring-y than you think will sound good.  Compression will bring up a lot of the "missing" frequencies when you use it.  That's why you don't track things so full range sounding.

I also took the Andy Wallace school of thought to heart, mix into a bus compressor with only a little compression happening. Hitting it right will yield a nice tight low end from the beginning. Mix into it, and you'll have no surprises later when trying to get things louder. If it doesn't sound right at that point, then something in the mix is out of balance. If I see the SSL bus compressor needle moving a lot but I don't hear the mix spanking, I know I have too much bad low end masking the good low end. I read once that CLA(I think) would judge lows on a mix by watching the cones on NS-10s. If they moved a lot but there wasn't a tight low end, then there was too much sub-frequencies.

Now, I'm completely sure that "dynamics" are all about how the compressors act upon a signal giving the impression of dynamics, rather than simply leveling out a signal.  It's all a trick for the brain, and less about actual levels.  Everybody obsesses over RMS numbers.  That's cool, but I feel it also belittles the hard work it takes to get mixes hot but still dynamic sounding, and it derails a lot of folks who were on the right track but are essentially talked out of following through by those chastising making things loud.  I feel that a few of my really early mixes on better gear were superior to a lot of mixes I did after a few years of being tugged around by various schools of mixing thought.  I'd say that you shouldn't listen to what I did to fix my issues, but I would say to listen to the moral of the story, figure out a plan to find what you are missing in the mixes.  Do whatever it takes and that includes putting yourself into situations that allow you to hear things differently and give you different perspective!



Over all, I no longer obsess over gear or the promises that a certain piece will give me something I'm missing.  I no longer push my inconsistency and shortfalls off on the excuse of missing gear.  My last 1-2 years of recording sessions have been the best sounding I've ever done, and I'm only using about 1/3rd of the gear I used to use.  The rest is a no-excuses approach to getting instruments to work together in a mix, where I used to try to bend them to my will alone during mixing, after allowing artists to dictate the tones for the tracking, now I use a combination of learning from failure and taking a lot more time for pre-production testing to get what I want.  Also, a lot of failures during recording.  Guitars, for me, have always been the hardest to track, and there have been too many times I've failed to deliver the tones that would have served the mixes much better.  I've figured out a few problems with my techniques, but I have a lot more to fix.

I guess I'm saying that I'm finding that successful recording (for me) is a lot more about getting everything in the project working cohesively and knowing how to get to that point, rather than just having a bunch of cool gear to mix with later.  Part of that is absolutely making sure the playing is gelling.  There is no way to make a nice and tight low end if the bass and kick aren't working together cohesively. Guitars that aren't played right on the beats will also add mud and everything will go from "cohesive" to "mud" real quick.  It's also knowing how to control a session and get players into the moment and get them working for you and the mix.  That was something I had a tough time with as well.  I'm not much of a people-person, but I've learned how to earn the respect of an artist and then we work together for success.

Very nice song and arrangements.

Okay, I agree with all this. Vocals are too loud, dry and up front. Maybe back away from the mic more (like at least 8 inches to a foot or more depending) when you're tracking them.  Better the room, as Bob says, the farther away you can get without it getting muddy. To me, the same basic concept applies to size from the front of kit mic if the drums are tuned properly.

The backing vocal, make it wetter, lower in mix, panned more, add predelay, push it back with eq, whatever combination, to somehow separate it more from the lead vocal.

The guitars, yeah, too much going on in middle.
Pan them in mono to opposite sides (this is one signature Tom Petty sound), and if you double, try some ~20ms predelay on one of them, monitoring in mono for phase. Also track your guitars with a different guitar/amp/mic or some permutation on each guitar part. On electrics, I always pair a ribbon and a condenser or a dynamic for this reason, so you have more tonal options for different songs or emphasis on certain parts, or you can blend the two mics in different balances on one or more than one part.
Definitely agree the lead part should be tucked in much lower and more subtly somewhere to the side.

I find it's way easier to get separation this way without resorting to eq, which never sounds as good. I do find it useful to high pass/shelf cut one of the guitars a little higher sometimes.

The drums, are they real or programmed? They just need more personality.

The crash on the left is a little tinny sounding, and kit is kinda lopsided without another crash or ride or both on the right. Get or record samples of some nice dark/thin cymbals like Zildjian Ks, 18" -20", if you don't have any, and don't high pass them. To me, this makes a huge difference.

Hihat doesn't have enough chick/meat to it. You can always try shaker and tambourine too.

Kick could have more depth. Snare sounds a little nondescript.

I think the bass guitar could be a little less clean and direct in sounding.

Also one more note. There's this recent trend to steep high pass everything somewhere as a matter of course and boost highs and sometimes high mids on the whole mix. People seem to think it makes it easier to mix but real ensembles don't sound like this. Personally I think this makes everything sound disconnected, especially on drums. Cymbals lose their body, there is no foundation to the kit. And then you have to use more and more bus compression just to get the mix to gel. So you keep boosting the highs and then you have to boost the lows as well to compensate. To make matters worse, people scoop the shit out of the midrange on everything, and there is no body.

It's sorta like taking a solid tree and cutting it into sections, and then stretching those sections apart from each other. Then trying to glue them together again. 

I think it's way easier to get highs from the cymbals (maybe add some sparkle in 14-16khz where applicable) and the vocals mainly and not mess with anything else too much. Sometimes you have to watch the sub 40hz region, and the build up from 300-700hz, but that's about it. 

Like -1db at 400hz and +1db at 4-7khz on guitars or just favoring the condenser mic is about as much as I'll do now if I miked the cab right.

 

"What I ‘m discovering after trying so hard to get good and loud mixes is that I’m not so good at it."

That's the problem I hear in most modern mixes. Everything has to be loud and in your face.
Every plugin the tracks are run through reduces the "air" and brings the track more upfront.
If you resort back to some of your old analogs techniques you'll find sometimes less is more.
Watch the "It's all going to pot" video. Everything part isn't the loudest.
Y.M.O.

Digital should not change one bit (literally).  I think it's just you hearing things differently over time.  We all do that as we grow and change, both physiologically, but also as we make the connections in our brains that allow us to hear things differently.

I certainly hear things in my mixes from long ago, that I would have never heard even a couple years ago.  

I actually suggest getting close to the mic.  I find that distance makes things more "roomy" but much more dull.  Get closer to the mic and the sensitivity will give it a more hi-fi sound, which will compensate for some of the midrange honk.

Thanks guys. I think what's happening is partly what Svart said, I'm hearing differently, and also that I may have added an effect or two along the way, and only now notice it's creating some new distortions. I recently upgraded to the Avantone Abbey monitors, and my mixes have improved since then, but it's hard to tell if I'm now hearing what was always there, or if in attempting to pump up the volume a bit, I'm also pushing the volume of little distortions that were previously masked.

One thing that definitely happens is some kind of digital corruption of files when using pitch correction. I have previous mixes where a vocal is perfectly clean on a particular word, and then the same word, even when not being touched by pitch correction, develops something like a little pop or a gargle. Unfortunately, once there, nothing seems to get rid of them. I've begun to run a bounce of a vocal as a safety before I do anything to the track. This is why I've stopped using Flex Pitch or Auto-Tune. It happened with both plugs.

Looking forward, I will try to get it right the first time. My living room doesn't sound great, but that's not a big deal for close miking instruments, only for vocals, which I'll try to dial in a better sound, and try a few simple tricks, like a few blankets to help with first reflections, etc.

What I hope to do now is make a few adjustments and get past these older songs/mixes, without doing a complete reboot of the mix, but maybe that's not possible.

I might go back to the thinner, but clearer original opamp in my Tone Beast. I'm planning on getting the Dizengoff D4 soon, so maybe that'll help too.

On the first track, "Something's Coming", I recorded tracks through the WA76 compressor and straight to the Apollo at the same time. This gave me the choice in tone, WA76 or not, or both, because it also allowed me to have stereo guitars. Of course the same guitar track on two tracks panned left and right would still end up in the middle, but since I did a few takes of each part, I was able to choose take A for one guitar, pan left, take B, pan right, and though close, they were different. I did the same thing with two twelve string electrics. On the Ryan Adams track, Two, there are two acoustics, left and right, and I like that sound. Here's something I'm curious about, let's say I want the two acoustic guitar sound, so, I pan one hard left, one hard right. Now, if I add an electric guitar part, do I pan it at say.. 45 degrees to separate it from the acoustics, or do I use some kind of delay to move it in the soundstage while still panning hard to one side?

Thanks oddssey, I think I am a little burned out right now. It's not always so obvious, but I feel like I keep banging into the same wall lately. I feel like time's slipping away and I need to finish the songs I've been working on for a year and a half now, so I can start fresh, but the songs just aren't feeling right enough yet. I'll try to take a step back for a few days. I know I can do better and faster work, I just might be in a little over my head, trying to be the writer, performer, engineer and mixer, and then a publisher.

It's just painful knowing I have the chops to do a recording i'd be proud of if I could just get to a point where I could work in a good studio and play with some good musicians again.

Mjb, listened to it last night. First of all, I wouldn't say it sucked at all. After reading your post I was expecting a train wreck and was pleasantly surprised. Could it use a little tweaking? Maybe,but to me it's not far off, and the song is cool good job.

The one thing that stuck out was the vocal tone like you said. I have a pair of tonebeasts and while they are great for many applications the one thing I don't like them on is vocals. Seem a bit fast and "pokey" for voice. Mine are stock so I dont know what difference the opamp makes but something to think about. I use a 1073lb for vox and it just works. I'm also hearing what I think is too much room sound. Try to make yourself some movable gobos, or treat a corner of your room for a makeshift "booth". I like to track vocals very dry so you can compress without bringin up nasty reflections. I also find it helps with sibilance. Then wet with verb/dly/chorus come mix time.

Happy hunting! Cool song man!