David Villagran August Entry

[dayvs]

Just sharing with you my august entry. Great song, I just tried to bring out all the energy of it. Hope I made it. Can't wait for your feedback!

[fHumble fHingaz]

Hey David! You've certainly captured the energy on this track - I like the low end you got from the bass - very round & full.

The drums sound very good too - perhaps a smidgen too much boomy-ness in the toms - maybe cutting around 200hz on the toms would help that... the muddiness is really noticeable when the bass & drums play the intro riff together with all that tom work going on.

The guitars sound a little on the dull side - possibly a little too much low end left on the guitars? HP filtering up a bit higher may help. The lead break is a bit subdued - could be a bit louder.

The vocals are nice & loud - & it may be personal taste, but I'm not too keen on the processing on them - it tends to make them sound a little "hollow", for want a better description. On a more specific technical note, the lead vocals could do with some de-essing, as the sibilants are cutting through just a bit too harshly.

Overall, a pretty solid mix - nice job!

[Radukku]

Well hello Mister dayvs!
I am happy that at least this month's song got you going and post a mix on...member since 2009...time to chip in a bit more...often?!
And yes the energy of the song is evident in your mix Sir! Very well executed too...the bass was 'love at first sight' with me and so were the toms...but they don't seem to love each other that much...when they're together they do quarrel a bit around where fHfH said (200 to 400 Hz)
I wish I could say the same about the snare but it just seems to get a bit lost/buried behind especially in the choruses..
cool effect at the beginning of the guitar solo too and I would've raised the level a couple of dbs of the whole track as well - it's worth it!
the lead vocal could have used a bit of de-essing indeed or if you don't have that (I only use the 'stock' de-esser that comes with Cubase...does a fairly good job and A LOT of parametric EQing....tedious but they do a better combination) if not...just some low pass filtering I guess...)
Good work and hopefully you'll 'pop' in a bit more often from now on!
Thank you for sharing your work with us!

[brotastic]

I would agree with Fhumble Fhingers and raduku's comments. The main thing that sticks out are the toms. I think what would help you if you listen to the way the toms were recorded. When you listen to the top and bottom mics you will see that the top of the tom has alot more attack and the highs and bottom mics have all the low end girth. If you encourage those attributes and take away what isn't helping those attributes I think your toms would sound more powerful and it would clean up your mix. Get the top mics to be your attack and the bottom mics to be the low end. Then mix them together to form one tom sound.

[TopBobSecret]

David,

I like how you got the guitar out of the way as the vocal enters. A slight dip in guitar might be needed at the chorus. They seemed louder there than in the instrum. breaks. Maybe flip-flop volume levels.
Otherwise, sounds clean with good separation. Vocals sound pretty good to me. I especially like your subtle blending of the crazier guitar parts.
Good luck! TopBob

[heygermandude]

I was pleasantly surprised with the vocals. Once those came around the mix turned into a scene from (i am making this up) a movie that should have been made in a dive bar with this playing in the background.

Or... maybe a seventies themed high school movie with this as the intro! haha.

but on the mix itself I did like the surround effect it had with the mix itself. In particular, the guitars didn't sound like they were panned very wide the the effects on the guitars made this hole for the vocals to come through, even with such a strong effect on it. Worked out really well.

I am always particular about the drums and though I feel they sounded very nice, I will agree with a previous post about the muddiness involved in the low end. That, and the sheer excitement from the kit, particularly the snare. I've said it time and time again, so maybe I am just biased, but I love to hear a lot of snap from this song. Easiest way for me to achieve that is to use more bottom snare mic than top. Eq the top snare mic to not have a lot of weight by taking out around 200hz about 3-4db. Then.. boosting about 3db around 8k for the air. set a relatively hefty compressor on the top snare mic with an attack of (scale 1-10) about a 3 to allow the initial hit to get through then compress the rest of the tail giving the crunch I like. The release will be set around 5-6.

I always dig that.
but nice job! Look forward to hearing you chip in more. Especially hearing a mix like this, sound like you need to give some more advice than receive. But hey we're all learning.

[JoshERTW]

Hey man, loving your bass and drums on this, nice and thick and meat-laden.

Be careful with the time based effects on vocals - I've always found they are best used sparingly, Brandon describes this as the "miss it when it's gone" philosophy I believe - Drop the volume on those effects until you just barely hear them. When you Mute the effect, you shoudl lose "something" but not really be able to place what it is. this applies to a lot of processing actually, but I always approach time based effects on vocals from this angle.

Try using vocal time based effects as sends instead of inserts too (with the exception of a short delay of like 60-100ms which helps push the vocal out front a bit and isn't really noticeable anyways). This has the added benefit of being able to easily automate the degree of effect you have in the mix from section to section i.e. if you want a wetter chorus or drier verse or whatever you can just automate the FX track.

[The-Zeronaut]

The drums sound very natural and live. i like it.
the vocals sound like it has some kind of doubler or echo. maybe too much.
it feels like the drums and the guitars are from two different mixes. like they are not in the same place. (personal opinion)
the mix (and the vocals on particular) could use a little cut on the low mids

[michaelspek]

Hi,
Great drums+bass, the basis of any great mix!!!
maybe a little muddy, as previous posters mentioned, but I liked that I feel them!
for me, there was a gap between them and the ac/rhythm guitars/vocals, which to my ears sound a bit shrill.
maybe try to give them some weight, and connect them to the rhythm-section by boosting some lo-mids (a little, wouldn't want them to get muddy )

[mannygtr]

hi, nice mix. kicks a little bity too loud maybe, snare a little dark. i like the bass, sounds good. the fx on the voice makes it a little bit metallic. for the rest i dont see big probs! .. maybe the solo is too quite

[IMF OnSite Recording]

Hey , here's my new critique. Nothing is sugar coated and the point is to help you the best I can to my ability without my personal taste getting in the way. I'm overloaded on my end and in life in general so I've put this together to still fulfill my duty of helping as many people as I can.

DRUMS: I like the tone of the drums man... good job. THey just need to be more AUDIBLE. Solution? A little limiting to bring it up. Parallel compression to enhance attack. I am a broken record when it comes to drums but, unless its jazz or something, I am all about Parallel Compression and careful limiting!
BASS: Try to keep it mono if you havent already, but it can come up... give it some limiting on the lows (split the track if you have to) or use parallel compresson on it.. then you can feed the source bass and paralleled bass into the joined bass buss where a little more compression and limiting can be applied. This will help it sit better in the mix. Also, automating the volume on those note decays will provide a more natural sustain.
GUITAR:Pan those bad boys harder! This will get you more room for vocals.... same goes with acoustics. You want less space occupying the center while vocals are present. If you want to move something more toward the center when vocals arent present, that will be good as it will keep the ear satisfied and not felt with a loss when the vocals stop.
VOCALS: Sibilance is very audible. If you don't have a de-esser... I am going to say willj was right on the money when he mentioned using quick bits of volume automation at the beginning of those S and T's. I might add that you should do this at the source track so that the compresser on the VOX bus will be fed the automated information so ITS compressor doesn't have to work so hard. These little steps add up to a smoother vocal delivery while staying clear. In the chorus, if you need to get that extra vocals volume without slamming it with a limiter or compressor, trying taking an aux send from your "vox chorus" source track into a "parallel compressed vocals chorus" track or "VOXCHORPAR" bus, feeding into "ALLVOX" Now, you can heavily compress the vocals on that parallel track (try 10-14db of reduction!.. ~3ms attack, and a longer release.. like 200 to 300 or more. If you want to get fancy, you can ride the release in automation to provide a much more natural control of the volume, but that is not necessary.. Now, mix it in when the chorus comes to add more power to the vocals while keeping it safe from the harmful effects of limiting and heavy overall compression. Too much info? Oh well! Dont do too much cutting besides a low and high pass filter (Low ~150 and high ~16k+.. lows are tricky, based on the singer.. make sure its not too thin sounding... theres a fine line there)

I would kill that chorus for the verse.. let that vocal be more dry and in the center so it catches your attention better. It's too "stereo" and kinda lacking mids at that.
OTHER ELEMENTS:
COMMENTS:You need to take advantage of the "High Pass Filter" more often. There's a heck of a lot going on in your low end that needs to be put to rest. 79% of which should barely even be there. Let me give you a high pass frequency punchlist of each element

Electric Guitar (Rthythm and Chorus) ~100 hz
Leads ~150hz
Acoustics ~180
Vocals ~125 - 150
Toms ~75
Kick ~45

Start there, if its not working... go ALITTLE MORE lower... but do that and then hit play and tell me you don't hear a difference .
Now your kick and bass have a big field to play pass with. Yes, pass, not hide and seek.. because they have to SHARE the area. Low pass your ENTIRE MIX after you filter the above out. Listen for the bass and kick. They should be pretty clearly separable. If not... you may need to sidechain the kick into the bass by a few DB on a quick attack so it claims a piece of that frequency range for that moment.


OVERALL MIX: Pretty nice and tight overall. Just some low end issues and few other things. Good job

[danmanisa]

Hey Davys,

I'm liking this mix a lot. Typing as I listen, you have really injected some energy like you said! I'm loving that vocal effect. I was not sure if it would work throughout the entire song, but it almost ramps up as the vocals get more intense. Cool!
There is a slight sloppy edit/automation on the left guitar at around (00:50) where the tail of the guitar sounds a little awkward.
Nice little hissy thing you did there too.

Overall the mix is very very powerful. There are some aspects that feel a little bottom heavy and almost boomy, mainly when the toms are going nuts. I think on the little toms hits it sounds fine, it's just on those rolls.

Look, at the end of the day, there are a couple of small issues, but for the vast majority of the mix, I was wanting to rock out. That's a 5 star requirement for me, with nothing fundamentally broken with your mix as far as I could tell. It was dark but the Black Sabbath could be accused of worse, and they did alright!