JoshERTW - Mike Rennick Band's "Fire Inside"

[JoshERTW]

I've got a fetish for guitar harmonies, so it goes without saying that I had fun with this tune.

This is basically a straight up rock mix, went with a good dose of loudness processing but I think I managed to keep the dynamics intact. I tried to let the acoustic guitars have the verses with big electric guitars in the choruses and a healthy blend in between, and I'm pretty happy with the results - I also made a point of really making those chorus guitars as big as possible without completely stomping on the vocal and other elements.

This is my first mix using ARC since I got it set up. Although I was skeptical at first when it seemed to butcher the bass sound on my speakers, I was pretty happy with how it translated to other systems - the issue ofcourse was that my speakers were hyping the bass like mad and I wasn't hearing what was actually there. My last few mixes have been lacking in bass a little bit, hopefully I've avoided that problem here

Used all the supplied tracks but the Hi-hat's as I found there was enough of them in the OH's to suit my tastes. No sample replacement, just a healthy dose of parallel compression to get the transients up. I'm pretty content with the snare but could be happier with the kick, and maybe replacement was warranted there, or I needed to carve out a little more bass or something.

I also tried out Fhumble's Backwards Compression thing, I'm about 50/50 on whether I like it on this mix, I could be happier with the vocals. Overall though, I'm pretty happy with this mix, and I'm at the point where I start questioning changes after I make them, so it's time to call it a day on this one.

Enjoy

[bobbybovine]

Hey Josh, I like that you went with a more aggressive mix as I feel this song really calls for it. There are a few things that jump out to my ear. The first thing is the bass, it is much louder and more up front than all of the other instruments, to my ears it sounds like it is sharing the spotlight with the vox and all the other instrumentation is pushed back and lower in volume. I think your kick also doesn't lock in with the bass guitar as it lack some punch. I agree that maybe some sample layering or more aggressive processing with eq and comps, maybe multiple would help there. But if you brought the bass down, added a bit more attack to it to let it cut some more (i did notice in the raw tracks that the bass had a ton of pick noise that was very hard to tame, so I understand the lack of attack) On the vox, I like them they suit the song IMO,I would have liked a little more width or dimension on them in the chorus. The guitars sound really good, just too low in the mix for my tastes, which again may only be casue the bass is overpowering. So tell me how was it working with ARC?? I am sure everyone wants to know.

[JoshERTW]

As always the last thing I change is what get's picked on first - I pumped up the bass a couple DB just before mixing down this morning - Overcompensating for previous months perhaps, but I felt it was an important part of the song rythmically.

I found Arc allowed me to know where my low end was at. I had been keeping it too low in the mix most of the time because it was hyped in my room. When I turn it off and switch to headphones, it sounds exactly as I was hearing it in the room now, instead of there being drastic differences between the two, and having to find some middle ground where it sounds "OK" on both systems, it now sounds the same on both when I bypass the plug and throw on the cans. I was surprised at the difference actually. Setup was a bit of a pain, and I think I should probably re-run it with a slight change to my room configuration.

For example, with my current setup I've taken down the gobo's I used to use for direct reflection absorption and let ARC do that work - I imagine putting them back up and calibrating again would give me even better results, especially because they live behind the right speaker when not in use, and so ARC is doing different compensation between L/R, and if I make both sides of the room even (i.e. by unfolding the gobo's and putting them up on either side of me), it won't have to work as hard. It might make no difference at all though, who knows.

[bobbybovine]

As always the last thing I change is what get's picked on first - I pumped up the bass a couple DB just before mixing down this morning - Overcompensating for previous months perhaps, but I felt it was an important part of the song rythmically.

The lesson here is to not second guess your gut feeling.

I found Arc allowed me to know where my low end was at. I had been keeping it too low in the mix most of the time because it was hyped in my room. When I turn it off and switch to headphones, it sounds exactly as I was hearing it in the room now, instead of there being drastic differences between the two, and having to find some middle ground where it sounds "OK" on both systems, it now sounds the same on both when I bypass the plug and throw on the cans. I was surprised at the difference actually. Setup was a bit of a pain, and I think I should probably re-run it with a slight change to my room configuration.

Cool.

For example, with my current setup I've taken down the gobo's I used to use for direct reflection absorption and let ARC do that work - I imagine putting them back up and calibrating again would give me even better results, especially because they live behind the right speaker when not in use, and so ARC is doing different compensation between L/R, and if I make both sides of the room even (i.e. by unfolding the gobo's and putting them up on either side of me), it won't have to work as hard. It might make no difference at all though, who knows.

That would be the smart thing. As with anything, if it doesn't have to make drastic changes it will probably give you a much better result. Symmetry should be of utmost importance.

[wireman957]

Man, I hear you completely on the second-guessing-yourself, last minute change thing. I did the same re: the toms this month and it's bitten me in the ass a little. I thinned them out from where I had them for days and I'm hearing about it.

I have to agree with BB that the bass is a little dominant, especially in the context of the kick/bass relationship. The bass tone itself is great - you handled the transient noises beautifully - it's just a little too loud tending to overpower the drums and guitars.

I think your vocals sound really nice. Full, open and always audible, never really harsh, and there were some sibilance issues to overcome here. Like you, I tried the backwards compression this month and I found it helped in some areas but not so much in others.

Your drums have a nice open room sound which I enjoyed and your guitars are well-defined and clear, never sounding thin at all - still thick and meaty.

With the exception of the bass being a bit loud, this is a great mix. Like I've read from you before, if only there was a 4-1/2 stars button! Great to hear you get this one in this month. How's your project up north going. Done tracking? I'd love to hear it some time soon!

[Egavas]

Hey Josh,

All I say do is echo what Bob and Jeff have said. As a bass player I like a good strong bass sound and think you've got it sounding sweet
it just needs pulling down a bit to form a relationship with the kick.

Good job on the whole

Edd

[TopBobSecret]

[QUOTE=JoshERTW;364774]As always the last thing I change is what get's picked on first - I pumped up the bass a couple DB just before mixing down this morning - Overcompensating for previous months perhaps, but I felt it was an important part of the song rythmically.

Josh,
I've had this same experience!
I have bassy headphones or speakers with too many variables. It sounds good to me, but I overcompensate a bit at the last minute and hastily post. Whammo! There's the old RR gang of "golden ears" to tell you where EXACTLY you've gone wrong and how this would be a killer mix IF you didn't do that last stupid thing. OK, this may be straying now from common experience.
So, on my bassy headphones it did sound quite that. Not too bad, but could be "crisper" or more focused on frequency. It was a bit muddy, here.
This is the hard part, isn't it? Making our songs sound good no matter what system you play them in; MP3-4, iPods, computer speakers, car stereos, CD's, TV's, movies with supersonic THX surround sound. Ugh!
I like your mix, overall. I am taking a similar approach with the acou. guit. and the ending. I swear I am not copying, just "great minds thinking alike, trying to dethrone fHumble fHingaz"!!!
May the Force be with us all!
-TopBob

[cptfiasco]

expect to get into the sweet sixteen again, the only thing standing out is the bass "woofs" considerably at times. You kept the energy up, but also eased off some when needed...thank you for not making this a constant onslaught. this song can become UNdynamic real quick...good luck

[Ewout]

Hey Josh, great mix. I hear what you mean with the bass and second guessing yourself. In my mix I did the same and those things that I adjusted turned out the wrong way.....
As a drummer, I think that the drums sound great, but could be more upfront. Maybe the bass pushes them back...

Cheers,

Ewout

[Bigduggieface]

I like this mix a lot, Josh. It really emphasizes the melodic content of the song.

The vocals are absolutely perfect. The dynamics and harmonic content is spot on.

Yeah, the bass is a bit dominant. Take it down a couple of dB and it will allow the finely mixed drums to come through.

I would only complain about the rough intro and outro. They seem a bit neglected with all of the hiss and noise going on. The arbitrary delay on the guitars at the end seem unnecessary.

Love the mix though. The best vocal I've heard yet.

[Radukku]

oh wow, indeed!
Feel the energy from the very start..and the wall of sound suits my...ear buds just fine!
I think you nailed perfectly the vocals from any aspect they come nice and clean all throughout the song...
Even if I do agree with the other posters about the bass overpowering the kick a little, here and there,I like it (I have a weakness for bass anyway...) it is a good tone!
But I still have to say that I miss the electric rhythm in the verse (although it seems it's becoming more and more of a choice in other mixes too...) and i find that you tried to compensate that (dynamically of course) with the bass (acoustic alone can't cut it IMHO...I don't think it was 'designed' to do it anywhere in the song )
Solo is spot on and is the only 'place' in the song that I don't miss the electrics (again bass supplies the needed backup quite well!)
So you say that ARC is a good investment and makes a difference for the better...I mix on the phones exclusively too because of the room and feel like trying it (but it's 200 bucks or so...)
Superb job (like always) Josh!
And thanks for sharing it with us!!

[JoshERTW]

Hey guys, thanks for the kind words and critiques.

"great minds thinking alike, trying to dethrone fHumble fHingaz"!!! May the Force be with us all!

I'm gonna put my money on hell freezing over first

As a drummer, I think that the drums sound great, but could be more upfront. Maybe the bass pushes them back...

I think you're on the money - I'll probably drop that bass a bit and post the corrected one after the contest ends, or on soundcloud or my website or something, I'm pretty happy with it and will probably use it as a portfolio piece if Brando and the band are down with that.

I would only complain about the rough intro and outro. They seem a bit neglected with all of the hiss and noise going on. The arbitrary delay on the guitars at the end seem unnecessary.

I tried to do a lo-fi intro thing, I just couldn't get any of my creative idea's for the start and end to work well enough that they were worth keeping. The random delay thing was kind of a last minute addition - I still felt I needed to do something there, and I still kind of like that little touch. To each their own I guess

So you say that ARC is a good investment and makes a difference for the better...I mix on the phones exclusively too because of the room and feel like trying it (but it's 200 bucks or so...)

I found it to be worthwhile - I'm pretty strapped for cash these days and $200 was a big deal for me too - I contacted IK directly and they gave me a bit of a discount ($180 after shipping etc.) - Their quote happened to be exactly what I had in my paypal so I took a chance, and I think it panned out. Sadly there's no demo, but for me, it was a good investment. Now I can put off room treatment for an extremely long time

[IMF OnSite Recording]

I am hearing a lot of low\low mid buildup in the bass and toms. Very boomy. Take your master bus EQ and high pass down past 300 and listen. If that sounds like a bunch of mud and noise - which it does - this means you have to go back and clean up the low end to make it more separated. There's a war going on there and noone is really winning. First, make sure you solo your kick and bass and do this to see where they sit. If you have to, you may have to do some EQing on both those tracks to get them to fit together, as well as a few db on a sidechain for the bass with the kick feeding it. Here's a good explaination on that:
Pensado's Place: Working with Bass and Kick Drums

You may want to pan your toms a bit more because its clouding up the center a bit. Also, you could sweep on each one at a tight Q in the low areas around 100-250hz and find those icky muddy frequencies and pull some out.

You could bring the bass down slightly as well. If you high pass the guitars around 150 without them getting thin sounding, and pan them a bit more while bringing them up in the chorus, you will get some more clarity in the middle and width overall when the chorus comes in.

Vocals aren't bad, they're pretty consistant - I think its more the other tracks that could be getting in the way of them.

Pretty good mix overall

[JoshERTW]

Take your master bus EQ and high pass down past 300 and listen. If that sounds like a bunch of mud and noise - which it does - this means you have to go back and clean up the low end to make it more separated.

Cool idea, I've never thought of trying that master EQ thing, will have to check out the pensado link too - sidechaining is one of those things I've never really played with much, although I know I should probably just dig into it so it's in my toolbox.

The main problem is I boosted the bass at the last minute before mixing down and I probably should have been more diligent with it - no bass automation like I usually do, I even split the tracks into one thats LPF'd at 250 and one that's HPF'd at 250 so I can adjust the "meat" and "potatoes" separately so to speak. Not this time - had to submit when I did or I wasn't going to get another chance - I'm procrastinating right now just responding on here

You may want to pan your toms a bit more because its clouding up the center a bit. Also, you could sweep on each one at a tight Q in the low areas around 100-250hz and find those icky muddy frequencies and pull some out.

You could bring the bass down slightly as well. If you high pass the guitars around 150 without them getting thin sounding, and pan them a bit more while bringing them up in the chorus, you will get some more clarity in the middle and width overall when the chorus comes in.

I do have the toms pretty close to middle (30/15/-30 or something), I don't like toms that sound like the drummer has 8 foot long arms so I'm wary of really spreading them outside of about 40% or so, but guitars are pretty wide already - I could probably still push some of the more centred ones out a bit more, with 12 guitar tracks or whatever there was it was tough to find space in the stereo spectrum for all of them without having some of them stomp all over each other. I do have the guitars HP'd at about 150 I think - it was either that or 120 where it started to thin out on this one.

Thanks for the critique!

[belleym]

Really clear mix without any frills. I can hear all the details of all the instrumentation during every section. Vocals sit real nice on top. Just think the mix is a little bright. The acoustics sound like they were EQ'd with a "smiley" setting as I hear a lot of string noise and percussive attack over actual notes. I'm also getting a sense the snare and kick are panned off center. This could be a result that the overhead mics had different levels on the provided tracks and needed to be tweaked. Since you have a clean mix throughout, the delay at the very end really sticks out. Great job!

[willj]

Hey dude! Nice work here man. This is the first comment after finishing my own mix and its always a shocker to hear somebody elses interpretation(?)<< i think i spelled that right. no spell check.

There is a lot seperation to where i can here everything well and levels are all pretty complimentary to each other. Its not hard to pick out an instrument in this mix.

I know youre in a new mixing situation and as with anything else ,it takes time to learn, so i cant be too brutal on ya. I think the thing here is your snare drum. Its such an important element in driving this tune that its where a good bit of your focus maybe should have gone. However it needed to be handled, whether you had to sample it, or bury yrself in your room for 10 months

I think your vocals are spot on bro. You may be a little bass heavy, but yr electric rythm guitars are dead nuts for the way they need to co-exist with vocals. I think with the bass backed down and a the low end under a bit more control, the vox and guitars work really well together.

Nice work man.

[drummer67]

I think bringing the bass down a bit would be a good idea. Like the drums, toms have a bit of mud too them just a bit. I also am interested in the ARC for my room is not ideal. I tend too mix alot with headphones and I think 200 bucks is a bit but the cost of treating my room will cost a lot more.
nice job man

[Stan_Halen]

Hey Josh - I liked how you handled the vocals on this. They come through the mix very well. I too noticed the bass first thing as being overly loud, and it also seems to have a long sustain/release which makes it even more prominent. There is a lot going on in the low-mids to my ears: bass, toms, acoustic gtr (kind of the opposite of the "spectrum gap" I seem to have on my mix). I especially notice that when the lead guitars come in, and your lead guitars sound pushed very much in to the high-mid frequencies, which causes a contrast. Did you HP those more than your other guitars, or did you do some special processing on them? They almost sound like they were pitched up an octave or something.
You brought the OH's out nicely, and ditching the HiHat track was probably a wise move.

[JoshERTW]

Hey guys thanks for the Comments:

Will: I did slack off a bit on the snare - I went as far as to manually increase the volume on the little rolls so they were'nt totally buried, and slapped some parallel comp. on them, but that's about it. I might get trigger one of these days, I have that SSD4 Essentials now, but its too late. Cubase lets me convert hits to MIDI (velocity sensitive too) so there may not be a point in getting trigger, but now I at least have a couple samples that don't sound like my Great Dane shitting on the carpet of my studio at 4:00 AM - a wonderful thing to wake up to, and an accurate interpretation of the stock drum samples that come with Cubase.

D69: I took a chance on ARC and I think it paid off. This is my first mix with it and it's already improved some issues I was having before, though clearly I overcorrected a little bit.

Stan (almost wrote Satan there, force of habit): I def. overcompensated due to the "gap" last month, didn't want to screw that up this time. I actually HP'd my rhythm @ 120 and leads at 150. Zero compression on the electric guitars, you're just hearing the natural stuff in the tracks. I've got a stereo delay on there pushed out to 100% with the nearest lead guitar @ 85% and all guitars sent to the delays and panned opposite at low volume. It keeps a lot of the harmonic content in there that you might otherwise lose (probably from comb filtering or general smearing). I can't really explain it, but I knew what I liked and I kept it in there. I didn't even do much EQ, just a cut at around 4k to get out some unwanted grit and I think I might have scooped out something around 1k to let the vocals have that spot.

I updated my mix, will upload when I have a chance - put it on Soundcloud but Soundcloud seems to boost the Great Dane defecation tone substantially - on all instruments. Never realized until now how BAD stuff really sounds on there...

[danmanisa]

I was in the same boat (surprise surprise ) regarding my snare, and I used samples for my kick because it just wasn't working. Same here with guitar harmonies too.....

Typing as I listen, the bass feels a little strong. I don't necessarily think it's too loud, but it is very much centered on the lows. I would look to reduce a little more there and bring in a little more attack. This could be done by duplicating the track and treating it differently (high passing and major compression for example). I had three bass tracks. One was the supplied track that was moderately compressed, one had a fairly bright distortion for verses and one had a more fuzzy overdrive for choruses. This helped the bite get through.
Everything else, to me, is pretty much spot on!
Your verses utilize the acoustics really well! I couldn't see how to use them there, now I know. Vocals sound great, nice and bright but with enough depth. Toms sound cool too, although I don't hear the one off hits as much as the rolls. Very, very cool mix from you Josh, with the bass being my only real criticism.

[heygermandude]

I'd agree with the bass being too up front for my taste. The vocals were nicely fit into the mix, and I can't necessarily say "USE MORE COMPRESSION/PARALLEL COMPRESSION/PUNCHY GENERATOR THINGY" because I don't know what you used.. But I still felt there was a lack of something that didn't bring the mix "to my attention."

If I could only really say (from a blind.. ear?), parallel compressed drums.. all the way. And I do apologize if you have already said that you did/didn't use that. I didn't read the other comments!

[The-Zeronaut]

sounds good but the bass sounds almost like a sine wave :S

[JoshERTW]

Hey guys - I did parallel comp. the drums, snare volume was probably just a bit too low and kick was fighting with that bass

[The-Zeronaut]

listening to it again i would say that the lead vocals need a little de-essing
the "SSS" are killing me when i hear it on my headphones
otherwise good solid mix

[WolfeSoundPDX]

Hey Josh,

Sounds pretty good to me! I like the sound of the hats that you achieved through the OH mic. I vote that the vocals sound good with the backward compression on this song. I kinda wish I would have tried that this time. I have to agree on the bass sentiment with everyone else. I do think it is an important driver to this song though, so I like that you made it somewhat dominant. Cool Mix!