Willj of August

[willj]

What a hell of a lot of fun. I hoped this this tune would turn out a little better than it did, but a closer look revealed A LOT of tracking issues. Some i was willing to fix and other i just didnt have time for.

I ended up having to sample the snare drum because it was the main thing holding this mix back from sounding good IMO. Everything else is the original tracks that came with the download.

Creatively, a couple guys beat me to the punch with the same ideas that i had, so in effort to NOT copy another mix, i had to roll it back a bit and its not exactly what i wanted.

Thanks for puttin it up Rennick!

[fHumble fHingaz]

Great mix, Will - love the rhythm guitar sounds! You've really given this a hard-rock edge... very cool.... your snare choices are always controversial, but I love this one!

Wow! just got to the breakdown with the sidestick, then the "stolen overdub" part - GENIUS! That made me smile...Awesome.

This mix has so much energy & excitement, I almost forgot about critiquing - that's great...

ok, a couple of nits...

The bass on this track is a mongrel - it drives the track & it needs to be prominent, but it's full of ugly low mids that really need some taming. Same with the toms - both of them add up to a "perfect low-mid mudstorm". For the most part you've handled this really well... If I'm super-critical, I would say that the bass needs a little more taming in that area.

The lead guitar bits at the end are mis-timed (I think it was an editing error, rather than player error) - they needed to be re-aligned (I think Brando mentioned this, but it might have slipped by some).

Those things are simple fixes.

I LOVE this mix - It's gonna be VERY hard to beat - Top job!

[wireman957]

Nice, Will! Love the bass/drums/vocal beginning to the last verse! Obviously we had similar goals with regard to the vocal harmonies, so I had to smile when I heard those! You went a little further than I did, though, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about the doubled vocal in the choruses so I'll listen again.

Honestly, the only "technical" observation I can make is I feel there is a bit of a spectral gap between the bass and guitars. I felt as though you could have beefed up the low mids and volume just a tad on the bass, or used less high-pass and volume on the guitars to fill that void and glue the instruments together a little more. As it is, the guitars are a little overpowering relative to the bass and vocals (I'm a guitar player and never thought I'd find myself saying something like that...border line blasphemy!)

Really nice energetic mix, though! Another fine one from you - not exactly unexpected...

[willj]

Great mix, Will - love the rhythm guitar sounds! You've really given this a hard-rock edge... very cool.... your snare choices are always controversial, but I love this one!

Wow! just got to the breakdown with the sidestick, then the "stolen overdub" part - GENIUS! That made me smile...Awesome.

This mix has so much energy & excitement, I almost forgot about critiquing - that's great...

ok, a couple of nits...

The bass on this track is a mongrel - it drives the track & it needs to be prominent, but it's full of ugly low mids that really need some taming. Same with the toms - both of them add up to a "perfect low-mid mudstorm". For the most part you've handled this really well... If I'm super-critical, I would say that the bass needs a little more taming in that area.

The lead guitar bits at the end are mis-timed (I think it was an editing error, rather than player error) - they needed to be re-aligned (I think Brando mentioned this, but it might have slipped by some).

Those things are simple fixes.

I LOVE this mix - It's gonna be VERY hard to beat - Top job!

Thanks dude! always nice to get you out of the way and it seems like yr always first.

The bass on this track is a mongrel - it drives the track & it needs to be prominent, but it's full of ugly low mids that really need some taming.

I hear you dude. I have a little bit of time wrapped up in this mix, and A LOT of it was wresting with that damn bass guitar. Meh hell, MOST of it. In the end i ended up doing nothing to it! that really pissed me off I tried everything. Even low shelving off 18db of bass Nothing - is what sounded the best IMO. OK i did do a just a bit of clip automation. Still not what im looking for.

Thanks for your thoughts dude.

[paul999]

Wicked mix dude. Loved the break down as well. Your sounds are fantastic!. You get top marks from me.

[willj]

Wicked mix dude. Loved the break down as well. Your sounds are fantastic!. You get top marks from me.

Hey thanks kid! Im surprised you havent found time to do one of these. I know it isw hard for a guy in your shoes, but i figured youd jump in sooner or later.

Thanks for taking the time. It means a lot.

[paul999]

Yeah march until now has been brutal. I am attempting to slow down and just returned from an 18 day holiday. I did do a mix of this tune but solely for selfish shoot out reasons. I did not do all the final stuff like automation and fixes that it would take to be a contender in this and have not entered it. In fact I am hearing some harmonies and parts in yours that I never heard in the original files. I sorted things super quick and may have missed them. You really did a great job here.

I thought your mix was wet enough. This was were I struggled. I just kept plastering on the fx and layers.lol

[willj]

Yeah march until now has been brutal. I am attempting to slow down and just returned from an 18 day holiday. I did do a mix of this tune but solely for selfish shoot out reasons. I did not do all the final stuff like automation and fixes that it would take to be a contender in this and have not entered it. In fact I am hearing some harmonies and parts in yours that I never heard in the original files. I sorted things super quick and may have missed them. You really did a great job here.

I thought your mix was wet enough. This was were I struggled. I just kept plastering on the fx and layers.lol

Thanks man. I assumed this song would be easier than it was. Its NOT. I have some time here, and some aspects i just never got, so i can understand how that would NOT work with your schedule

In fact I am hearing some harmonies and parts in yours that I never heard in the original files.

Half assed, offline clip processing, with a virtual stomp box not close to perfect, just enough to break the monotony.

The bummer about turning these mixes in closer to the end of the month is hearing your creative enhancements being used before youve had a chance to

Thanks a ton for the comments man.

[JoshERTW]

Nice work man, those rhythm guitars are murderous - how they hell did you get those to growl like that?

All in all you've infused a solid "heavy" vibe to this song, which didn't exist in the provided tracks as downloaded - I'm always blown away by that ability by some of the senior members on here, maybe it's just lack of experience with "remix" kind of work but I always have trouble pushing mixes in my own direction, unless the song happens to coincide reasonably close to my vision - I usually can get the tracks to do what "they" want to do well enough (if that makes sense).

All in all some really solid production decisions too, the drop verse at the end, the drum solo near the beginning there, all pretty cool stuff. I think you more or less got the verse harmonies to blend, though as with Jeff's mix, I find them sounding a little too artificial for my tastes - that being said I kind of dug the "wasted Lane Stanley" harmony on the second verse.

I'd say the monster guitars are competing with the vocals a little bit frequency wise (gets kind of muddy right around 1:18), but it's not a game breaker, and a lot of people have chosen to let the vocals sort of try to edge their way out from the guitars - I think I'm one of about 2 or 3 who really went "vocal centric" on the mix, which is fair given the number of guitar tracks to play with here

Other than that the only thing that stuck out was the guitar solo repeat thing you did going into the last chorus (2:08) didn't quite sit right with me timing wise (FF touched on that one as well). If I was gonna be really picky I'd have to say that after my third listen I was feeling a bit of ear fatigue from some of the high's on the guitar parts when listening in headphones at a pretty decent volume.

Top notch dude, I have a feeling you'll be hitting the 16 again this month.

[TopBobSecret]

Willj,

Always a pleasure to hear your take, and it always tends toward the "metal" so I'm not surprised you went there.
You must have a cool harmonizer (or just mad skillz) because your additional harmonies are well done musically and not simply parallelled. Please share your secret!
I'm not too keen on the snare sample and it could have dipped when the vocals enter in all cases. At the sidestick, the loss of lows makes me go hmmm! Nice touch, and only a personal tweaking. I DO like the borrowed riff going back in to the chorus there. Timing I did notice was off a tad and I also noticed a timing issue on the original back-up vocals which came from the track alignment we were given. I moved 'em in my mix to match up better.
I'm coming after you and fHumble this month so I hope you'll be ready!! Please, have a hack at mine and try to score honestly.
-TopBob

[willj]

You must have a cool harmonizer (or just mad skillz) because your additional harmonies are well done musically and not simply parallelled. Please share your secret!

Thanks your Bobness. appreciate the in depth analysis. welp with the harmonies theyre not even close to spot on. i just wanted to break up the vocal track a little better.

Heres how i handled the harmonies- i only do it this way because its the easiest. I would never do it this way for a client unless it was giving off some sort of effect we couldnt get any other way. I would use melodyne or something similar, but most of the time when i hear the harmonies i'll always as the singer to sing it.
This is just basic clip processing. What i do is copy the vocal track, and get rid of everything except for the "harmony part to be". then i just use a guitar stomp box (because its the closest thing down my list of plugins that makes harmony and NO other reason) to select the harmonies i want. I use clip processing more often because sometimes you have to zero in on certain words. If you just threw it on the doubled track as *track processing* it would work but since you dont want a 3rd or a 4th being sang the whole time straight thru , the parts might sound a little off. I guess you could automate the fx unit if you wanted but take my word for it offline clip processing is easier and allows more accuracy.

to process a clip - cut out the words you want to process right click on the clip and apply the plugin as offline processing. This is how it works in my DAW it should be pretty similar in yours.

I'm coming after you and fHumble this month so I hope you'll be ready!!

Hell yeah man. I know you got it in ya!!

Please, have a hack at mine and try to score honestly.

Absolutely. I just wished i could get the same treatment in return. I take it as a compliment tho.

[heygermandude]

I very much enjoyed this mix. Especially the verse backup vocals. The mix has a lot of drive in it, which was great for me.

The only critique I can make is that I wasn't a fan of is that though you did a lot with making the song different from the other mixes, the song felt like it wasn't the original song anymore. And for me, if I were a part of the band I wouldn't have enjoyed that. Granted, that's what set your mix apart. But my view is strictly from the bands point of view right now.

[The-Zeronaut]

i think that the guitars and drums sound "too metal" for the song (personal opinion)
but i really liked the edits and the vocals harmonies you added

very good mix in my opinion

[willj]

But my view is strictly from the bands point of view right now.

Dude i don t care what the band thinks AT ALL and the qualuity of a persons mix has NOTHING to do with how close you think it is to what the band wants.

VERY poor comments. Keep in mind that your opinions of other peoples mixes dont matter AT ALL, and for you to come by and say that you dont think the band would like my mix is pretty childish and REALLY annoying.

[heygermandude]

[/QUOTE]and the qualuity of a persons mix has NOTHING to do with how close you think it is to what the band wants. [/QUOTE]
I didn't once knock your mix. In fact I said I very much enjoyed it.

Keep in mind that your opinions of other peoples mixes dont matter AT ALL

thats true. yet, given that I didn't knock your mix.. and that anyone can get on here and say "you're bass guitar is too muddy.. you're vocals are eq'd so terribly that they knock my head off above 8k" and other comments similar to that, i'd say what I think is still relevant. I believe a big part of this contest is to have a mind set that would ensure that you stick close to what the band would want. I don't think I'd get something to mix in my studio and then change the song to what I think is cool just to make it a good mix. Granted as you have mentioned, what I think doesn't matter. And all I said was that from their point of view I doubt they would have been happy. The mix itself is fine.

Not trying to hurt your feelings, brother.

[m24p]

Nice mix man, especially the rhythm guitars! You somehow un-cheesied them? Straight up rock! Big snare as always. I hear you about the original snare being a little weird to work with. That bottom snare track sounded bad but was needed for the sound, IMO. Or your solution of just sample replacement works.

[bobbybovine]

I think your mix is on Viagra!! Comes in hard and stays hard Nice old school metal feel you got here. Your harnmonies are cool as hell man, they sound ever so slightly evil. When the song started it felt like the was some over compression happening but once the song gets going I don't notice it. I do wish you had fixed the timing of gone gone gone, that bugs me on everyone's mix's. Sweet underdub section too. I notice you seemed to use the sloppy parts of the guitars as they enter the riffs almost as transitional elements, and although I didn't and wouldn't have done that, I don't hate it and if anything it makes the song sound more "live". The one thing I don't really like here is the end, it cuts off a bit too abrupt. Make that edit .5 seconds longer and it would be perfect. You have a solid use of panning on your guitars, and I don't hear anything out of place frequency wise, which was expected. Great mix dude!!

[willj]

Not trying to hurt your feelings, brother.

I owe you an apology for sure. You didnt hurt my feelings, but its like people find things to nit pick about, that are subjective or dont really have anything to do with the quality of the mix. sometimes it just makes you feel like they HAVE to say something derogatory before leaving just for the sake of....i dunno why. anyway i was in a rush this morning and my reply doesnt make complete sense towards the point that i was really trying to get at. yes i was annoyed and yes i was wrong to reply with the attitude, and Yes i owe you an apology, so please accept my most sincere one.

Not to beat a dead horse and not trying to be smart, i just cant think of another way to say it right now, but the possibility that the band wouldnt like my mix doesnt have much to do with what we're doing here, and in IMO its just something that souldnt be said. ya know what im tryin to say? so anyway, im over it, i hope you are too. I see by your reply, you probably never gave it another thought, so thanks for being an adult. esp after i called you childish Its not really my style to fly into somebody unless im being egged on.

[willj]

Nice mix man, especially the rhythm guitars! You somehow un-cheesied them? Straight up rock! Big snare as always. I hear you about the original snare being a little weird to work with. That bottom snare track sounded bad but was needed for the sound, IMO. Or your solution of just sample replacement works.

Thanks for lending an ear dude. Yeah, it would have been a lot of fiddling around trying to get that snare drum to fit into my mix. i dont think i could have done it at all....and the chance of hearing any snares from the bottom track to work well was....well you said it - i did it, just sample the damn thing.

Uncheesed guitars = EQ and delay and ofcourse buss compression but i dont usually factor that into the sound, althou im sure it has some effect. Thanks for your comments. I look forward to them monthly.

I think your mix is on Viagra!! Comes in hard and stays hard Nice old school metal feel you got here. Your harnmonies are cool as hell man, they sound ever so slightly evil. When the song started it felt like the was some over compression happening but once the song gets going I don't notice it. I do wish you had fixed the timing of gone gone gone, that bugs me on everyone's mix's. Sweet underdub section too. I notice you seemed to use the sloppy parts of the guitars as they enter the riffs almost as transitional elements, and although I didn't and wouldn't have done that, I don't hate it and if anything it makes the song sound more "live". The one thing I don't really like here is the end, it cuts off a bit too abrupt. Make that edit .5 seconds longer and it would be perfect. You have a solid use of panning on your guitars, and I don't hear anything out of place frequency wise, which was expected. Great mix dude!!

thanks dude. I agree about the ending, and the parts where the timing needed editing just didnt bother me. Thank you for commenting buddy!

[danmanisa]

Holy Metallica batman! (That's a good thing!!!).
As soon as your mix powered up, all I could hear was good old 'tallica rippin it up!
As usual, this is one well balanced mix! Everything is fitting perfectly. Did you grab different chorus vocals to make doubles, or is that an effect? I'm guessing the former.
That instrumental reduction arrangement (I hope you know which bit I mean) where there are minimal instruments and that crystal clear vocal, that bit is amazing. Not too sure how you thought of doing that because I sure as hell didn't see it coming.
In fact, listening again, there is lots to like in regards to arrangement here!! It's just a very interesting, yet loyal mix.
I'm 50/50 on the brightness of the guitars.... On third listen now and I am very conscious of it, but at the same time it seems ok. The verses, to me, seem a little more abrasive than the choruses and I think it is mainly due to that artificial harmonic guitar. I found it a bit distracting when mixing, and i think it pushes that element of your mix over the edge.
Other than that, I can't fault this and the feel is absolutely what this song should be about! 5 from me, well done!

[WolfeSoundPDX]

Hey Willj,

Solid mix! Gotta love the sidestick choice you made! I feel like the guitar mix is leaning to the right a little too much. Love the vocal harmonies you added! Don't love the extra (seemingly out of time) guitar part. I feel like there is a little too much upper -midrange information in the mix overall. I have really liked your mixes and I don't feel like this one is quite as good as your other entries. Very solid but not an immediate wow like I've gotten from some of your other mixes in the competition. Can't wait to hear your next mix!

[jackslab1]

Damn Will, huge drums. The kick is a little overpowering but huge. I can't really nitpick to much. Think the bass guitar could of been a little louder and the double on the vocs in the verse kinda fucked with me but that's just me. Awesome job dude

[heygermandude]

but its like people find things to nit pick about

Yeah you are right, that seems to be the typical response. And I am sorry for coming across that way, I really wasn't trying to nit pick. I imagine it's only because I've also heard the song a thousand times and spend all this time commenting on other member's work that it felt out of place hearing it so different. I didn't mean to be out of line! haha. But it's all good, everyone gets irritated every once in a while and so do I. I appreciate the apology and I hope you accept mine as well.

But honestly will, this mix is hard to beat brother. I now wish I had actually done some real work on my 2 buss to bring the dynamics of my mix up a little more now. I didn't want to over do it without real mastering. You did a great job.

[willj]

Very solid but not an immediate wow like I've gotten from some of your other mixes in the competition.

Not "wowed" by my mix this month?? Shit man, im gonna take that as the complement of all complements and run like hell before you can take it backSeriously, a cool thing to say.

Yeah, ive made some monitoring changes for this mix that should benefit me in the long run, but i struggled with a little bit right off the bat.

Needed to build a bit of intensity for the one part and just slapped those guitars in there. They dont bother me too much, nor do the other parts that were *supposed* to be fixed. Usually that kind of thinbg drives me insane. maybe i was just too consumed with my monitoring all tho they still dont bother me much.

Thanks a ton for the comments.

Damn Will, huge drums. The kick is a little overpowering but huge. I can't really nitpick to much. Think the bass guitar could of been a little louder and the double on the vocs in the verse kinda fucked with me but that's just me. Awesome job dude

Thanks for your comments Jack. means alot.

I appreciate the apology and I hope you accept mine as well.

Not that you needed to, but I absolutely do, and am gaining more respect after each post you leave. All class. If i can help you in anyway dont be afraid to ask.

[willj]

Holy Metallica batman! (That's a good thing!!!).
As soon as your mix powered up, all I could hear was good old 'tallica rippin it up!
As usual, this is one well balanced mix! Everything is fitting perfectly. Did you grab different chorus vocals to make doubles, or is that an effect? I'm guessing the former.
That instrumental reduction arrangement (I hope you know which bit I mean) where there are minimal instruments and that crystal clear vocal, that bit is amazing. Not too sure how you thought of doing that because I sure as hell didn't see it coming.
In fact, listening again, there is lots to like in regards to arrangement here!! It's just a very interesting, yet loyal mix.
I'm 50/50 on the brightness of the guitars.... On third listen now and I am very conscious of it, but at the same time it seems ok. The verses, to me, seem a little more abrasive than the choruses and I think it is mainly due to that artificial harmonic guitar. I found it a bit distracting when mixing, and i think it pushes that element of your mix over the edge.
Other than that, I can't fault this and the feel is absolutely what this song should be about! 5 from me, well done!

DanDan the mixin man! your comments always rule.

Yep i used different choruses for the doubles, and the side stick thing....well my idea was about identical to what ALove posted. So i just cut the drums as well.

I know what you said in wiremans thread, but it just bugs me. All the sudden your vision doesnt really sound like your vision. its easy to say, "i thought of it before ALove or Danman posted their mixes" but in reality its already been done and a guy needs to push himself past it. Here it worked out. i wasnt sure how much i liked that part and have had some really nice comments on it.

I do agree with what you said tho in a way. I DO want to hear your vision whether its been done or not. I go back n forth.

Thanks again for your time man. you seem to get me thinkin with some of the things you say and, (That's a good thing!!!)