Hello all

I recently finished mixing some tracks for a friend of mine who is doing an EP. This is the 2nd official professional project I have done. I feel the only way I get better is by learning from the mistakes of my previous work and fixing it for next time. About 6 months ago I gave you guys my bands songs to listen to, and one of the most useful critique I got from sharing that with you guys is that the music and all instruments were too loud, and that I needed to learn how to balance the instruments better. So that (amongst others) is something new I tried for this project.

Please listen and tell me what you think I could improve upon next time. I'd really appreciate it.

Also note
1. This is not mastered. I want you to hear my work and not my work and the mastering engineers work.
2. All recording, playing, singing etc is done by the artist. I only recorded and mixed him.

I thought I'd give you 2 songs for a more general idea. Without further delay:

https://app.box.com/s/0zsutt4js31dua0tzxbd

https://app.box.com/s/rwprk6sw0d6mss97dum5

hey adrian

i'll give your tracks a listen. i'll do so over the next day or two and give you my feedback ? .

While on subject....

Any suggestions for simple mixing and mastering?

Not too expensive and it's usually just acoustic and vocals, sometimes some percussion and bass added.

Will give it a listen on the tab Adrian...No soundcard on PC at work (it's in a white enclosure, that should say something...

I listened last night and am listening again now as I type. Headphones only (sorry! Can't be helped ATM).

Mostly great. Some quibbles with the performance and production, but that's not your baby, so I'll leave those alone...

Few thoughts though:

Maybe a little dry (particularly Victor) and needing some additional ambience (particularly in the high end). Basically needs some "glue" to bind everything together. Maybe a bit more reverb on things with lots of high frequency content or a synth pad.

Hats are just a bit too loud - might work if you bring up the cutoff on your highpass filter to thin them out a bit instead.

Snare is quite dull. Might be a touch overcompressed. In fact sounds like the whole drum buss is a little overcompressed too.

Other than those few things, it's great.

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: I listened last night and am listening again now as I type. Headphones only (sorry! Can't be helped ATM).

Mostly great. Some quibbles with the performance and production, but that's not your baby, so I'll leave those alone...

Few thoughts though:

Maybe a little dry (particularly Victor) and needing some additional ambience (particularly in the high end). Basically needs some "glue" to bind everything together. Maybe a bit more reverb on things with lots of high frequency content or a synth pad.

Hats are just a bit too loud - might work if you bring up the cutoff on your highpass filter to thin them out a bit instead.

Snare is quite dull. Might be a touch overcompressed. In fact sounds like the whole drum buss is a little overcompressed too.

Other than those few things, it's great.

Sorry for delayed response. I was preoccupied. But I have digested all that has been said, well, by Alan atleast haha.

These are really good critiques. I guess I thought that the mastering engineer would add more reverb so it wasn't necessary for me to do so, but I think I have the wrong mindset there. I should make the song as perfect as it can be, and not do less so as to let the Mastering engineer do what I think he might do.

Also the drums. Upon listening, I agree, the snare sounds dull. I'm proud of the kick. I used parallel compression on the Kick, snare, bass and toms. How would you recommend I bring life to the snare? Add a saturation/distortion plugin maybe to give some added harmonics?

Nitebob wrote: While on subject....

Any suggestions for simple mixing and mastering?

Not too expensive and it's usually just acoustic and vocals, sometimes some percussion and bass added.

Are you asking for tips or people who can do it for you?

Adrian Rogowski wrote: Also the drums. Upon listening, I agree, the snare sounds dull. I'm proud of the kick. I used parallel compression on the Kick, snare, bass and toms. How would you recommend I bring life to the snare? Add a saturation/distortion plugin maybe to give some added harmonics?

Listen to the raw track, sans fx. If it has the highs pre-processing, you will want to adjust your EQ/comp accordingly. If not, then it's a tracking problem and you'll have to jump through hoops to try and create them. Distortion, pitch shifting, EQ and enhancers are some of the things you'll have to play around with to see what works.