I'd like mixing/mastering tips for this track

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Hi.
I'm finishing a track which i like and value a lot (mostly 'cause the memories: the original idea is more tha 20 years old), and i'd like to mix/master it at the best i can (i'll use only mix for both the terms).
But i'm not so educated, so skilled (no golden ear, sorry) and not so equipped (my best gear to check my mix is my car, where i compare what i do with some song i like of the same genre) and i could use some tip :help: .
This is a ...rock instrumental track, so i'm aiming at a general sound between Toto (for crispness) and Steve Vai (for the ... "weight" of the guitars) of the 90's (Steve Vai's "Passion and Warfare" is my Holy Grail).

The fun fact is that i'm a keyboard player, so everything in this track is made by virtual instruments, guitars and amps emulators/modelers, sampled drums.

Anyway, I want to aim high and get the best i can do, just for the joy of it :)
This is the link to this track. It's unfinished (i still have to clear some sections, fine tuning some modulations, de-patternize some drum parts, etc) but the sounds and the instruments will not change, so why not trying to make it sounding good in the meanwwhile?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7mnp1tvgexgxi ... 4.mp3?dl=0

- EDIT - clean url so you can copy/paste if the previous don't works

Code: Select all

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7mnp1tvgexgxioa/Heartbreaker%204.mp3?dl=0

My main problem (but i'm sure you'll find many more) is the "booming/boxing" feel given by the sinth bass, the pads, and the lower notes of the distorted guitars. I've struggled a lot with the FLStudio EQ2 trying to reserve to each of them a space in the low frequencies, but as the tracks become clear, it looses ... weight, that "massive" feeling...this is the best i've got (i recon it is still in the "boomy" side). The master track is dry (i have tried something with Ferric TDS but it makes the highest frequencies -mostly the cymbals- sounding like there's a phaser/flanger on it... like some old cassette tape).

Well, thanks to any suggestion, help, and feedback you'll want to share with me. If you like to suggest some VST effects, pls try to stay in the free/cheap zone :wink:
Last edited by Parduz on Tue Feb 21, 2017 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ensoniq SQ1, Korg Wavestation A/D

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I couldn't play your track for some strange reason. But anyway, giving someone else advice isn't that simple. It's only you who knows what the track you made want it to sound like. If 100 people comes here and give you advice you will get 100 different advices. And forget about mastering until you know how to mix your music good. A bad or mediocre mix will not benefit with a bad or mediocre mastering. Remember the net is full of bad advices. Learn from pro's instead. Find mixing courses from well known mixers and genre(s) your into. It will cost but it will be worth it.

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I think the main issue is reverb - too much!

What probably sounds good on each instrument individually is swamping things as a whole. Try dialing back on it and use shorter decay times , and crucially high-pass it above 600hz as in a busy mix thats where your boom/mush will be coming from.

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Well firstly,

It would help considerable (and no disrespect meant) if we could hear it. Your link isn't playing. (not your fault)

Secondly, when mixing and mastering the first thing you should do is to turn down the volume on each track so that ALL of the parts can still be heard (if barely). For this it helps to use a decibel meter to ensure your mix is at most -5 to -6dB. This gives you headroom to tweak the track without causing distortion as well as preventing the raw sound from "clipping" which means going above unity (unity is another term for 0dB). You can always raise the volume later by normalizing to 0dB. I usually use Audacity for that, actually. It would help to know what program you're using, though, most DAWs are pretty much the same in the most basic sense. They'll have a limiter, at least one compressor and some other tools for mastering. Firstly, maybe consider signing up for a free soundcloud (because it's only one track) I'd suggest making it a private track so that only people you share the link with can hear it. For anyone to help with a track we have to be able to hear it. Music is kinda rigid in that area haha
Nothing satisfies like a song that makes you feel alive or in another place and time

TH!S EDM

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For PC owners that are not so network savy;
- right click on embedded player's URL link then select 'open link in new tab'. or;
- click on this link;
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7mnp1tvgexgxi ... reaker%204.

I agree with Donkey Tugger above.
I dloaded the track so I can listen to it and mess with it on my off-line DAW. I'll post my results here.
....................Don`t blame me for 'The Roots', I just live here. :x
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Yeah, I figured out how to listen after I posted the reply. (Figures)
I listened to it last night, and noticed what you were talking about. I've had that problem before, myself (too much bass taking up the headroom) and when I encountered it I just turned the volume of one or two of the bass instruments down a tad. I'll agree, however, that it sounds more like an issue with reverb...
Nothing satisfies like a song that makes you feel alive or in another place and time

TH!S EDM

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firstly, reduce reverb.
it can be about 5db louder and there is a dip between the 500hz- 5khz freq bands that makes
the overall tone unbalanced.
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Thanks guys.

Link not playing:
Sorry, i saw the "play" button and i did'nt check if it was working.
Here it is a tweaked one:
https://soundcloud.com/fabiocalzolari/h ... -6/s-Ywk8d

-6db:
Yep, that's what i've done.

Daw:
FLStudio, but think as you did'nt know it :). I like to avoid "internal" effects and use free effect plugins so i can migrate the whole project (saved as midifile) to whatever else i want.
I have not "rendered" (freezed?) any of the single VST tracks to audio, so i can do whatever tweak you may suggest without going to "wave editing".

Reverb:
Found unwanted reverb on the synth bass patches, which now are off.
Tuned down guitars delays and reverb until i begun to miss the "space" and "distance" i want to have, also raised the reverb Hi-pass filters frequencies.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/571l5qvye1ssz ... 6%20EQ.png
These are the current EQ settings for the guitar, synth and bass bus.
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Ensoniq SQ1, Korg Wavestation A/D

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I saw you mention when you Eq'd things became thin, watch out with sharp high cuts like that as they cut away a lot of information often the fundamental frequency that can lead to thin sounding mixes. Also be gentle with the bell type cuts/boost's as things will start to sound unnatural when going overboard.
"People are stupid" Gegard Mousasi.

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I hope you don't mind, but when annode said he was going to have a mess about with it, I thought I'd have a quick tinker as well (to your original big reverb version)...

I'm no mixing genius by any means but I've done a quite a few eq tweaks, added just a touch of stereo enhancement, some quite aggressive overall mix compression (probably gone overboard.. :hihi: ) to try and get the drums to punch a bit more, a bit of compression on just the low end to tighten it up, used Nova to dynamically lower the cymbals a bit, and put just a bit of tape saturation on it before a bit of limiting at the end. I think I've definitely made it more bombastic if nothing else. :lol:

http://www.bennyleeds7.myfreeola.uk/heartbreaker.mp3

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donkey tugger wrote:I hope you don't mind, but when annode said he was going to have a mess about with it, I thought I'd have a quick tinker as well (to your original big reverb version)...

I'm no mixing genius by any means but I've done a quite a few eq tweaks, added just a touch of stereo enhancement, some quite aggressive overall mix compression (probably gone overboard.. :hihi: ) to try and get the drums to punch a bit more, a bit of compression on just the low end to tighten it up, used Nova to dynamically lower the cymbals a bit, and put just a bit of tape saturation on it before a bit of limiting at the end. I think I've definitely made it more bombastic if nothing else. :lol:

http://www.bennyleeds7.myfreeola.uk/heartbreaker.mp3
Well, i can't thank you enough for the time you spent on it.
I'm at office, so i will listen to it only this evening (right now is 11:16 AM, here). Meanwhile (or when you can), would you like to post some screenshots of the various effect settings, perhaps also telling me the reasoning behind them? So i can try the settings to me and learn.
Ensoniq SQ1, Korg Wavestation A/D

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shroom81 wrote:I saw you mention when you Eq'd things became thin, watch out with sharp high cuts like that as they cut away a lot of information often the fundamental frequency that can lead to thin sounding mixes. Also be gentle with the bell type cuts/boost's as things will start to sound unnatural when going overboard.
(i'm replying to explain why i did that and to learn why it could be wrong, not to argue ;) )
The "bell" cut on the bass is 'cause there's a particular note that resonates a lot.... it really bumps out louder than anything else, both in my car (sigh) and in my earphones.
The high freq cuts on the guitars and the synths are to cut off unwanted noises: the guitar amps-stomps emulator generates a thin "hiss", and the sinth choir patch has an audible "blow" which perhaps could be useful in trance music to generate "air" but that i don't need here.

The guitar low cut is my biggest problem: it is still boomy, but if i rise the cut frequencies the guitars become less ... massive... becomes thin.
Synths low cut is somewhat similar: i need the lows in the intro (until the song really start) but not so much after it. It's a bit easier 'cause i just avoid to play the lower notes after the intro. Still i like to have some of them... again, without them the songs sounds thin (but here it is possible that i'm too used to hear the track in the way it is right now...)
The Bass cut is just to leave room for the kick alone, without muting the lower (tonic) note played.
Ensoniq SQ1, Korg Wavestation A/D

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Nice one Donkey!
I like the verb in it maybe better then the clean now. :lol:
Listening on these small PC speakers here, it sounds mighty fine for an mp3 mastering job.
Just for fun i'll try a version too...only i'll need to go to the dark side to make mine anywhere as interesting. Initially I was going to mess with it in order to see where I thought it might be going wrong.
One kick ass track Parduz. :D
....................Don`t blame me for 'The Roots', I just live here. :x
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Parduz wrote:
donkey tugger wrote:I hope you don't mind, but when annode said he was going to have a mess about with it, I thought I'd have a quick tinker as well (to your original big reverb version)...

I'm no mixing genius by any means but I've done a quite a few eq tweaks, added just a touch of stereo enhancement, some quite aggressive overall mix compression (probably gone overboard.. :hihi: ) to try and get the drums to punch a bit more, a bit of compression on just the low end to tighten it up, used Nova to dynamically lower the cymbals a bit, and put just a bit of tape saturation on it before a bit of limiting at the end. I think I've definitely made it more bombastic if nothing else. :lol:

http://www.bennyleeds7.myfreeola.uk/heartbreaker.mp3
Well, i can't thank you enough for the time you spent on it.
I'm at office, so i will listen to it only this evening (right now is 11:16 AM, here). Meanwhile (or when you can), would you like to post some screenshots of the various effect settings, perhaps also telling me the reasoning behind them? So i can try the settings to me and learn.
Well, I'm on FL as well so I can post the file. There were only 3 paid for plug-ins I used so I've done another version (which sounds substantially the same) substituting these as follows;

Samplemagic Boost - TDR Kotelnikov
TB Reelbus - Ferric TDS
TB eq - Fruity Parametric eq 2

The other ones are;

TDR Nova
A1 Stereo Control
Fruity Multiband Compressor
Boot Eq MK2
Son EQ
Baxter EQ
Limiter no 6
TLS Maximizer - you can still get it here - http://hem.bredband.net/tbtaudio/archive/archive.htm. Old but still my favourite limiter.

They should all be in the KVR database if you haven't got them already, and I think that SonEq is the only one you have to register an account for - well worth the hassle!

Here's the zipped FL file;

http://www.bennyleeds7.myfreeola.uk/hea ... r-free.zip

I'll write some notes on the settings, but would just add now that a lot of the eq stuff especially, you'd normally doing on the individual tracks, so wouldn't usually need this much processing on the master!

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annode wrote:Nice one Donkey!
I like the verb in it maybe better then the clean now. :lol:
Listening on these small PC speakers here, it sounds mighty fine for an mp3 mastering job.
Just for fun i'll try a version too...only i'll need to go to the dark side to make mine anywhere as interesting. Initially I was going to mess with it in order to see where I thought it might be going wrong.
One kick ass track Parduz. :D
Cheers! You wouldn't start from there, as they say. But as you put it, it's a good track so it made it easy to work on - some great programming of the guitar parts; I can usually pick the faked ones, but if Parduz hadn't have said I wouldn't have known. :o

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