Abbey Blues

[alfstone]

My comments don't mean your mix is bad, if fact it's pretty good to my ears. The things I would do (which is subjective to each listener) is to use the stereo field more to get a larger sound. Such as move the wah guitar and the main riff guitar away from one another.....one left and one right a little. The snare drum and the vocal are at different levels so either move the vocal level up or the snare down so one doesn't take away from the other. I always try to match the snare and the lead vocal or at least get them close to one another in levels. After saying that, it doesn't mean that I always succeed but that's my target. I also like to hear the bass and kick drum clearly which you've done a good job at doing that here with your eqing. I hope this helps some. By the way, I like your song.

Farrell

I agree 100% with Farrell:vocals little up, drums little down

Alfredo

[danthecoat]

Great feedback people many thanks and all seem to be what i was thinking so nice to see i was heading in the right direction. This is now getting an overall so watch this space

[AndyR]

What I'd attempt is:

Keep guitars and bass same relative volume.

Turn up the vocal a smidge - I don't try to compare vox with the snare (at least not consciously) so I might check that out in future - thanks Farrell (that could be gratitude or sarcasm if turns out it's just another bluddy thing I have to worry about next time!! )

The reason I'd be turning up the vocal is I'm looking for the lead "voices" on a recording. In my stuff it's usually the vocal and any other lead melodies - including a keyboard, guitar, fretless bass, whatever, riff when the singer isn't singing, and guitar solos etc...

In my mind, each "soloist" should be given the same degree of "centre-stage" and "spotlight" when it's their turn. So I try to volume match all the "soloists" throughout the track.

In this case, when the vocal comes in, he's a bit further back and has less light on him than the tasty guitar stuff he's following. So as a listener I'm wondering if he's standing in until the main act arrives... But he is the main act.

So, figure out who the main act is in the intro, then match the vocal to that - don't give the vocal a bigger spotlight (that's my usual mistake), give him the same sort of billing as the interest in the intro.

And THEN... try ducking the drums slightly under the vocal but bring them back up for the instrumentals. Not enough so we go "eh?! whassat?", just enough to make sure we enjoy the intro, and then recognise when the "song" starts, that the main course has arrived, when the singer gets up to sing.

When I mix, I nearly always ride the drum master all the way through because of this (and also looking for nasty ghostly artefacts caused by drum parts and something else, such as fretnoise when changing chord), nudging it up and down as the track needs it.

Hopefully you won't lose any of the groove that the drums give if you only dip them a smidge, and the groove in the intro and breaks will make us think it keeps going when the guy sings anyway.

I'm not saying any of this will work ... but that's what I'd attempt from this version.

[danthecoat]

Thanks for all the tips. I've just invested in some software (advised by Mike Huntingford) and im going to have a play with it as its so nearly there. I have someone that may be doing a drum track for it to so i am holding off until i hear that. I may even add some hammond in there too but im also recording other songs and remastering so im a very busy boy at the moment 

[Flash Harry]

I'm late to this...

If I were doing this...

I'd listen to each track individually and try and decide if there's EQ required, I'd also put a bit of compression on the bass, possibly on the drums, and maybe on the vocals too.

I'd start with the kick drum and bass guitar. As the main part of the rhythm section, these two should sit in the same sonic space - unless of course you don't want them to but that's a different story - so balance these straight down the middle so neither is dominating and the levels are peaking at about -10dB. I think that your bass drum is too high and could come down a bit.

Then I'd mix in the snare and hi-hat so that nothing is prominent and pan the snare and the hi-hat slightly off centre in the opposite directions, I like to have hi-hat left and snare right, but a left handed drummer would have them the other way, so it makes no odds, the aim is to leave the vocal frequency ranges in the middle empty for whe the vox is added.

Guitars, keys etc. next, pan guitars opposite, put the keys away from the middle, somewhere where they sound good, some experimentation is needed at this point, but I'd keep them away from where the vox is going. It might be neccessary to scoop out a bit 300 to 600 Hz on these so they don't compete with the vocal.

Next I'd bring in the vocals straight down the middle. The most important range of male vocals tend to sit between 300 and 600 Hz, you need a wider range than this naturally but this is where keys and guitars tend to compete with vocals. There are some great articles on the various areas of the vocal ranges which are worth reading. More often than not a little push at 5KHz gives a bit of 'air'.

I'd aim for the mix to be peaking somewhere between -6dB and -3dB now. If not, I'd adjust everything accordingly. Then tweak the mix to get it where you want it and I'd do this before I added any mastering effects. This tweaking step of course takes weeks of listening and tweaking and each day is different and sometimes starting again from scratch is the best option.

It's worth bearing in mind that mastering compressors hide excessive levels and the result of mixing with mastering compression added can lead to heavily compressed results.

This may all be a load of bollocks but it's a starting point that tends to produce something that I can work from.
   

[Mike_S]

I won't say too much on the production or mix as I don't really have a leg to stand on in that department, but let me try to help a bit... first off I loved it, it's a funky cool groove, but I see room to enhance the track by the drum and bass performances. I think they are slightly flat. I can imagine if this was played live the drummer would be going hell for leather and be a lot busier with fills, etc, but I understand it is time consuming to progam them like that if you are doing it on a PC. I am sure it would help a lot though. The bass part too could have more variation maybe, again though very time consuming if you are programming it yourself.

I am only listening on headphones, but like others have said, maybe bring those vocals up and the drums down a little.

Having said all that I feel a little guilty as a lot of my stuff could have the same comments applied.

But a lovely, real cool track Dan

Mike

[Greeny]

I like it! Sounds good to me as it is - lots of space and a nice clean, uncluttered mix. Unlike others on here, I don't know fuck all about production technicalities though. Cool!