Owen wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 5:53 pm
I thought I would sleep on it and give it fresh ears, but I almost hate it more this morning, so I guess I am just going to start again and mix it again. What do you do when you are stuck like this? Do you get to the pint where you re-record again even though the performance is good and is recorded decent? Maybe just walk away and give it a couple days?
These kind of mix problems are hard enough on a technical level, before you get into all of the psychology of wanting to hear your own music sound good. I've always thought a complete re-record would be an interesting experiment, but it could be an exhausting effort.
As for the mix problem, I often find that problems arrive when elements that sound good separately have unexpected buildup when put together. The most common (but certainly not the only) place for this to happen is in the low mids.
A few things you may consider trying, if you haven't already:
- Pan both of your bass tracks up the middle. There certainly isn't a rule against a panned stereo bass, but it's definitely way harder to get away with.
- Sometimes bass casts a fog on the mix in those low mids 200-400hz region. I'd try cutting some of that out of either/both of your tracks and see if it opens up the overall mix a little.
- High pass the vocal reverb. Get rid of anything below like 500hz. You can low pass it too. It's amazing how much info you can cut out of a reverb, save space in the mix, and still have a sense of a spatial effect.
Another thing I've done when I'm losing my way on a tricky mix is pretend I'm a mastering engineer. I'll mess with eq on the stereo 2 track. For some reason I prefer twiddling knobs on a parametric EQ on the boad, but it could just as easily be done with a plugin. Make a move to cut something in an area that sounds bloated, or less helpful to me, boost something that seems undefined. If you picked the wrong frequency move it a little, or go back to zero and try to set your spot again. Don't go sweeping around like crazy, it's really confusing. If cutting an area a little opens something up, does boosting it bring out more of what was bothering you? Are some instruments more affected by these moves than others?
This can of course be a total snipe hunt and can send you obsessing over, or overcorrecting frequencies, but in the right frame of mind, taken with a grain of salt, it can give you a broad side "there's a little too much shit happening at this frequency" kind of focus, that can then inform individual cuts, or boosts on instruments individually. And as you, and others have stated, if any of this gets weird, or you feel like you lose the thread, you just turn shit off and walk away for an hour, or a day.
My goal with mixes like these is to pretend I'm an outsider with a good ear and a critical attitude. Throw the mix on, stand way back and go "sounds a little harsh on that snare", or "pretty cool, but something in there is boomy, kinda sounds like it's in the guitars or bass" etc. Just some seasoned asshole with a cup of coffee hearing it for the first time. That's who I'm trying to be.