Band Song First try at mixing. Need feedback. (Progressive metalcore)

Xsr

Xsr

Member
I was hoping some of you guys could tell me what you think of the sound/mix or even the song for that matter. We have zero experience with all of this so we could really use some pointers.

Hopefully you can find the time to check it out! Thanks :D

 
Only one rhythm guitar, down the center? Definitely move the guitars to each side of the stereo spectrum and double track the rhythm guitar.

Tone wise the bottom end (bass) of the guitars seems a little light on. Personally I love the effect you get when the bottom end on the guitars seamlessly merge with the bass and form one sound. You haven't got that happening yet. The bottom end of the mix needs a fair bit of work, i.e. how the kick/bass/gtrs all mesh together in the bass freqs. I can't tell you what to do, as I'm still figuring it out myself as well.

Pretty tight timing wise tho. So nice work on that.
 
Both guitars are double tracked but ye they seem very light. Panning will indeed help a lot though I think everything is down the middle now. I will def try to look into seperating the bass freqs.
Thanks for the input appreciate it.
 
Hey dude,

Fret had it right, the timing on this is spot on as far as I can tell.
There's a million things you can do to any mix to make it awesome. I'm no expert but I've learned some pretty decent practices.

First up you have to think about a complete track as a range of frequencies going on at once. When things get crowded in the same frequency it gets muddy and sounds crud. What we want is clarity, so part of the mixing process is giving things their space.
I read a random blog post where the guy went from bottom to top with a rough outline like (Kick drum (60-100hz) Bass Drum (100hz-250) Floor Tom (xxhz-yyhz) and so on). This is why when you first start mixing you tweak the levels like crazy for ages but without doing things properly it'll never sound right.

I always double track rhythm guitars and pan one track 100% left and the other 100% right, this sounds like a 50/50 mix or something.
If I have a solo or some lead riff that I only want on one track I'll record it on one track dead centre and use some sort of "stereo spread" effect to give it something extra.
Most of the lead riffs I do are ambient high delay sort of things ontop of chugs so to give them their own space I'll drop I'll generally drop the eq 1 or 2db around 800-1k and do a boost 2-5k.
Most of the lead riffs I do aren't super hard so I can get them dead on for 2 takes. So I double track and do an 80% pan left for one and 80% pan for right (the 80% thing probably does nothing but I do it anyway).

Bus/route all of the guitar tracks to one track and add compression onto that. I generally add some sort of eq to this track with ALL guitars. The on the lead tracks I'll boost the highs

ADD COMPRESSION TO ALL OF THESE:

Kick drum
I generally boost EQ at 80hz a couple of db depending on taste/sample. To make things sit in the mix I drop 95-120hz by a couple db so the bass can live there. I would also give it a small boost around 600hz-1k but it depends on the sample you're using. Low end is for feeling/thump, high end is for clicky sound.

Snare drum
Add reverb (this makes it cut through so sick). Don't go nuts though cause it'll sound horrible. I think roughly you'd be using 8-12% wet reverb on the plugin.

Bass guitar
Drop db at 80hz for kick and boost around 90-120. Play around boosting at 600-1k and see what sounds good.

My figures could be well off, it's just a guide.... but hopefully it gives you insight on it.

If you google/youtube "Metal Mixes" I'm sure you'd get way better info than what I've written, but it's a start :)

Good luck man,
 
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