Looking for help with mixing

Gear
#1

I’m still trying to record the song from my last thread:

The guitars here are nicely balanced, and play together very well, as if they were glued together without any spaces in between. Pleasantly “smudged” too, someone here referred to it as “cloudy”. I hope you get what I mean.
At this point I think I’ve learned the song from A to Z, all guitar parts (maybe some minor errors), but I can’t get it to sound close.
While my rythm guitar is kinda OK-ish, my leads sound thin and tracks stand apart from each other.
It helped to slap some delay on leads and tons of reverb on all guitars, I quad tracked them all too, but it’s still screaming “amateur!”.
It really sounds like all homemade black metal tracks (which it kinda is after all) but for the sake of abition and learning I want to make it sound as close to original as possible.

So here’s mine:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KkjqyPR1-_7FT-kN4bfEYgS6QuSmBkfV/view?usp=sharing

This is still in WIP state, drums need some fixing as well, but it still should serve well - especially since this is the best result I got so far.
Any advice?

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#2

Sorry if I was too obscure with my explanation - I wanted to know which plugins/effects could have been used to create the tone of the original.
It is somewhat washed, yet fills the spectrum nicely, especially the leads, and all tracks blend in together very well.
As opposed to my playing where each instrument stands apart from the rest and leads sound quite thin with harder attack.

#3

Excellent tracking! Sounds well-played and in tune, great job.

I think this is a matter of getting the right perspective. Your mix, especially the kick, has way more low end than the original. You can scoop away the kick’s frequencies around 80-200 Hz and high pass it maybe around 40-50 Hz. Reducing low end like this will make the high end click seem more prominent, so check the kick level afterwards.

Your lead guitars are also much higher in relative level than in the original. Raise the rhythm guitars a lot and sink the leads, snare and cymbals deeper into the mix. That pleasantly smudged effect you mentioned comes largely from the way the instrument levels are set: in the original, the rhythm guitars are masking tons of detail from the other instruments. What we actually hear are small parts of the snare, kick, lead guitar or even vocals. When making your own mix, it’s easy to listen too closely to details of an instrument, and then turn it up too loud because your ear wants to those details to be heard.

The rhythm guitars have a bit different tone/EQ in the original, but yours sound really good as well.

Try setting the rhythm guitar levels pretty high first, and then pull the other instruments up underneath them. Don’t let the drums or leads pop too much on top of the rhythms. Some reverb is also probably useful, like you said.

If the rhythm guitars sound “bad” when they’re on higher volume, it’s likely just because you’ve succesfully changed the perspective of the mix. You can EQ them (e.g. slightly turn down areas like 2k, 4k, 5kHz) if needed and shape them to fit the new, more dominant role. Experiment a lot!

As usual, I’d say this is more a matter of mix perspective than plugins, but especially since it’s a “gluey” vibe you’re going for, you could try a compressor with a lot of character on the master bus, like SSL G. Compress something like 3-4 dB with fast attack (maybe .1), 300 ms or auto release.

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#4

This is my fault, I did not have any base track so I tried to compansate and got carried away.

That’s actually a good advice. Noted.

Yeah, it sorta feels like the original is darker sounding, which makes sense - I guess it’s that way so they don’t take up all the space, right?
This is actually a tricky part, since I don’t know what kind of gear he’s using. I was guessing it would be some kind of british sounding amp, so I went with JCM800 plugin.
Also when I tried cutting some high end it did not end up too well. Maybe I was just too hasty to make an effort…

That’s the thing - even though the rythm is loud relative to lead, it kind of feels more like an ambience than a guitar, to a point that I can’t be 100% sure of what I am hearing at any given moment.
Reverb helped getting some dimension, but even at quite an extreme setting it did not give that washed vibe.
Could be also that there are synths playing along.

Now - after I do all that to the rythm, how do I get leads to sound more “full” and soft?

#5

Sometimes you can fix this before the mix. Though I never recorded black metal I did some hardcore (Killswitch Engage genre). I always felt I got the best blend between rhythm and lead by

  • For rhythm guitars, using the bridge pickup
  • For leads, using the neck pickup

Sort of counter intuitive but I got great results. Other than that, just a little more mid range and a little more gain on the lead. That would be all amp/guitar eq knob settings. The only thing I did mix-effect-wise was was add maybe a little compression to the lead and used a ‘send’ to a channel with some light delay and reverb, so that can warm it up a little too. I’ve read interviews with some good mixers (I think Andy Sneap???) who mentioned they do a little compression on leads.

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#6

How did you record them? Neck or bridge pickup? Can you post a clip of just the leads?

Record with neck pickup if you didn’t already and try distorting the lows more, if your VST has that function. Like @joebegly said too, compress them at least a bit.

But most of all, sink them into the mix. See how low a level you can get away with for the leads, and tweak slightly from there. Focus your ear on the rhythm guitars and snare when you’re jogging the lead guitar fader level. If the lead grabs your attention, it’s too loud.

Try pulling the master fader down to almost nothing every once in a while. Listen to a passage when all instruments are playing and check what peeks out the most: is it the snare, kick click, leads, vocals, cymbals? In the original recording, I’d say it’s mostly rhythm guitars (with occasional peeks of lead) and then vocals on top of them. I can’t recognize the drums hit-by-hit at all, but if you muted them, I’m sure there’d be a big difference. In your mix, I can hear the lead guitars on top of everything else, and then a tiny bit of snare.

This may seem a bit backwards, but the perspective idea in this type of a huge wall-of-sound mix context is that you don’t want to raise the leads (or snare or vocals etc.) so high that the entire note and all its details and textures become audible. You only want the general perception of the note kinda being there, if that makes sense. If you raise it too much, it loses the full and soft quality, which is actually mostly provided by the immense wall of other instruments that almost drown it.

If your source tone is very sharp and sizzly, you can’t raise that instrument very high if you want to make it seem full and soft in the mix. But it may still do the job, depending on the mix context and goal. Sometimes it’s better to use a duller source tone and therefore be able to raise it a little higher.

#7

Bridge. I don’t think there’s ever neck pickup used in the original, the leads are too bright for it.
I actually changed the ampsim to Audio Assault Sigma, it is a bit more gainy with I believe smoother vibe to it.
And it’s got built in delay which I turned on.
I am sending all guitars to separate reverb (full wet / no dry) track too, so it’s 10 tracks with same reverb settings (4 rythm, 4 lead and 2 additional leads in one riff):

That’s all lead tracks + reverb, Sigma instead of JCM800 (NaLex Amplex).
Had to cut it in half due to size, but doesn’t matter, all riffs are there.

On a side note - I am not convinced if the last part is 100% correct. Nor the quick melodic part (3rd riff).

#8

I may be misunderstanding but are you saying you’re sending your rhythm guitars to a reverb track? I’ve never heard of anyone doing that in a heavy genre because they’d sound washed out and the definition/articulation needed for tight palm muting would suffer.

#9

Yes, you are reading that right. And that was precisely my point, even in the original the rythm tracks are very washed, there is barely any attack in the tremolo, it sounds more as if it was some synth holding a note (and I am sure there actually is a synth buried in the mix somewhere).

In any case, here’s all tracks together too:

I think I majorly screwed up with the bass as well, for one I have no clue what the bass is playing, for two - it is the only free bass plugin I’ve found so far. It does not allow to go lower than drop D though so I had to program MIDI in E and then drop it to B with pitch shifter.

#10

Ok cool. Yeah that would be the first thing I’d do, just to remove some extra work. Just keep the rhythm guitars dry and you’ll hear more definition immediately I’d bet.

#11

Yeah, normally I would do that. Only this time I’m aiming for washed guitars, just not as washed as playing into a bucket.

On a side note - I gave all DIs someone else to mix, and they came up with this:

While it’s definitely a different vibe, it sounds more “pro” than mine…

I still have to mix my own though.

EDIT:

This is the best I could do today.

There is just a tiny bit of reverb, just to give it some more dimension.
Leads don’t annoy me as much as they used to, but still could be improved.
The bass does not sound like a washing machine anymore, but then again it doesn’t have all that much of a presence either.
Still not the kind of tone I wanted, but certainly sounds better than what I was starding with, so there’s that.

#12

The bass side is in much better balance now.

If you want the mix to sound more like the original, then in my opinion:

  • Rhythm guitars are too quiet
  • Drums (especially snare) are way too loud
  • Leads at 2:05 are too loud

However at 2:45 stuff sounds pretty nicely in balance. That’s the kind of balance you might wanna look to maintain throughout the song. The snare is a little bit muffled in that part, but not by a lot. If you can bring out the snare’s clicky attack a little bit, one way or another, it should be good.

At 3:48 your snare volume and/or sample changes a lot. It changes a few times throughout the song actually, is that intentional?

Imo the volume/sample at 3:48 is a bit too aggressive for the blast beats, if you want to capture the feel of the original. I’d use the 2:45 balance for all blast beat parts, and then reserve the highest snare velocity samples only for fills and slower beats. A good example in the original - check out how soft the blastbeat snares are compared to sharp hits of the fill. Compression with a fast attack (around 5-15 ms) will help make the harder hits not jump out so much.

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#13

That’s because I got rid of riddiculous EQ on drums and programmed “proper” bass.

Actually when I listen to original the rythm part does not seem all that loud. On te contrary. It’s more like a presence, that is more felt than heard and that’s why it overshadows the lead.
I may be wrong though.

No, I don’t think I have. I use Superior Drummer 2 (and I am a noob at that) and I’m pretty sure that I used only one snare sample as it was under one key. It could be the velocity though as I divided drums into several parts that I was doing in the span of few das.

Anyways - I re-recorded the whole thing, threw in my Schecter on two of rythm tracks, fixed some parts I was playing wrong (not entirely though).
Now though there is a lick played on literally the last couple of frets and my hands are too big so I guess I’ll have to use Schecter or Flame again since they have high E strings, just to move that part in lower regions of the neck.

It finally gets some punch. Turns out EQ on guitar bus was muddying the tone quite a bit, so I removed it (or moved the low pass higher, can’t remember now)
The lead guitar’s tone is still different though. I have no idea what are they using to make it sound that way effects wise (I’m talking mostly about the riffs in 1:50 and then 2:45.
I thought it’s just lots of reverb coupled with delay, but apparently I was wrong, or at least that’s not enough. I tried slapping some chorus as well but it didn’t get me closer, just weirder unless I kept it at minimum.
In other spots the lead sounds kinda metallic, dunno how to describe it. I thought it would be high B (would be E but it’s downtuned) string played open, but no. At least not when I do it lol.

#14

Ok, so I think I managed to fix the drums a bit, meaning they should sound more “human” now, with more hats, crashes, brass in general and less of that nasty kick.
Also I added some chorus with an automation so it only engages at select moments. I thought it would give more dramatic effect, but it turned out very subtle.

I lost that nasaly tone unfortunately. EQ moves on guitars are questionable, I thought I had it pretty much ok, then copied and pasted them from previous session trying to bring back that midrange.
Guitar levels should be more in line with what you pointed out in last post, and if I dared I would say it begins to sound massive.
I don’t dare to say that though (yet).
I have an itch to bring the lead back up a bit, but I guess I need to resist that urge.

I added some compression here and there as well, but I sincerely have no clue how to use it. Going by ear I think it’s ok, but in my situation (cheap, old Sony stereo or Sennheiser HD599 headphones) I honestly can’t tell.

Now, without further ado:

Also, this is how it looks in my DAW:

General view:

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Guitar EQs:

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Left is guitar bus, right is high shelf on rythm tracks.
The notch at around 666Hz is supposed to reduce quackiness, but I might have missed the mark here.

Rythm guitars chain:

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Lead:

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Lead bus:

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Reverb for guitars on aux track:

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Drums:

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And master bus:

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I hope I did not screw anything up… too much.

Let me know what you think. I’m sure there still a lot to improve on, I just can’t rely on my ears and skills.

#15

I’m out of practice but there was a period in my life where I did almost nothing but record/mix. I got decent at it, to where when I let people whose opinions I valued and were very mix-savy (and I knew they weren’t just “being nice”) gave me good reviews. One thing I ran into a lot was ‘over mixing’ and not giving myself time to step away and come back with fresh ears. Our ears will begin to accept a lot of things as ‘correct’ in a short period of time. One thing I did that helped was listen to ‘reference’ mixes to make sure I wasn’t veering. Sometimes a healthy break is as valuable as a session that lasts several hours, which can even do more harm than good when you’ve already done a lot of remixes and you aren’t sure of what you’ve fixed/broken.

Compression is easy to get wrong. Our ears can tell us a lot BUT if you’re not quite sure what you’re listening for, one of the first things you need to check is how much gain reduction is actually happening on your track. People throw around all sorts of ratios as good or bad but depending where the threshold is set, even a low ratio could be very aggressive. Conversely, you can have some ridiculous 20:1 ratio, but if your threshold is so high that your peaks never hit it…it does nothing lol!

For all that, I’m not really commenting on how you’re using it, just a general FYI about how to think of it. Check out this video on compressing vocals, which IMO, should be similar to how you compress a lead guitar since it’s the ‘featured thing’ at that moment in time. Of course, we all know a distorted guitar is already compressed by nature so you won’t need as much as a vocal. Still, a good ballpark of how to think of compression.

Keep up the good work!

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#16

BTW, after a quick A/B of your latest and the first thing you posted, I’d say you are definitely moving in the right direction. It sounds way more balanced and professional now. Everything can always get better, but I think it’s sounding better. To my ears (high level) at this point is that it sounds more muffled than the original. I know you are going for more of a washed out sound so that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just an observation. Again, good work!

#17

That’s absolutely right and I only realised once I posted.
I literally spent last hour trying to find out why made the last one sound darker than the previous, finally after countless ampsim changes I switched out IRs on rythm to what I use most of the time.

Behold:

13th version of the mix.
I think It’s best one so far and I think I’ll stick with it for now, unless there is something completely wrong with it that I don’t hear or there is any quick fix to improve it.
I will still have to track guitars again. I am hoping to be done with this whole thing by saturday/sunday.

BTW - that one riff @ 2:05 has lots of top end that annoys me - I think it’s pick chirping, but in general it sounds as tiny bit too bright.

Also, I’ll see if I can slap some synths there, recently I downloaded Kontakt with some free samples.

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#18

Nice work! I really like how it’s shaping up! The balance is nice and even, sounds more like the wall of black metal that the original is.

Thanks for the screenshots too. Like @joebegly said, it would be helpful to know how much gain reduction you’re getting with compressors. Depending on what your interests are right now, compression might or might not be a thing you want to start concentrating on at the moment. It’s a broad topic and takes a bit of getting used to. It’s important to get right in a mix, but also one of the hardest things to get your ear around when you’re starting out in mixing.

If you are interested in compression however, folks here are probably happy to help but I would actually first recommend you to start by watching a few tutorials on what compression is and how it’s generally used. For example the one Joe posted, and this one by In The Mix.

One important thing to keep in mind when going for a mix like this is, in my opinion, that lead guitars aren’t really comparable to lead singers. They’re not like frontman “solo singers” that should be heard above everything else, they’re more like the higher-register voices of a full choir. They poke out a tiny bit above the rest in volume, but not by a lot. Right now they sound pretty damn good to me.

I think there’s one little programming error I’m hearing in the drums. At 3:16 you’re accidentally using the cymbal choke articulation (hit + grab with hand), and 3:44 there’s a single hit of it in the left channel. Other than that, the drums are sounding really nice and the relative levels of rhythm guitar, lead and drums together is now creating a beautiful smudge of frostbitten black metal.

But yeah… I think it could use even more reverb? :snowflake: :smiling_imp:

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#19

Yeah man, nice. To me it’s got the brightness of the one you shared in post (not mix, but forum post) #13 but the balance is improved as you’ve implemented @Shredd’s nice suggestions.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that number is SUPER low compared to what I used to do. I’m sure I surpassed 100 different mixes of just one tune back when I was at this. WAY too much. 13 versions is not so bad :slight_smile: If I were you, unless there’s anything glaring you can’t stand, I’d do exactly what you said you will and just live with it for awhile. Come back with fresh ears and fresh perspective and see how you hear it in a bit. The nice thing is once you get all this legwork done, you can save a template in your DAW and you’re next project will be ready to go with much less work required. Keep it up (but do take a little break first lol)

#20

This! It’s crazy sometimes how different a mix can sound after some rest. Really recommended.