JOEL WANASEK & EYAL LEVI: Pro mixing standards, fixing muddy mixes, and radio-ready rock vocals

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Mick DSP professional audio plugins. For over 15 years, Mick DSP has continued producing industry acclaimed and award-winning software titles. The podcast is also brought to you by Slate Digital, all the Pro plugins. One more monthly price, and now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

(00:26):

Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. I'm your host, Joel Wanasek, and with me is Mr. Eyal Levi. How you doing, Eyal?

Speaker 3 (00:38):

Great. Great. How are you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:39):

I am fantastic and Joey is on his way on a plane right now to the Grammy, so you can't podcast on a plane, so screw him.

Speaker 3 (00:47):

Well, he is not actually going to the Grammys. He's doing something with the Grammy committee.

Speaker 2 (00:51):

It's the same thing. Don't give him any extra credit. He doesn't need it.

Speaker 3 (00:55):

Well, I don't want anyone to think that this episode is from some other time. We're recording it ahead

Speaker 2 (01:01):

Of time. We're recording, it's back to the future,

Speaker 3 (01:04):

Something like that. So it's November, 2016 For anybody who's curious,

Speaker 2 (01:09):

We're going to do something fun and special here on Mix Crit Monday that we've never done before. Every month at Nail the Mix, what ends up happening usually is people are like, well, why the hell didn't I get in the top 20? And I'm always sitting there as one of the guys who judges these mixes and I'm like, well, usually the top 20, it's not very ambiguous. The mixes that get into the top 20, yeah, there's going to be a couple that are on the line because anytime you listen to such a large amount of mixes, what happens is it kind of all starts to sound the same, but for the most part you can click through 'em and in literally 10 seconds be like, great garbage, great, great. Ooh, that really needs a lot of work. You just know right away. Now a lot of people ask what criteria goes into this?

(01:52):

So what we're looking for, at least what I'm looking for when I'm doing this, and you can say what you are Al, is I'm looking for something that sounds really pro like I'm holding it up to an A-list standard. If I hit play on this, does it sound like a song? Does it blow me away? Is it thick fat? Does it hit hard? Does it have good clarity in the mix? Does it gel? Is it in the pocket? Is it grooving? Is there anything harsh or nasty that sticks out? How are the balances? Does it feel like a song? All the hallmarks of just a great fantastic mix. I want to hit play and be like, oh yeah, this sounds great. That's what I'm looking for.

Speaker 3 (02:24):

And I'm going to bring up a story from last night. A really, really big name mixer that you guys have all heard of is in the middle of a mix competition against another really big name mixer you guys have all heard of, and he sent us a track for advice. He sent us both tracks and they both sounded incredible. I personally like the one that our friend did better, but

Speaker 2 (02:46):

Yeah, I think he won beat

Speaker 3 (02:50):

The

Speaker 2 (02:50):

Big, big,

Speaker 3 (02:50):

Big guy. He beat the incumbent. However, the reason I'm bringing that up is because they could have gone either way with those mixes and been just fine. Both of those mixes were a level. So at that point it becomes what do I like better? What artistically am I more in favor of? And so I guess I liked the one that our dude did better because the drums were more powerful and the acoustic guitars were more percussive and it just hit harder, had more emotional impact. But the thing is that even if I didn't like the other one as much, it was still an incredible mix. And so that's what we mean by standard. What we're looking for in the top 20 is that regardless of if we really would pick it as the mix, if we were the artist, it's still got to be good enough to be in the running, to be picked in the first place. Now obviously when you're picking 20 out of a few hundred, it gets tough and more than likely you're not going to have 20 that are good enough to be picked by an artist or a label. It's probably going to be five maybe.

Speaker 2 (04:10):

Yeah, it's definitely the case. I always feel like there's five to 10 really exceptional mixes and then there's kind of everybody else. And the part I struggle with is when I'm trying to sit down and like, okay, what are my 17 through 20 mixes or 15 through 20, what are those bottom slots? There's a lot of gray area. In that case, I kind of just try to pick what irritates me the least because sometimes the mixes that are at that level aren't even close to what the top five would be or if they're close, there's some major deficiencies so it can kind of go on interpretation and I just go off a lot of gut feeling where I'm just like, Ooh, that one sounds a little bit better than that one without trying to overthink it. So there's definitely an ambiguous area in there, but guys, listen, don't get discouraged if you don't make the top 20.

(04:53):

It's not like it's the end of the world, it's only the nail the mix mixing competition. It's not like you're losing a gig for some huge artist and it's going to cost you $20,000 in mixing fees if you don't get it. So don't, don't be discouraged or whatever. We're all here to learn and this is how we learn. So I think this is going to be a cool thing because we're actually going to do a mixed crit on the mixes for this month's song, which is Face Everything and Rise by Papa Roach. And man, I just got done listening to Kane's reference Mix. Kane cco, who's our guest who produced mixed engineered, mastered that whole track. His mix is fantastic. So we are just comparing here your mixes. We picked a couple off of the forum here. We have the URM Private Producers Club Tigon or Octagon, I forgot what we call it, where you guys can kind of post your mixes for crit. So we grabbed a few off of there and we decided to have a little bit of fun with these songs here today to give you guys some insight on what you are doing versus what we're looking for.

Speaker 3 (05:51):

Let me 0.1 other thing out about Kane's Mix, which I also think is fantastic. I heard some of the guys be like, it's not my style of mix. I prefer something more natural or more this or more that. And hey, that's your right. But I still haven't heard a mix that even comes close to his and

Speaker 2 (06:10):

Yeah, he wrecked everybody as expected.

Speaker 3 (06:12):

Well, yeah, that's kind of the is to be expected. But I guess one of the things that I'd like people to pay attention to is that when you're mixing for an artist, you're not going by what is in your personal taste quite as much as what you think is right for the song and what the artist thinks is right for the song. It's your job to bring their vision to the forefront. So for instance, if you read Kane's notes, because Kane wrote a bunch of notes about this and he said that the band loved the electronic drums, like everybody was in love with the electronic drums so much that they had to try to kind of think of how to fit in the natural drums. So the natural drums were almost there to support the electronic drums. And I think that the natural drums play a huge role in the song, but still, if you listen to what Kane said that, and this is coming from working with the artist, everybody loved the electronics and almost didn't record drums.

(07:16):

So when I start hearing mixes that didn't pay attention to that, I start wondering, well who are you mixing this for? You mixing this for yourself? Are you mixing this for the artist? Because if you read the notes, you would see that the artist was in love with the electronic drums. Just little things like that it make me wonder what people are trying to pay it, what people are prioritizing. I think obviously you need to prioritize making a great sounding mix that makes you happy, but if you want to be doing this for other people and getting paid for it, you need to prioritize making them happy.

Speaker 2 (07:53):

That's very true. And I'll just reiterate,

Speaker 3 (07:55):

Okay, cool. Podcast over. Just kidding.

Speaker 2 (07:57):

Yeah, let me just reiterate what you said earlier. Oh my God, I totally lost my train of thought on that. I was going to say that you said earlier we were talking about what is the standard for the genre that you're mixing for. So if you listen to Active Rock and every mix on the radio has really bombastic, smashing drums that have a ton of energy and tons of bottom super wide guitars and really loud vocals and you come in with a really natural sounding mix that's kind of muddy and dark and the vocals are under mixed and maybe you threw in a lot of effects and stutters and this and that and a bunch of fancy stuff, but you didn't really hit the standard, then that mix would be considered no good because from the point of view of the band, the a and r, the management, the label itself in the radio guys who are really, really the gatekeepers when it comes to this style of music, I mean literally going to active rock radio and I used to be managed, I should say by a radio promoter guy manager dude who was really big in that scene and I learned a lot about radio and those guys are like the gatekeepers.

(08:58):

And if they don't think it sounds good, if they don't think that their audience is going to like it, that band literally with that song, whatever's being pushed, has just been tanked before it even gets to come out of the gate. So to even have a chance, there are only so many spots that are open on radio at any given time and it's a fricking war to get a song onto radio and for a band to get a spot and maintain and hold the spot, it's got to sound the part, it's got to be competitive with everything else. You have to play it safe to some degree, but at the same time you can push it. You want to make it stand out. So I think that you guys got to take that in consideration. It doesn't matter if you don't like drum samples. The fact is everybody else you are competing with is using them.

(09:37):

And if you want your track to be taken seriously amongst those people in professional scope and actually have a fighting chance of getting that song on the radio through the program director, guess what? You got to play by the rules. So if you listen to Kane's Mix, it's got tons of bottom, it's got really punchy in your face drums that give it a lot of energy. The vocals are insanely well balanced, super clear, the guitar tone is cool super wide, it just sounds awesome. It hammers, it makes the song really exciting. You very quickly forget about the mix when you're listening to the song and very quickly just start listening to the song and getting into the energy and the vibe of what Papa Roach is trying to put out. So when we listen to these songs and we cri this before we even start doing this, I'm going to say as a precursor, I'm not hearing any of you guys accomplish that in any of the mixes I've heard so far now we haven't officially submitted mixes yet and we're also sitting here just grabbing some, we'll call 'em work in progress mixes off the forums here.

(10:31):

But I will say that a lot of you guys aren't capturing that power and maybe it's, you guys dunno how to do it. It's not experience or whatever, but if I don't hear the power, it's going to be hard for me to vote that into the top 20. Yep.

Speaker 3 (10:43):

And I'm just going to throw this out there guys, if you like us picking nail the mix tracks mid month for Mix CRI Monday, let us know. We'll do this more often. We've never done this before. It's a bit of an experiment. Thanks Joel.

Speaker 2 (11:01):

I just thought of something. What's

Speaker 3 (11:02):

That?

Speaker 2 (11:03):

They're going to, this is, yeah, this is a wild idea. I called Al this morning and I'm like, Hey, you want to try using the Papa Roach mixes? Because I was listening to some yesterday and I think it'd be fun to do. The problem is people are going to be like, oh, those guys got unfair advantages, blah, blah, blah. Well let me before you start complaining, let me put this out as a disclaimer. I don't think that's the case because just because giving somebody critiques doesn't mean they're going to be able to take what they have and turn it into something that's going to compete with somebody like Kane. So I think that we're going to say whose mixes these are? Yeah, we'll say who did the mixes and what we think they could be improving it, but the mixers actually have to do the work and whether they're capable or not of getting the mix up to that sort of level is yet to be decided. So before you guys start going complaining about Unfair Advantage and things like that, let's just see how it tops out. Now, if these three guys win the one and two spot from user selected and the number one on the secondary poll, then we'll say, okay, maybe that was unfair, but I'm just saying before it happens.

Speaker 3 (12:07):

So if they win, then we know that this is giving them a unfair advantage. Also, let me point another thing out. We've done this for a year now. We have listened to lots of mixes and lots of the issues that you find in one mix you find in a hundred mixes. So lots of these things are happening over and over and over. So I've already written notes for these songs, I know what I'm going to talk about, but I have, even though we're only talking about three songs, these are things I've heard in lots of mixes. So you guys are making lots of the same kinds of mistakes. So even if it's not your mix, pay attention

Speaker 2 (12:48):

Who's up on the chopping block of death first.

Speaker 3 (12:52):

Alright, first up we have Mr. Anthony de Cuomo here. It is

Speaker 4 (13:27):

A Dead Sea. Well, that's broken, the earth shakes and burning, but it feels like the tide is life hurts and there's no strikes. My heart is I.

Speaker 3 (16:08):

So that was Anthony Giacomo's mix of Face Everything and Rise by Papa Roach. And let's get into this. First of all, man, I think that those vocals are painful. There are some spiky frequencies in those upper mids that are just like, ouch.

Speaker 2 (16:27):

Let's talk about a bigger concept involving vocals too. Aside from the way they're eqd, I don't think they fit into the track in terms of they're not gluing with the ambience. What is that effect on the first verse or in the

Speaker 3 (16:38):

Dude? No, no, that's the double. It's got to be that. I think he's got the doubles equal volume with the mains.

Speaker 2 (16:45):

Yeah, that's possible. It just sounds like, okay, the ambience on the drums, this is really important. I once turned in a mix. The very first record I did, I sent it to James Murphy Al, you know James, right? Yes,

Speaker 3 (16:57):

I do. I

Speaker 2 (16:58):

Sent it over to James and the first comment he says, okay, the mix is cool, but your ambiences don't match. I'm what the hell are you talking about? He's like, listen to the ambience on your vocals and you're snaring your kick and your symbols. It's completely different than your Toms and it just doesn't gel. And I'm like, oh, okay. And it took me a couple of years to actually get how to do that and what it meant. But what I'm hearing is that the vocal ambience completely sounds like it's out of left field. He sounds like Jacoby's in the bathroom singing the song and then the ambience of the rest of the track is good. I mean the precedent for that actually even starts out right in the beginning with that. The lo-fi is really harsh and kind of, I don't know, it doesn't fit. The ambience of the vocals just doesn't gel at all in this track

Speaker 3 (17:41):

And they stick out. I know that they're supposed to be loud, but they're just way too out front. So I think it's a combination of things. I think it's volume, ambiance and eq. Maybe you're right that it's an ambiance thing. Making it sound weird in that first verse. I swear that it sounds to me like he's got doubles at equal volume and you're hearing the CO in between them. But I also think the compression is wrong. It sounds way too spitty. Are you hearing how it's like

Speaker 2 (18:11):

Yeah, definitely does

Speaker 3 (18:13):

All the time.

Speaker 2 (18:14):

Yeah. It's like he's got five of Joey's gain reduction plugin. I mean that thing is really damn aggressive and sometimes you have to really back off. I mean I know Joey likes a lot of that spitty stuff, but I feel like Anthony overdid it to the point where it's actually distracting and kind of obnoxious. It's like you've got a mouthful before every word and it kind of distracts from the diction and the emotional impact of the part because it's like all you hear is mouth noise and you're not actually listening to Jacobi bring it. And if you've ever seen Papa Roach live, and I've toured with this band and I've watched him play 10,000 people and shared the stage with him. And I'll tell you man, Jacobi is one of the most energetic dudes in rock. That guy on stage is fire. He's so much, just so much positivity and energy as a person. And you have to think about Jacobi and his personality and that's really what Papa Roach is. You can literally Google Papa Roach on YouTube, not Googling, you can search for it on YouTube and watch him live. And man,

Speaker 3 (19:13):

You could Google it on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (19:15):

I mean it's the same thing, right? He just brings so much energy that's the point. And it's compressed to the point where it's taking away the energy and it's bringing out all the negative aspects of his performance that normally would come in and make the vocal really pop and really hit and make it really exciting. So you got to back off on the compressors and the doubles and whatever the ambiance is, I would reevaluate the entire way. The vocals on this are mixed completely EQ compression effects like start over.

Speaker 3 (19:40):

Let's talk about volume two because for instance, when you go to the pre-chorus, the vocals are buried. You got the electro hats are way louder than the vocals. The vocals are like an afterthought then. But the thing is that the vocals just are jumping around in volume. And I do believe that different instruments need to be brought out at different points in the song. Of course, but this is too much. They're blasting you in the intro when that should be a little bit more of a build. Listen to the listen to Kane's mix for a good example. They're still there. You know that he's singing the chorus at the beginning, but it's not blasting you in the face.

Speaker 2 (20:26):

Yeah, like in Kane's mix, you can't even hear that it's Kane singing. I always thought it was Jacob until I open up the session. But the other thing I'll say, Al, is again, what is the target? This is where a lot of people are screwing up is when you look at who the hell are we mixing for? We're mixing for radio rock and this song was a number one. And what does any rock fan care about? They don't care about the snare, they don't care about the guitar tone, they don't care about the guitar solo, they care about the vocals. It's about the emotion, the energy, the passion. And if you cannot hear every single word and a song that goes to radio like this, it's not going to crack top 40, neither less top 10, neither less be a number one in Kane's mix. You can hear every single word, you can sing every word because you can hear it. And then when they go to the Papa Road show, the crowd can bring just as much energy as Jacobi. So by not having that vocal be completely 100% audible across the entire track, that's the most important thing. And this entire type of music, you failed. That's the most important thing to fix. You have to have it nailed. If you can't hear your vocal, you don't have a mix.

Speaker 3 (21:32):

That's right. And then a couple other things were just that I think that the rhythm guitars are way loud in some spots like the chorus and everything, and I feel like that's kind of helping take away from the vocals.

Speaker 2 (21:47):

I thought the top of the base was weird too.

Speaker 3 (21:49):

Yes, that too

Speaker 2 (21:50):

Audible and not in a good way. It's almost mixed like a metal core, but the thing is you don't have some dude screaming eligible nonsense. You actually have singing so it's too gritty and it also takes away from the vocals.

Speaker 3 (22:03):

Okay, that's a really, really good point because that thing that we strive for in extreme metal and metal core with bass where we have the distorted top end so that you can hear it through the double bass, through the wall of guitars, through the screaming, and that's an important thing in that style. It also, it helps define the guitar tone some when you get it right in extreme styles, but that style of bass mixing serves to distract when you're working with music that's got this much space. So you've got to be careful with that. The idea here isn't to get the bass to poke through a wall of insanity. The idea here is to support the song and to make it sound huge and not

Speaker 2 (22:59):

Yeah, provide the size.

Speaker 3 (23:00):

Yeah, not the same methods, not the same goals.

Speaker 2 (23:03):

Now I'm going to say one thing that I think that Anthony did do right is compared to the other two mixes that we're about to listen to, I thought he did a good job of actually having bottom end to the mix and overall I thought his mix sounded the biggest of the other two that were going to create.

Speaker 3 (23:18):

I agree

Speaker 2 (23:19):

And I think he did a good job of getting the overall size of it. It actually has some impact and it has some size. I do think the snare could have a little bit more 200, it was mixing some of the punch, but definitely I think he's in the right direction. He is just got to get some of his balance game completely, redo his vocal approach and maybe clean the top end of his base and get some better balance and I think he's going to be in a much better position with this mix.

Speaker 3 (23:44):

I completely agree. There definitely were those positives about this mix and shave some of the high end off your Toms bro. Just had to add that in. Alright, shall we move on?

Speaker 2 (23:54):

Can you add 40 db of 4K on everything?

Speaker 3 (23:57):

Great idea.

Speaker 2 (23:59):

Alright, who's up next?

Speaker 3 (24:00):

Luke Phillips. Here you go.

Speaker 4 (24:31):

With a deadly outside of sea. Well I can't breathe. The pain is blessing in disguise burning, but the tide is, there's no blessing. Blessing in disguise. Lets come and the is a blessing in

Speaker 3 (27:12):

That was the Papa Road submission by our subscriber Luke Phillips. What do you think Joel?

Speaker 2 (27:18):

Well, okay, this is an interesting one because it starts off and it's mixed great. I'm like, alright, this sounds good. It hits you didn't mess anything up and then the mix comes in and it absolutely disintegrates. I don't know, it's like you push the small button on it or something. The mix comes down by two db, it doesn't gel, the bottom end is lacking. The drums sound like the scenario sounds like it's getting hit by a chain is being dropped on it or something. I don't know. Everything is wrong that the balance, it just sounds weak. It doesn't jam jive, it doesn't hit, it doesn't impact. But it's weird because the buildup is so he nailed it. It's so suspenseful and it builds up and I'm just waiting for this huge mix to come in and kick me in the nuts and I feel like the person kicking just slipped on the concrete and fell down on their butt. You know what I mean? Go back to elementary school

Speaker 3 (28:08):

Trying to flick a cigarette across the street and it just

Speaker 2 (28:11):

Landed on

Speaker 3 (28:12):

Their right back

Speaker 2 (28:12):

In their face. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (28:13):

Yeah. Landed on their shoe or something. Yeah man. I mean I've done this to myself a few times back in earlier days mixing where spend all this time on an intro and make it super epic and I get it to a point where there's no way that the band can sound bigger, but there's a really, really easy solution to that which is turn it down.

Speaker 2 (28:39):

Yeah, master bus automation.

Speaker 3 (28:41):

Yeah, I mean that typically solves it. Just turn that fucker down,

Speaker 2 (28:45):

But it doesn't structurally fix the deficiencies and the bottom end, the drums, the guitars, the balance,

Speaker 3 (28:52):

Et cetera. No, no, no, no. That's a different topic altogether. I'm just saying if your intro sounds a hundred times bigger than the band, start by turning it down. Yes.

Speaker 2 (29:05):

Or turn the band up.

Speaker 3 (29:06):

Yeah. Well I don't know if he could turn the band up. This was really loud.

Speaker 2 (29:10):

Yeah, that's exactly why I made that comment.

Speaker 3 (29:14):

But now onto the mix. Alright, where do we begin?

Speaker 2 (29:19):

Okay, so the two bus is pumping like crazy. Man, I can hear that bus compressor swinging around and not in a good way. The volume's going in and out and a lot of things I can hear when something louder comes in and everything else dips and ducks and so we got to look at our bus compression. The funny thing is it'll probably come back and say, oh, I was only hitting it like a half DB of reduction or something really light, in which case meaning to me that means the release time or the attack time is way crazy. I don't know, but it is definitely off. That can also be a function of EQ and not having your low end and your low mid range. Right? Because compressors react to low end swings more than they do mid range or high frequencies.

Speaker 3 (30:00):

Yeah, man me, I want to divert for one second. I know that one thing that we talk about a lot is top-down mixing and nali is a big proponent of that and cool, I think it's a great way to go, but part of me thinks that people shouldn't dick with the master bus until they know how to eq. I agree. I understand that at this point some guys like yourself or whoever will have the master bus engaged from the get-go, but I mean earlier informative years, I think it might be a better idea to get the basics down before you start adding something as powerful as the master bus. Just my opinion.

Speaker 2 (30:46):

Yeah, definitely. I think, okay, so how do we create this? Let's start structurally. I think the first part is the drums have no power. So to me it sounds like the kick and snare just stock samples and maybe the snare is clipped, but it's literally clipped to the point where it sounds like that bowl hitting mashed potatoes thing that I like the analogy. I like to, it sounds like a,

Speaker 3 (31:06):

Do you think it's a sample or just I thought that was natural.

Speaker 2 (31:10):

I'm not sure. Might I'd have to listen to it again, but all I remember is this really whipping, that's why I got the chain. It sounds like somebody's dropping a chain on it instead of hitting it with a stick. It's like I can hear all this highend rattle but I can't hear a crack. I'm waiting for like cane's mix comes in dude, and it builds up and it's super exciting that it hits and it just kicks you in the balls. It's just like boom. It's so powerful and it hits so hard and I want that to happen. It is active rock and it comes in and the drums are so soft and they don't have, so the EQ is off, meaning we need some sub attack. If they're clipping, they're probably over clipped, maybe some compression on the snare. It's just not impacting. So maybe there's a limiter on them or something or the master bus limiter is not set in the right type of transient retention mode. I'm not sure. But somewhere those transients aren't getting through the mix and it just doesn't sound powerful. So I'd go back to work and either grab some different samples or grab some EQ and do some radical moves and try to get a punchier sound.

Speaker 3 (32:14):

Yeah, I completely agree. Do you pay attention all to the low end of the kick in the chorus? I thought it was overwhelmingly distracting.

Speaker 2 (32:22):

Yeah. Okay. I think it's a stock slate sample, at least it sounds like it to me. And the thing is with those slate samples is whatever he did when he mixed about two or three db usually of too much 50 hertz in those kicks, but I don't mean in a powerful or good way. I mean you kind of got to shave it off and then you got to thrust the kick with a clipper or a compressor to get it to be punchier. You know what I mean? It's too soft. So however he got his low end in, maybe it's a S wave generator, maybe it's some sample blending or something like that. The bottom line is that something about it is definitely not, it's too much, it's excessive. He's got at tam it and then he's got to focus on the punch and the attack of the kick. But it is just got a little bit too much rumble. It sounds too soft.

Speaker 3 (33:08):

Yeah. Okay. I want to bring something up that's completely different topic on here, and this is something that I want to take us back to Kyle Black month. So Kyle Black did secrets by state champs and one of the things that people had problems with is how to balance all the different guitar parts, all kinds of league guitars and octaves and things like that. And one thing he said was not every part needs to be a priority. Some of them are just meant there for texture. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because in this chorus there's an octave melody in the Papa Roach chorus and Luke's version here has that octave melody in the guitar really loud and it's distracting from the vocals and if you listen to Kane's version, it's not loud at all.

Speaker 2 (33:59):

Yeah, it's just size.

Speaker 3 (34:00):

Yeah, exactly. It's size and texture and you need to learn to differentiate between something that's just there to add to the overall, like we said, size, texture, vibe versus something that's supposed to be in the forefront. That's definitely not a forefront line. And so in this chorus, hearing it equal volume with the vocals just about, it's completely taking away from the vocal melody to the point where it's hard to sing along with the vocal melody because it's almost like you're hearing two separate melodies going at the same time and you don't know which one to follow because they're both really distinct.

Speaker 2 (34:41):

Okay, let's jump forward here al to guitars and bass because first off, the guitars are way too damn loud.

Speaker 3 (34:47):

Fuck yeah, they are. More

Speaker 2 (34:47):

Importantly, I don't feel like the base is gluing to the mix at all. It's really weird. I'm really struggling to hear the base and how it fits into the mix. I know that it's there and it's creating a lot of mud and mush, but I'm not, it's missing the definition and clarity that even the last mix we listened to had. So we definitely need to go in and reevaluate how the base is being mixed and I think what probably threw people off this month is Kane has all that sub VE 8 0 8 stuff in there, so they're probably doing the thing where they're filtering out the sub, putting the 8 0 8 in there, then using the real base for upper base to lower mid range and somewhere in there I feel like a lot of people are going to get killed this month because that's a really, really dangerous, difficult and advanced thing to pull off correctly. And even he in the q and a the other day he was saying he was just like, well, I don't even remember how I did it, but I remember it being a lot of work or something along the lines of

Speaker 3 (35:44):

That and he only used it in key moments. That was the other thing was that he pretty much said that he wasn't really using it through the entire song. He would use it here and there as needed.

Speaker 2 (35:57):

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how he handles that. I usually try to stay away from that stuff because it's like all of that headroom gets eaten very, very carefully and while it can be a good way to extend your bottom end, relying too much on that as the foundation of the bottom end I feel like is a very dangerous thing to do. And that's something I always bite my lip when we talk about that technique on the podcast because a lot of times I'll hear mixes and I'll be like, what's up with your base? And then they'll be like, oh yeah, I replaced it all with the sub generator and I used real base and I'm like, well that's why your bass sounds so disconnected. You miss the most important thing is getting the correct crossover and volume. Crossover meaning the balances, so the part glues together and works as a unit and sounds like a bass instrument instead of just like a sign wave of generator and a bass guitar playing alongside each other. You know what I mean? It has to glue, it has to gel, it has to work together as a unit and push and pull the speaker at the same time and if you don't accomplish that, you're hurting yourself.

Speaker 3 (37:02):

Last thing I want to bring up is in the pre-course the balance of the electronic elements is again weird and notice earlier I said lots of these issues come up mix after mix after mix. So I'm sure that now we've gone through two mixes here where the electronic elements are kind of out of whack. I guarantee you that a few hundred of you have your electronic elements out of whack and I guarantee you that when we start listening to the polls, we're going to encounter that. So those of you who listen to this podcast, double check your electronics. What I'm referring to right here in this pre-chorus is so it goes to the pre-chorus, which is I guess a less intense dynamic than the verse or the chorus. It builds back up and it starts with these hand clap things and eventually the electro hats come in, but those hand claps are way too loud and then the electro hats are even louder. And rather than helping build they distract, they kind of make it sound like this weird techno thing when it's not supposed to be that they're supposed to be supporting role helping build us up to this huge epic chorus, but instead it kind of makes it sound kind of funny. So be real careful that kind of stuff can make or break this style of mix in my opinion. You don't want to take people out of the moment because something that was supposed to be a buildup actually turned into a funny dance part.

Speaker 2 (38:40):

I concur.

Speaker 3 (38:41):

Okay, let's move on to the final mix. This is by Ricky Whiteout

Speaker 4 (39:15):

With a deadly that's broken, the blessing in disguise. I'm cutting and my pain is a blessing in disguise. I feel cutting right die, I'll face everything and right never until I die. Keep falling from the sky, broken wings and learn to fly. I'll face, face, everything shakes burning, but it feels like the tide is turning. Life hurts and there's no warning. Lightning strikes. My heart is storm the rain progressing in the skies, the floods coming in, the drowning over last. The rain is a blessing in disguise. The floods coming in, I'll face everything and rise. Never I falling from the broken wings. I face everything, rise never from the broken wings and learn fly I

Speaker 3 (41:54):

And rise. Okay, so that was submission by Mr. Ricky Whiteout. What do you think, Joel?

Speaker 2 (42:03):

I've got a couple of notes. Okay, I'm trying to think even where to start. I'm reading my sheet here. I think that just like some of the other mixes, first off, the balance is way off. The guitars are way too loud. Again, the mix has no power when it comes in and it sounds really muddy and is just missing a lot of impact Now, something specifically, well two things I'm going to start with. First off, the intro vocals are way damn dry. They don't gel with the ambience of the track. It's like the vocals are so dry, they sound oddly and weirdly out of place. They catch your attention in a bad way. But I'm not going to dwell too much on that. The first thing I want to say is I feel like the drums don't sound like a kit. The samples are way too disconnected from the rest of the kit and I feel like, I don't know, it's just really weird. There's a lot of things that contradict each other in terms of it feels disconnected but it feels super muddy and the mix has no power. But there's just a lot of things I think that need to be worked on here.

Speaker 3 (43:02):

I think the guitars are one of the big culprits to why the mix is weird. There's a few things going on. First of all, I think there's too much gain and that gain is taking away from the definition. So a lot of those rifts, you want to be able to hear the definition so you can hear the pick attack and so that it sounds percussive, but it sounds more like a smooth saw and it's way loud the whole time, especially in the intro, it's distractingly loud and then on the verses it's distractingly loud and then on the pre chorus it's even louder. And then on the chorus it disappears.

Speaker 2 (43:45):

Yeah, right. What is going on

Speaker 3 (43:46):

With that? Totally weird. I mean I am glad that he turned the guitars down, but at the same time, way too much all the energy dropped off. What you want to do is find more of a middle ground there where the guitars are a little louder in the chorus and not nearly as loud in the verses and pre-chorus and intro, but I think that I definitely hear there's a blanket all over the whole mix and this low end rumble thing happening,

Speaker 2 (44:19):

He needs some LDFC on that.

Speaker 3 (44:21):

Oh yeah, absolutely. There just needs some EQ love on this. The chorus mix,

Speaker 2 (44:29):

What happened here? The kick drum comes up three DB and everything else gets muted.

Speaker 3 (44:34):

It's weird. Well let me say something positive, which is that we talk a lot about having a different EQ scheme, different everything for different parts of songs. And if that's what Ricky's trying to do, then I commend you. You should be trying to do that. However, you can't be this extreme about it. When we talk about having different EQ schemes for different parts of the songs, you really shouldn't be able to notice that the EQ scheme is changing unless you want someone to hear that. If you have an automated filter or something. The idea you do that is because the way you eqd the arrangement on one part, like say a blast beat might sound wrong when it then goes to a sludgy halftime part or whatever and you want them to sound consistent with each other so you change the EQ from part to part so that there's a consistency between them. The idea isn't to make them sound like two completely different mixes.

Speaker 2 (45:39):

Yeah, I'll use the example we were talking about earlier from yesterday. So the two A-list guys that were mixing off to see who was going to get this artist. One of the things that our guys mix, I thought he did really great is when his chorus came in, there was just something about the way it exploded. It slightly brightened and widened and it just exploded. And that was something I feel like the other guy quite didn't capture correctly. And again, it's so important to have that little variance in certain parts. Maybe you make a guitar part a little bit brighter in the chorus or whatever, but it has to be done very tastefully because when you do it right, it's supposed to accent

Speaker 3 (46:17):

And it's subtle

Speaker 2 (46:18):

And emphasize things. It just sounds bigger here. The vocals are more in your face and everything comes in and supports it and the mix comes up by db but it doesn't feel unnatural. Those are tricks that really excellent mixers use that take a while to master. I mean there's no free lunch in this stuff. I don't know what else to say. You got to do the work.

Speaker 3 (46:38):

And so like I said, I commend Ricky if that's what he's trying to do, but definitely suggest to try to be a little more subtle about it. And again, it's kind of like the same thing as when I think of reverb on drums, other than specific examples where I want to hear a huge reverb, typically I put reverb on drums to just make the drums themselves sound a little deeper. Meaning like there's front to back depth and maybe a little longer, but not so that I can hear the actual reverb. It's meant to give life or room to the drums. I'm enhancing the drums sound. I'm not enhancing the reverb sound. So right here, you're enhancing the song, not trying to enhance people's perception of your automation skills.

Speaker 2 (47:27):

There's

Speaker 3 (47:28):

A big difference. You put the song first. Alright, here's another thing. A lot of the sound effects like the explosions and stuff, way too loud and distracting and people use eight oh eights explosions, those kinds of things on downbeats all over the place. I even, I

Speaker 2 (47:45):

Know why it is. I'll explain after you finish.

Speaker 3 (47:48):

Yeah, I was just going to say that the trick there too, unless it's like a whoa base drop section again, it's not something that you're supposed to really hear as much as you're just supposed to feel. The section get bigger right there, it's supposed to add impact. Here's

Speaker 2 (48:05):

What he did wrong. He came in and because he hasn't nailed the eq, right? And structurally the mix is too muddy and it doesn't have enough separation. You didn't get the low end relationship, right, the mid-range, the top end, et cetera. There's a lot of mud, there's a lot of clutter in the mix, so there's not a lot of room for those sounds to come through the mix. So what he's doing is he's compensating up in terms of volume to try to get him to punch through. And by the time he gets to the point where you can hear it, it comes out of that zone of fuzziness. He raises up the fader and then what happens is it just eats the whole mix and pops out because there's just no room for it in terms of frequencies. The thing is with mixing posts, and I've mixed so many bands with posts and written post, et cetera, you got to use great quality synths and beat programs and things like that.

(48:51):

That's super important. You have to have great sounds, but not only you have to have great sounds. Your mix has to be very, very nicely eqd and structured and interlocking so that there's room for a massive explosion to cut through without you having to do 15 DB cuts in it and stuff like that. You shouldn't have to do anything super extreme. So a lot of people, and this is something I see all the time, a lot of people will send me mixes and they'll use really shitty sounds that should be in stereo, but it's in mono. And then they're like, well, I hear the reverb here. And I'm like, because you sent me a mono file idiot and it sounds like it's a lo-fi, I could use my own sample, but you're paying me to mix not write posts on your album. So what do you want to do?

(49:30):

The thing is when you have really good post-production sounds and if you've done your job right, you shouldn't need anything more than a clipper and a limiter to get 'em to really cut through. You should very rarely need EQ on those things. Now I will say Simpson pads usually need a lot of work in the mid range just because of the nature and there's usually some really nasty resonant frequencies in them. But the more percussive, cinematic stuff like Joey would use in a hallmark of his production style, a lot of the mix is built in a way that it is structurally sound in terms of eq. So you don't need to do anything else other than balance it. And like I said, maybe clip it a little bit or limit it a little bit depending on how the mix is gained structured.

Speaker 3 (50:09):

You know what? This dude needs enhanced. I'm going to give him one free month of enhanced so that he could get his gain staging together. Ricky, you won one free month of enhanced for you URM enhanced so that you can, there's just too many fundamental problems here. Sorry I didn't ask you guys about this. I'm just doing it. Take duck my pay. I don't care. Ricky, you're getting one three months of URM and Hanson. You need to watch those fast tracks and watch the one about gain staging, learn that shit, let it be your Bible EQ and compression one. Really learn LDFC. You need this dude IV that shit. What else can I say? This just needs to go back to basics with this stuff.

Speaker 2 (51:00):

Yeah, once he gets more clarity, just like the post-production, I feel like it's going to solve my comment where I said that the mix didn't have enough power because the drum samples aren't being, there's no space there for them to hit and to punch. He hasn't carved out the necessary areas and the frequency, everything is kind of just overlapping in the same frequency range. So once he gets to that point, he'll be able to diagnose whether his drum samples are punchy and clear enough and are going to cut through. So either he's going to have to use new samples or he is going to have to go back to work and reshape them. But the way it's mixed now with the guitar in the bass, it's hindering the power of the kick in the snare which drive it. And again, go back to Kane's Mix. When you listen to Kane's Mix, the first thing you hear is that big ass punchy drum sound, thick bass and guitar mix and it's so punchy and clear and it hits you really hard and it conveys a lot of energy and power and we're absolutely doing the opposite of that here on this mix. We're coming in and it's like there's just no power in punch because we haven't parted the Cs so we can walk through them. We got to structurally fix the EQ of pretty much everything.

Speaker 3 (52:09):

That's right. Ricky hit me up al at URM Academy. That's EYL at M Academy and I will get you sorted. Alright, well thanks for listening guys. I hope that you enjoyed this episode of Mixed Crit Monday and we want to know if you want us to do this more often, meaning if you want us to create your submissions for the nail the Mix monthly mix competition, we'll do it. We have plenty of mixes to crit, so let us know if enough of you say yes, then we'll definitely do this maybe every other episode or something.

Speaker 2 (52:47):

And I'll just say that we do these crits guys and they may sound really brutal, and I know when you're in the Iron Throne, they're taking the heat and everybody's trying to cut your head off and destroy your mix. It takes a pair to really withstand that. So you got to keep an open mind when you're listening to the stuff. This is really good for you. I feel like a lot of the best mentors and just people in my life that really made a difference and helped me end up in the place that I've been, have been the hardest, most ruthless, brutal people to me that have been like, this is absolutely unacceptable. This is garbage. Now what are you going to do to get better? Don't get mad, just show me. So I think that it's important to have that mentality when you're submitting for mixed crit.

(53:28):

And if you're afraid of getting ripped up and torn apart, it's like we're doing this out of love because we want you guys to be great at this stuff and get way better. And the only way that you're going to get better is when somebody sits down and says, everything is wrong. Here's why. Here's what you need to do. And you can sit back, reevaluate your workflow, make the necessary changes, and put in the time and the effort and train. And with some work you'll get there to where you need to be and you'll look back and be like, damn, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. So guys, hopefully this stuff is helping you. If you're ever mixed crit and you feel like you've been unnecessarily savaged, please know we are doing this with the best of intentions. And a lot of you guys that have been great sports about it, we've seen you guys improve and it's really exciting to watch. So hell yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:13):

Hell yeah. Have a good one, guys.

Speaker 1 (54:16):

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