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Comments
It sounds like nothing I've ever heard before, and the creative decisions seem so deliberate. I don't think I've ever seen anyone's original music receive this much attention on here. It sounds like some avant garde experimental electronic noise music from NYC that I wouldn't even think about evaluating or altering.
But I could definitely see myself creating something inspired by this. I would use CC automation for the vocal panning, to make the vocals dance around. They're kind of buzzing around like a fly, so I'd maintain some of that erratic movement, but make it seem like it's determined by the energy of each line of vocals, rather than just matching the energy of the track. I would put a bit crusher on the synth and run it into a granular, then run it into WOV, and I would then side-chain the rest of the track to the WOV'd up synth, so that the whole track has more of that cutting in and out, "listening to a transistor radio on acid" vibe. I would also automate the volume of the synth track, and the intensity of the side chaining, so that some of the strong beats are super strong, and some are super weak. The off beats would be medium intensity, but with some variations in velocity, just so that every element gets a hint of chaos.
I would use every technique that falls under the category of: adding silence and "rhythm" while also keeping the track busy, trippy, and abrasive.
That's not exactly the help you asked for, but...I'm inspired.
Chaotic avant garde music with autotuned dance elements is such an interesting concept. But in terms of your creative vision, I think this video might help, because you did say "five piece band" and those are rarely so synth-centric.
And my only personal piece of advice would be, if you're writing a song with so many parts, try to visualize how all of the elements will interact beforehand. Think of each piano part as a unique character with a voice, interacting with both the audience and the other characters onstage.
@qryss, great explanations everyone can understand. Once again, this forum shows itself to be knowledgeable, patient and tolerant.
@annahahn, I can see how important this is for you, and while all the advice given here seems top notch, it might be helpful to seek professional help (no, not that kind). Have a sit down with a recording engineer for a few hours. Or offer to compensate someone here to virtually guide you.
You brought up these questions before and got similar advice (tho this seems more detailed this time).
And you didn’t find your magic formula. So, unlikely it will work this time. Maybe cause in mixing and mastering when you jigger one thing others fall out of balance.
When I had spent years trying on my own to learn to improvise it all came to nought. I needed a teacher. And, IMO, especially since you are seeking a mastering and mixing formula, it might be wiser to pay for someone to help you develop it. If it is that important to you that you are sacrificing family time... well, best solve it in the most efficient way possible or you may have bigger problems to deal with.
Good luck!
@annahahn : if after hundreds of hours this is where you are, I think it is time to temporarily shelve the idea of getting to where you hear it in your head (that swirling mix with slamming volumes and clarity) and get a basic mix that doesn't swirl working.
I'd recommend that you start by figuring out what the core two or three tracks are and getting those figured out and sounding solid and crisp -- with none of the swirling stuff. You can't get that figured out (imo) until you have figured out how to get the tracks to sit well together without it.
My rec: get your basics down and post that mix for comment.
It would be helpful to see your mix layout to see what is going on. Might also be useful to post the stems to see how much of the issue is in the original tracks themselves.
Mixing, recording, and playing are different skills. Getting each track sounding great on its own is different from playing them (almost no professional musicians are also their own engineers -- and those that are mostly worked as engineers at some point as a separate gig -- and some people are great engineers from the point of view of getting tracks sounding great on their own but not great at mixing). And getting the great sounding tracks to sound great as a mix is different from getting them to sound good on their own.
It is hard from what you have posted to know how much of the muddiness is the mix and how much is in the actual tracks.
I think @LinearLineman's suggestion of investing in lessons or sessions with an accomplished engineer will save you thousands of hours of frustration.
Perhaps you should approach mixing from the "other end" than where you are coming from by mixing in mono first.
I found this video by Kush very revelatory:
With respect to adding twirling motion - I assume you are trying to model an auditory experience when dancing the tango: if you go for a binaural headset experience there used to be an app 'VirtualRoom AU' that allowed precise control of sound sources in 3D-space, alas it is no longer available. Possibly Binaural Location by Blue Mangoo may be in a similar vein.
Ok, I ripped a part of Tango to take a quick look.
As suspected ,your frequency balance is almost the inverse of what it should be.
Here’s two grabs. First is a professionally mixed and mastered progressive house track. (I couldn’t find a similar genre to yours quickly which I believe in any case is fairly unique to you). Second is yours.
Can you see how in yours everything above 500hz is way louder by comparison ? Likewise everything below 260hz is down ?
I also low pass filtered the bass and sub range and you have a lot of frequency masking going on between your reverb swooshes and your kick and bass.
I would take others’ advice and spend a day with a competent mix engineer or hire someone on the board to work remotely with you so you can at least get a handle on the fundamentals. I feel sure that if/when you do, you will only wish you had done it sooner.
Good luck
Your advice is too generic and can be applied to most ABF members. Just writing here can help and cost nothing. But the tradition of paying "so called experts" is typical of the upper crust.
But to be fair:
https://www.betterhelp.com/helpme/?utm_source=AdWords&utm_medium=Search_PPC_c&utm_term=mental+health+online_e&utm_content=52022657179&network=g&placement=&target=&matchtype=e&utm_campaign=384672130&ad_type=text&adposition=&gclid=CjwKCAjwnef6BRAgEiwAgv8mQT1G-xgMnWeDC3ZKdiEKa-rmAHGELhgZt2tY1nwfLAHuhno3cF2p2xoCW4YQAvD_BwE¬_found=1&gor=helpme
Personally, I think it's better to self-medicate and it's going to be a great mushroom season when the fires go out and the record breaking storms hit the Pacific coast. Good times.
I would turn down your cacophony tracks. the swirly chaoticness is just too much for the other elements to breathe.
Also sidechain them.
The Kick should be your main focus of the song. It needs room to breathe and punch through the mix.
Also, picking the right reference is super important. Try some PC music stuff for references.
Sophie, and PC music tracks in general can get pretty chaotic at times, yet still maintain balance, and a clean mix.
on listening to your tracks again, i would say to just back off the reverb / fx overall. A little reverb goes a long way. Unless your doing ambient etc, overdoing verb can very quickly muddy up a track. If you listen to the rico nasty track above, you can hear the synths have a bit of verb on them, but still cut through the mix. Also notice how loud the kick is in general against the rest of the mix.
Also, the pink noise thing doesnt really work that great / should only be used as a somewhat loose reference point. Always use your ears, or better yet use your ears while referencing as similar a track to yours as you can find.
Where is the kick drum sitting in your reference? Put your kick drum in the same spot, follow with the rest of the elements, then adjust accordingly.
I had a look at the screen grabs and from looking at
the frequencies @annahahn is making a classic mistake.
The mix shows that he's over compensating for the high frequencies.
It happens with ear fatigue.
@annahahn
Firstly I would recommend turning down your headphones or monitors.
Secondly, mute everything except for the drums and bass.
Get the drums and bass nicely balanced then bring everything else up.
There are some really good suggestions in this thread.
Great suggestions here. What @Gravitas just said, mute all but the drums and bass. EQ them to a stable balance and clarity, then slowly mix in the other pieces. I struggled with this badly as well until i started keeping the volume down and learned how to properly EQ.
There are some great EQ tutorials on yt, particularly the ones with ProQ3 though Toneboosters EQ is perfectly substantial.
Yes, good point. I forgot to suggest mixing at easy listening levels or you won’t really hear things properly. Or not for long in each session anyway because your ears will fatigue.
I’d don’t know what you mix with (which headphones, which speakers) but if it’s bass heavy then you may well accidentally skew your frequencies to the upper end.
@annahahn
Talking about classic mistakes.
I presumed that you were male.
If I had had a gender neutral pronoun I would've used that instead.
My apologies.
On the Internet, no one can tell if your a troll or a woman really. But we can surmise and act accordingly. On this thread I'm going with non-troll, indeterminate gender. Is there really such a thing as gender really?
That should stimulate some interesting comments unrelated to the mixing of the audiophiles.
More cowbell.
Interesting tracks actually. You might want to use less reverb and see how it does to the sound. Also, try to pan everything center, forget about the swirling for now. Just get everything sound balance first, then add pan afterward.
If you have Perforator, try it on the vocal track etc. to create gaps for some breathing space.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/perforator/id1382134258
It can also simulate sidechain pumping.
It's at this point in an @annahahn thread that it typically dies slowly without closure. No improved mixes
are ever shared to show the effort applied was applied to the problem stated up front.
I'll put some crow in the microwave and see if I need to eat up. If not the cats will get a snack.
The upside of course, is that there a lot of useful advice here for everyone to sample for their own education.
@McD aaaay man don't give up on me I'm trying to get it right
currently attempting to integrate the myriad strategies proposed to see what is most helpful~ will be back with more soon🤞
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/40934/reverse-engineering-super-thick-bass-sound#latest
@McD that's for the same track~ @Gravitas pointed out my frequency profile is backwards so I'm trying to go back and make better choices about instrumentation so each instrument is clear and occupying the portion of the spectrum I intended
Ok as promised to @McD I have an updated version of the track where I’ve tried to take everyone’s advice into consideration
This version has none of the spatial swirling fx that were on the previous and I also removed the secondary whooshes/riser tracks for clarity- my goal here is just to get a clear + present mix then go back and add fx and embellishments- the voice still has a little bit of the oscillating spatial reverb but much less and no stereo movement
This seems better to me than the previous version, can hear the bass throughout much clearer than the previous version, but I feel like there still may be room for improvement here in terms of separation
The challenge for me has been maintaining the bass AND the loud hammer piano hitting really hard + clear without masking each other too much
Any feedback on how to improve what I’ve described above, overall clarity, or any other aspects anyone feels could be improved would be infinitely appreciated
Again thank you so so much to everyone for their advice and consideration
@annahahn
The recording sounds like I'm only listening
to an effect rather than the mix itself.
I can hear the instrumentation but
there is an absence of centre sounds.
I've checked my current setup to make sure that
I didn't have an effect on my playback channels
as I'm preparing my live rig for some performances.
I mentioned a French artist when I had heard a mix
of yours earlier this year if I remember correctly.
Quebrus was his name.
I had said then it would be interesting to mix your material.
Your music reminds me of his.
If I were still in the business I would say get in touch with Warp Records.
Hi @Gravitas
Thank you very much for this!- just to make sure I understand you correctly...when you say centre sounds, do you mean midrange?
I feel like it’s lacking mid body in a strange way also...maybe I need to go back and rework the instrumentation to address this zone more, I’ve tried a combination of saturation and stacking lower notes to address this but perhaps I’m not there quite yet
I listened to the beginning and while you have made some progress, I think you need to get the basic/core tracks working before you work on getting that vocal part mixed in. Things are still pretty muddy and with the vocal in there, it is hard to pinpoint why.
My rec: get the bass and drums working so that they sound like you want them...and before adding anything else post a mix. With each mix, I’d post screen snaps that show us the tracks and effects. I can’t tell whether the muddiness is how the tracks are mixed or if they are in the original tracks themselves.
I notice that the high frequency tracks are way louder than everything else. This adds to the muddiness. The bass and drums end up sounding like they are coming from a different room. You do t need the Vox and other high frequency tracks to be so loud. They will stand out without so much volume.
Hard to know how to fix the collision between bass and piano without hearing them on their own. Do you have reverb on them?
If you get the core crisp, it will make everything else easier.
No worries.
No, midrange are frequencies.
I'm referring to the spatial image.
How sounds are positioned in the mix.
I can only hear the sound of the space hence why I said
it sounds like I'm listening to an effect rather than the track itself.
For instance it can happen when mixing only on headphones
and it can also happen when one is exporting out a track.
That's what I'm referring to.
I don't think it's the instrumentation.
It sounds like an effect.
Here's one of my tracks from my archives so to speak so you
can hear what I describe when I say about placing sounds in space.
I still wanna know what @Tarekith thinks of Barkfilter???????
like everyone else has said. the mix sounds a bit better, but that vocal needs to come way down!! its drowning out your drums and bass!
I haven't tried it myself, not something I really need. Sorry!
@Gravitas thank you for the example track! everyone is sleeping around me now but I will listen first thing in the morning thank you very much!
I am guilty of mixing only on headphones- do you have any tips on how to avoid this/correct it given that I do not have a way of working on speakers or monitors at the moment? I have great headphones but I'm sure mixing this way comes with obvious biases
Also if not your own tips, any advice on what terminology to look up regarding this problem so that I can better educate myself. I know what you mean, the sense of space is very strange even though certain elements like the bass are mixed in mono.
Mixing with headphones only is always tricky. Plugin like TB Morphit may help*, but the most important thing is to keep comparing your track against viable reference track**. Also, compare as often as possible before/after states. Many times while tweaking something your ears adapt to whatever you're hearing, so you simply assume whatever you're doing is good for your track, bypassing your effect may shine the light on your mistakes immediately.
edit:
*Make sure your headphones are supported.
**Measurement tools will help you visualise the differences.