Song Mixing

Reverend Bow

Reverend Bow

Active member
Is anyone into mixing?

I recorded a thing, I really dig it (it most likely isn't to a lot of people's taste), but the mix is muddy. I tried rerecording it, but I can't catch the feel/vibe of the first version.



Anyone have any suggestions on how to clear it up? EQ tricks perhaps? I used to much reverb, in stereo, while tracking, which I believe is causing the mud...

It is a bit of an audio clusterfook...

If anyone can provide any ideas, I'm all ears.

And I fully expect to get slayed for the 💩 playing, but I pretty much expect it 😂
 
Eq can help separate tracks by giving each their own space and reducing how much they interfere with each other. Eq can't get rid of reverb though. That's why I always take a DI track. It actually saved me this week.

When I got my new pedal, the Beez Nutz, I was quick to have my bassist try it out. He's more of a death and doom guy, so he didn't really bond with the funky pedal. He did, however, find a part in one of our songs where it fit. I insisted he record with it, because I'm determined to get my nuts on his board. The intro/first verse of a song and the outro he plays a whole note melody over my quarter note riff, and the wah made a neat effect. We recorded it and I mixed it.

The band was listening back Thursday and the effect was challenged. It was different from how it's been played for years. Ultimately we agreed that it doesn't sound right in the beginning, but works for the outro. So, I fed the DI track to the bass rig and recorded his performance through his amp clean. By reamping, I still had the feel of his original performance, but with different tone. It can save your ass and is good to do every time you record.
 
Drums need more beef to start, low end needs tightening with drums and bass, and is that one guitar track with tons of reverb on it? I’d go double tracking hard panned 100L and 100 R. If you want to make any part like a true lead you could go in the center with the lead and rhythm guitars underneath.
 
Brandonrz said:
Drums need more beef to start, low end needs tightening with drums and bass, and is that one guitar track with tons of reverb on it? I’d go double tracking hard panned 100L and 100 R. If you want to make any part like a true lead you could go in the center with the lead and rhythm guitars underneath.
Click to expand...

^Do all this first, but there is also too much verb and delay and space in it also.

If there's mud in a mix, adding echo will exponentially mudify it up even more. Which is, why I expect you noticed it in the first place
 
Cool tune, but yeah that's a bit too much on the verb.
First of all, if you are running any mix bus compression or mastering limiting, it will drastically bring up all the low level audio like verb in a mix.
If that's the case, process the rest of the mix on another sub group and leave the guitar tracks with the verb untouched.

you could also try something like this:
https://www.zynaptiq.com/unveil/

You might be able to download a trial version and fix your song without having to buy the full plug-in.

Good luck!
 
DanTravis62 said:
^Do all this first, but there is also too much verb and delay and space in it also.

If there's mud in a mix, adding echo will exponentially mudify it up even more. Which is, why I expect you noticed it in the first place
Click to expand...
I did get distracted mid response kiddos running around, thought I wrote about the verb lol. Yeah it’s absolute over kill.
 
Brandonrz said:
I did get distracted mid response kiddos running around, thought I wrote about the verb lol. Yeah it’s absolute over kill.
Click to expand...

Generally speaking, the more verb and echo you want to add into a mix, the more midrange (especially 800 hz to 3k) you have to scoop out - OP should listen to dark side of the moon or any Def leppard for an example of how to accomplish this

The guitars and the mess of echo are sucking up all the oxygen for the space the drums should be occupying

He needs to

1. Take all the verb, echo, and fx off
2. Start from scratch with the drum sound
3. cut a gargantuan amount of midrange from all the guitars bass keys etc cumulatively,
4. making surgical cuts in just about everything, and then re-jigger the echo now that he has space
 
i would start with the kick, it sounds a bit buried which i think is making the overall mix lack punch more than it is muddy. the guitars do have too much reverb, id probably do like brandon said with a cleaner L/R track and add reverb and delay after. i think everything could use a little bit of compression to glue it together more. overall its a solid start though
 
Like some others have said. A bigger & punchier drum sound would help tremendously.

If you don’t have that, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle all day. To prevent them from getting buried, everything else has to be dialed back to compensate.
 
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