Re-Mix coherence/Feedback request

[MegaBacher]

Hello,

I've been tooling around with additional production and re-mixing of a 2017 song I produced and recorded for a now defunct band. It was a pretty barebones demo that I added production to last year, then attempted a re-mix recently. Wondering if it comes across coherently, or if it suffers from anything I need to retune my mixing setup for.

https://youtu.be/ZUS3gjsk3hA

[OneWorld]

Sounds mixed ok. I might suggest just a modicum of reverb on the lead vox?

[Drew Stephenson]

First thoughts as I listen.
I like this, a lot. I think the solo around 1:50 could come up a bit (or just have a bit more presence) to really take over at that point. Ditto at 3:15.
But I disagree with OneWorld about the reverb on the main vox, I like it raw like that.
Nice ear candy moments and I definitely don't think it comes across as lacking coherence.

[MegaBacher]

Thank you for the specific points. I think I would probably attempt re-amping guitars to get more presence, because I can never seem to do it right with plugins without adding harshness or unwanted frequencies. I wanted to re-amp the lead guitar in this track but got lazy on it since no one is paying me to make this song happen as a final mix.

[James Perrett]

My biggest issue with this is the room sound - everything sounds like it was recorded with a distant mic in a small room. I don't know whether this is deliberate or just a by-product of miking decisions made at the time but I felt that the room wasn't quite appropriate for the style of music.

[amanise]

Been meaning to get to this and kept getting side tracked - sorry. But - I loved it. I thought it was great musically and good performances on everything. Way better vocal than I could manage - and it did seem to have reverb or delay on it by the time I got to it. Very nice snare sound with a nice ring here and there.
I spend most of my time in headphones because my room is terrible. Listening on phones it sounded nice and airy - but I wouldn't want any more air frequencies than there already are. Perhaps this isn't quite as pronounced in a good room.

On the whole I'd say very good for something being brought back to life that you perhaps didn't have control of all the input decisions maybe at the beginning.

[MegaBacher]

My biggest issue with this is the room sound - everything sounds like it was recorded with a distant mic in a small room. I don't know whether this is deliberate or just a by-product of miking decisions made at the time but I felt that the room wasn't quite appropriate for the style of music.

Things that were miked were done so in one of two small bedroom setups, so way less than ideal. I've found over the years the smaller the room the more careful you have to be with performance and engineering to get a workable result. I hadn't yet moved into a larger place where I could spend more on acoustic treatment. By far the biggest setback, usually in multi-miked drum recordings.

[Sam Inglis]

One common mixing mistake I hear is when people start with the beginning of the track and make that sound amazing, without thinking about the fact that arrangement is going to get much more dense later on in the song. It sounds to me as though you've done the opposite here! When it first started I thought it sounded thin and empty, but by the time it got to the chorus I thought it worked well.

I'd agree with James about the room sound. The vocal sound works really well once the track gets busy but less so at the start. I also felt there was something distracting about the hi-hat. The rest of the kit gels quite nicely as though we're hearing mainly the overheads or room mics, but the hi-hat seems to sit on top of it -- is it a separate overdub, or just a close mic mixed too loud? I'd want to make it darker and push it back in the mix a bit.

[Spells]

At some point, it becomes about taste rather than flat out science. For me, it sounds great.... but I could probably do with delays on the vocals or at least on certain words. Delay throws to bridge the gap between phrases perhaps.

[tea for two]

When mixing I chose order of importance of instruments.
In this song the over prominent hihats is one of the least important : detracts from the excellent song, instrumentation.
One thing I do is plugin headphones but not wear them, I place headphones approx 17inches away from me then I listen to a mix to hear the levels of instruments. This way I can spot something that's sticking out like a sore thumb as it were, in this instance it's the hihats of this mix.

This next bit is personal preference so please ignore.
Raw Vocal a trifle air for it to breathe also smidgen bringing it's level up in relation to the instruments.
Kick could do with beefing up to nail the groove, an easy way would be to stack the recorded Kick with Kick/s from sample pack.
I nearly always stack my Kicks each Kick processed differently.
Weedy Kicks are present in various commercial hit Rock, Metal songs so it's not just this song.

So all in all just 3 minor adjustments to a triffic song.

[MegaBacher]

but the hi-hat seems to sit on top of it -- is it a separate overdub, or just a close mic mixed too loud?

It's the element I most wanted to fix and could do the least about. It's a multi-miked drum kit with about 7 or 8 mics in a small 3.5 meter by 4 meter bedroom with minimal treatment. I kept overheads close and did my best in the mix by solo'ing a single overhead mic for the intro, then bringing in all drum tracks once the drums kick in. The way I engineered the recording back then is NOT how I do things now, and had I desired to put more time and effort into someone else's song, I would've re-recorded the drum tracks altogether. Unfortunately I'm not as attached to the idea of fully realizing this song to do such a thing. It helps to know what's not working in the mix, as I tend to live by the recording principle of "rubbish in-rubbish out".

[simonmix]

The mix is generally good, dry, but does it just sound to me that the drums sometimes go out of rhythm? Then the voice is really too dry. More reverb doesn't hurt here.