Hypnotize Yourself - mix

[Sam Inglis]

I think that's generally pretty good, and an excellent performance. There are a couple of little things that bother me about the mix.

(1) I love the sound of the Les Paul that opens the track. I'm much less keen on the sound of the other rhythm guitar, it seems thin and nasal to me, and it fights with the vocal for space in the mix. I kept wanting to turn it down.

(2) There's a lot of reverb and/or delay going on here. Mostly it's handled quite well but I think the drums are too wet, and are losing some impact as a result.

[Drew Stephenson]

Again not my genre, but I agree with Sam that the drums aren't hitting as hard as they should. He's got a much better ear for reverb though so I'd listen to him on that front.

[Martin Walker]

Hey Sam,
Thank you for your honest opinion!
Could you share your experience when dealing with guitar and voice fighting for space? What does usually solve the problem?

I suspect having a read of the latest Sound On Sound magazine would help, as it contains a feature from Matt Houghton entitled How To Achieve Better Separation In Your Mixes

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... your-mixes

Martin

[James Perrett]

My thoughts are that the drum issue is possibly down to the snare being quieter in the mix than the rest of the drums and also having a bit too much of a rattle - possibly the bottom snare mic is too loud compared to the top mic.

The vocals could possibly be very slightly better defined but I wouldn't say that it is a major problem. However, there are a few strange aliasing effects on the vocals - have you overdone the auto tuning? I'd also like a little more ambience on the first guitar but I would lose the ambience on the kick.

[James Perrett]

I didn't notice a hole in the middle in this one but, compared to the music I'm listening to as I type this, your vocals don't quite have that magical hanging in the middle of the stereo image quality that I get from well recorded vocals. The lead guitar in the solo feels much better defined.

As far as vocal artefacts go - there's a squeak in the word "Shadow" in the second line after the solo and it all just sounds over processed - like you have possibly overdone the de-essing and lost all the real clarity. When I record and mix vocals I very rarely use de-essing. The only time I regularly use it is when preparing pre-masters for vinyl but, even for those, it isn't something that I would add automatically.

It may also be worth saying that I don't know the original version so I may be missing the intent of some of your mix decisions.