here’s a couple of songs i’ve made and just wondered what you all thought, i always feel like my vocals could be sitting better so if any bad recording or mixing techniques are jumping out at you then please share.
cheers and enjoy
I would classify this as a ‘nice song’
Put well together , nice drum programming.
Production wise…hmmmm.
It’s a guitar bas and EZ drummer? I miss a bit of balls and signature…
Greetz Dylan.
hi dylan,
your feed back is welcome.
there’s 2 rythm gtrs a lead and bass, superior drummer (may as well be ez d as the extended features are over my head) and vocals, i accept that a lot of people could mix and master this with a set of ear muffs on but i find it difficult using eq’s, comp’s etc. and getting all the tracks sitting well with one another, not so much with vsti’s as these seem to require less know how but definitely with real recordings.
anyway i know it could sound better and if there was a stand out problem with a simple solution then i’m all ears.
i think this (and all my songs) would benefit from a more powerful singer,(not sure if thats what you mean) i prefer playing gtr. which i think suits the nature of the song and granted its not an in your face type of song so again, i’m not sure if thats what you mean. perhaps you could compare to a song(s) which you feel are similar and do have balls
cheer
p.s after re-reading this before i post i realise to some it may sound like ive went on the defensive and im being a dick 
im not, i like hearing other peoples views but i need to understand your point before i can take it on board 
With today’s VST’s you can mix like the real thing, you just skipped the microphone stage but after that mixing an EZ drummer kit is the same as a real kit. The thing is, it may sound awesome as a preset, once it’s in a mix you have to blend it in like a real recording.
If you are not after a 'signature’production then what you do is absolutely fine, also the vocals.
To me this is a ‘dry’ recording waiting to be mixed. But in all fairness, I am a bit of a production addict.
About the vocals, they are fine, there are some spots that invites the singer to belt it out (like : I got to keep it moving till it’s gone in the 2nd song) It’s a bit hold back.
If you like to hear what this song can do I will gladly do a mix, just send me the Midipart of the drums and the stems of the vocal, guitar and bas.
Greetz Dylan.
Hi, a good effort , like the live sounding drums, I reckon the main guitar that goes all through the song is sometimes fighting with the vocal, noticed the same with the “fish on a ferris wheel” song also ( good song title ,by the way ) maybe you should pull the guitar back a bit when singing, cheers, Kevin
what a fantastic offer, thank you very much 
i’ve listened to some of your stuff before and your talent is there for all to see but what you do is very different from me, are you sure you can do it.
when i use eq’s and comp’s etc. i tend to just tweek presets and while this works wonders for overall levels i can never find that final touch. the high frequencies are just not there. boosting them makes it sound harsh while cutting the lows makes it sound weak.
when i record the only time i use a mic is for vocals, bass is di’ed with the use of amplitube ampeg svx while i have a line 6 pod hd for guitars, all this di’ing could be the problem, i once recorded an acoustic with a mic but due to lack of space (my room for recording is about 5ft x 5ft) i bought an acoustic pickup, i used it once then sold it, the high frequencies i feel are lacking in my recordings were more apparent in the mic’d recording while the di’ed version was a bit dull but to be fair it was a £50 pickup, cheap compared to some of the others.
i will happily send you the files if you want to work your magic on it, how would one go about sending these individual files, my email allows me to send a max of 25mb, each wave file is bigger than this, does the pm facility on this site allow for bigger files.
again thank you very much - wait a minute…your not gonna ask for credit card details are you 
hi kevin,
thanks for listening.
i agree, somtimes i think the lead is a bit loud, i guess thats why the good guys use automation, i tried that once but i found when i started on one track i had to do it on others then before i knew it i was sitting for hours loosing track of what i actually done, i decided to find a happy medium where the guitar is loud enough to hear solo’s but still low enough to hear the words. automation is somthing i will go back to at some point but im more interested in figuring out dealing with frquencies at the moment
Nice job on both. I see what the earlier comments are saying… maybe a louder deeper kick and a deeper bass preset. Drums sound pretty good to me. The whole thing sounds a bit dry, - little feeling of a room (reverb). And I would agree that the guitar can come down during the singing and back up on the solos, but I know what you mean about getting started and never coming back out again! But I liked them both!
Hello HS,
the songs are fine as are the performances.
The mixes themselves are awry, with virtually no substance
to the bottom end.
The drums lack punch and depth and there is little to the bass.
The guitars are quite brash, more so in the first
track, and could do with more warmth.
Not sure of your mix environment, but you could start with some
simple A/Bs with other recordings of your genre.
Jet
Good tunes! I like your style.
Guitars and vocals sound really good. Bass and drums are lacking substance. These songs would be much more powerful with a proper mix. I’m wishing for a gut punch.
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed listening!
hi guys,
thanks for listening,
@ early21,
i was just talking to a friend about reverb and how i never use it on the master bus, cant really remember what put me off using it but think its somthing i should revisit, appreciate the input and im glad you liked them.
@ jet,
my mixing environment is poor (based on what i’ve read on forums such as this, i have no experience in a studio or such to compare), my room is about 5ft x 5ft. a square, especially a small one is not good for mixing as far as ive been led to believe,
i have tried the A/B test with a few of my favourite bands such as Guns N Roses and Aerosmith and also a few others that i lke such as R.E.M or Ocean Colour Scene and one difference that is present in all comparisons regardless of genre is the higher frequencies stand out more, there is a smoothness to them and i aint yet figured out how to achieve this without making things sound harsh,
as for the drums and bass, well the drums i just get my patterns sorted then let it play i dont do anything to them, the bass i feel can be difficult to deal with, i know everyone’s saying it’s lacking and i sort of agree, the reason i say sort of is because although you dont notice it that much you certainly know when its not there, but to loud and it can appear to sit on top of the song rather than part of it so yeah its on my list of things to learn.
,
after i read this my daughter had to run upstairs and jump on my head to release me from the ceiling , i strongly (but respectfully) disagree, i have my own idea of what a harsh guitar sounds like and to me this aint it, but each to their own 
, your input is welcome
@ scab pickens,
kind words, its always nice to hear people like what your doing, if you read further up the post sir dancelot made an offer to do a proper mix on the song make my way which i accepted, judging by his own mixes i think i’m in safe hands and cant wait to hear, not sure when he will have time to do it but when he does i’ll post it
Hi Horny, just for clarity, I wasn’t talking necessarily about reverb on the master bus. I usually don’t put it there, although I know many do. I would usually set up an FX or two for reverb and then use sends on the instruments that I want to affect. Different amounts of reverb and different types can help place an instrument front or back in the room, so to speak.
Will be interested to hear what Dylan does with them. He’ll certainly have some thoughts on higher frequencies and how to make them clear without making them harsh.
hi early,
you have just changed the way i look at reverb and for that i thank you, i’ve always looked at it as just an effect that adds a little (or big) echo to make things a little more interesting, you have given me a starting point for experimentation, big thumbs up to you.
i dont expect much change here, at this point i’m more inclined to believe that its more to do with the recording side of things rather than the mixing. to be honest i’m not to disheartened by this, the fact this stood out in pro recordings compared to mine made me wonder what was going on in the mix, some other major thing i’m missing perhaps, but my brother let me hear some other pro recordings, cant remember what band, and it sounded a bit darker but still good.
if a proper mix brings out these high frequencies that i’m accustomed to then thats fine, if not then thats fine also, i like my sound and if i had to change it to bring out the high frequencies i’m not sure if i would
Your room is really a tight little thing, eh?
I thought mine was bad at 8x8. 
Can you pipe your output to another (bigger) room, like a lounge room
or some other space? I’m assuming maybe not?
It’s not always the case you need to do too much to preset drums,
but your mixes sound particularly weak there. What are you
doing to them with EQ? Anything at all? Any dynamics?
I’m just interested to try to sort out what’s going on in your little cube!
hey, couple a good radio rock tunes. I really liked the 1st one, guitar I thought sounded good and the chord arrangement is very catchy, vocals sit well too. when the bass came in after the intro, imo needed to be bigger. might just need to be pushed more on the track, give it a low pass and maybe even a boost on the bottom end with eq.
ok guys,
sirdancelot has finished a mix of “make my way” which i really like and i’ve given “fish on a ferris wheel” another go, as always your feedback is welcome
bluebob,
my songs on the radio, now that is a nice thought, think i’ll need to stick with sound cloud for the moment though, cheers for listening
jet,
8x8, thats almost a dance hall, i bet you even have a window
when i started trying to improve fish on a ferris wheel i did notice i put the cubase multiband compressor - drum preset 2 on the drums, cant remember doing it but there it was, dont think it was in make my way though, i do have two 3ft bass traps, 1 in each corner behind my computer desk, but 1 of them is almost sitting on top of my right monitor, cant put any more up though as the space in “my little cube” closes very quickly, i also have 22 1ftx1ft panels on my walls, i would be lying if i said i noticed a difference when listening between before and after but i did notice a difference in the echo in the room, im guessing it’s been more useful for recording vocals than anything else,
but i think this 2nd attempt is better, no where near the standard as sir dancelot but a step in the right direction,
feel free to comment further,
cheers
I had a lot of fun with thehornyscotchman’s song!
I just wanted to mix it a bit but I ended up doing a lot more, because the song diserves it.
mixnotes:
solo guitar through VST amp rack using only a cabinet simulator to remove the harsch and brittle edge.
A high pass filter to remove lows.some eq, reverb and occasional delay to make it sit in the mix.
I automated the track, pulled it up and down where necessary.
rythm guitars Made them wider to nutch one track a bit further then the original. Route them to a group and applied a high pass filter. Eq and rverb to let them sit in the mix.
Sometines a phaser was used, and I automated the track, sometimes to get them loud in the mix but when the sologuitar played pulled them way back.
lead vocal
Used reverb (UAD reverb pro) and removed some mids to let it sit in the mix.
Heavy compression with the cubase compressor, and a deesser.
I automated the track to pull some words up that were not really audible.
backing vocals
Set up a stereo delay in such way that left was played normal and the right track had a 20-30 milliseconds delay. Feeedback at 0. Result is the same as copying the track and nutch one in time. With the panner I compensated the stereo unbalance. This is a great trick to make things appear behind another.
I removed all lows with a steep highpassfilter and used a chorus or cloner to enrich the sound. Finnaly some reverb.
Basguitar This was a fun experiment
What I did was:
1) run it through melodyne and aplly 100 procent pitch correction.
2) Export the result to midi.
3) Import that midi info back into the project.
4) I let the midi play an instance of the MS20 synth from Korg using a one osc triangle and removed almost all high and mid frequenties with the internal lowpass filter.
This worked out great! I had with almost no effort a very controllable sublow baspart that played perfectly the original baspart from thehornyscotchman.
drums I used the same drumsounds from EZ drummer. I first wanted to add just some crashes because they were not present in the original. After some while I got itchy and started to make some breaks. After doing that I became more itchy and reprogrammed the whole track except the intro bars and the outro.
I routed each output from EZ drummer (8 outputs) into Cubase.
Those tracks were routed to another grouptrack. There I used some eq and a compressor. I also used the Cubase envelopeshaper to get some more transients. The kick got a little more low.
On the room mikes I used also some heavy compression.
I gave the rimshot a big reverb in the intro.I used another really big verb on two snare hits just for FX.
around 2.20 I pulled down the room and overheads and brought up the Hihat channel. Returned everything when the vocals come in again.
Additional edits
around 0.50 I cut a little vocal piece and dragged it to a new track. There I let it sound like a telephone voice using the channelstrip eq. In that same bar I also removed all guitars to let the next bar kick in louder.
Around 1:39 I put a pingpong delay on the lead vocal that I filtered like a telephone voice.
around 1:46 I cut and trimmed all rythm guitars and bass guitar to make them fit exactly on the drums. During that piece I gave the rythm guitar some more sparkle with eq and raised there levels a bit.
Around 2:18 at the end of the solo I used a big reverb to emphasize the end feedback guitar note.
I automated the reverbs FX channel’s to bring up the tale of the guitar note to tigh it to the next bar.
Around 2.30 there is a one bar break. I removed everything except the lead guitar.
On that bar I used a highpass filter to remove all lows from the lead so that the next bar kicks in very loud.
I used a subtle ping pongdelay on the lead guitar just on the first bar after that break.
mastering
UAD’s Cambrigde EQ for setting the low and highpass filter.
UAD’s Pultec EQ to remove some mids and push/pull the 100 Hrtz area.
UAD’s 1176se compressor to tame the dynamics.
UAD precision limiter to catch the transients and bring up overall volume.
Dithering to 16 bit.
Greetz Dylan.
Yeah…well i changed a few presets
Dylan,
the more i listen to this song the more i like it, the added drums in the intro sound great, i wasnt sure at first about how you ripped the guts out the original drum track but i just needed to get used to hearing it in a different way, i have to say im happy with what you have done.
i also hear a difference in the lead guitar, jet commented earlier also believing it sounded a bit harsh, while i maintain my belief that my guitar tone is not harsh i cant deny that it sounds a bit smoother with what you have done, i also think that some of the quicker runs in the solo’s are clearer and your use of the reverbs and delays along with the parts that you cut sound fantastic.
the bass, let me see if i understand this correct, you turned a wave file into midi data and its actually a plug in thats playing the bass, i didnt know that was possible, but then again why would i.
when you first told me a korg ms20 i had to google to see what it was and found a curious looking little keyboard, it confused me, i see now.
your effort is much appreciated, it has made my song a better listening experience
cheers
Well, a lot to learn from this. Nicely done, Dylan! Everything fits together better. Not sure I like that bass treatment, but most definitely interesting. I also listened to your re-mix of the other one, HornyS., and it does seem you’ve applied a lot of improvements. I am going to listen to Dylan’s mix a third time while following the classroom notes!