Vibe vs. Mixdown

[faisal_pirate]

Hey everyone - so two things with this one.

First - I mentioned this in the other post but my goal is to be a great storyteller through music, capturing a moment or creating a place to the point where the listener can’t help but go there and reimagine it in the context of their own life / imagination. I’ve attached a picture of where this song came from, its the moment I’ve tried to capture sonically, would love to know if you feel that / where it takes you.

Second - this is has legit been a full-on nightmare to mix, the vibe called for all these synths that are all piled up on each other in the midrange with loads of chorus and verb etc and sounds that rely on some pretty intense resonant frequencies, even the bass is like a wide reece. As you can imagine speakers really don’t like it when you make arrangements like this BUT it’s the vibe the song calls for I’ve spent ages trying to find a balance of preserving the vibe I wanted whilst getting a good mix down, any thoughts on improving the mix would be hype

[shrykeOX3]

Ah mate - I put this on and don’t know where I went for 3 mins - definitely didn’t stay in the room! Happier times, happier places - and somewhere warmer than the UK! Obviously I don’t know if that’s /where/ you wanted to transport the listener, but in any case some transportation is obviously happening. Unreal.

Sorry to say I can’t help with mixdown, but yeah - vibe-wise…nailed it.

[artyfact]

Hiya mate,

Love that, it’s thick and full an does the job well. I think my heart rate just dropped to about 40bpm lol.

As for the mixing, what eq and compression tools are you using?

I’d suggest the following (unless you’ve already tried this). Start at the bottom - the lower frequencies, and work your way up EQing them all the way. Because the lower frequencies tend to spread out all the way unless tamed. Cut as much high end off the bass as you can handle without totally mashing up the character of it when soloed.
Then work your way up through the synths from bottom to top, you’ll find the higher pitched ones don’t tend to need very much space at all and they will start to stand out a bit more on their own. Just need to let each one breathe in it’s own space.

I’m guessing some of the middish synths really overlap and clutter each other. I’d use a bit of side-chain compression on those if possible, letting the higher-pitched ones compress the lower-pitched ones. This way, it’ll squash the conflicting frequencies of the lower-pitched tracks and let the higher-pitched one sing out a bit more. With the EQing done in the previous step, the higher-pitched sounds won’t take up any more frequency than they need to.

Good luck mate, hope you manage to crack it. Is a beautiful song.

What software are you using out of interest?

[faisal_pirate]

Hey @shrykeOX3 that’s perfect feedback thank you, that means the songs doing its job!

[faisal_pirate]

Hey @artyfact haha a solid 40, that’s awesome glad it resonated! Thanks for the mix feedback, I’ve pretty much used all of those techniques and then some already, I think its probably as good as it’s going to get without altering the arrangement. It seems like for the several people that have listened to it that it’s communicating what it needs to so maybe any more mixing would be overthinking it?

I use Ableton Live 10, it’s my fav workflow for producing. Ill occasionally reach for Logic Pro X if I need to track live vocals or instruments but then ill always pull it into Ableton to make the song