Hey guys. Recently I tracked a song for an artist I'm producing and I'm now at the mixing stage and its not sounding how I hear in my head. Particularly the vocals don't shine as I thought they would. The vocals don't seem to fit with the instrumental. Maybe I'm compressing too much. I've started this mix over 3 times and came to realize I may need some professional opinions/direction. Any tips would help. Well appreciated.
edit: I think I should of posted this in the showcase thread instead. Pardon
https://soundcloud.com/gria-test/overtime-mix-ref
I can hear that you have worked quite a lot on this and I can totally understand you are asking for help.
Let's just first list the obvious issues, to not have those in the way when we start looking at the deeper issues present here. The snare is too loud. The ambience is not loud enough. The low mids are too loud on the left speaker. The kick drum and vocals on the side are a bit too loud also. These are some basic things that a mastering engineer would have fixed if you would have sent this mix for mastering and I'm sure these issues are not totally foreign to you now that I've highlighted them. Now let's move on to see how can we make this mix step up in hit vibe.
There are a few basic things about both sound and mix style that I find you need to correct with this mix if you want it to have that modern R&B vibe.
Sound.
If you would visualize how the stereo image of this mix is, it is like waves. It is rather thin at the center and rather thick on the sides, in other words the mix does not have a cohesive stereo form, it is rather a bit random. This makes the mix a bit uncomfortable, because there are various transients poking out here and there in the stereo spectrum maybe you did so to try to separate the sound sources in the stereo field, but it is definitely over done in my view, over compression is in this case part of that issue but also panning and frequency unbalance. My view is that you should try to re-shape the stereo form, so that you get some added height at the center and some roundness on the sides. You can have transients poking out, but that should be just a tiny little so that it does not distract the listening experience. I think it is good that you've put quite a lot of low mids far out, but be careful not to have it unbalanced across the stereo spectrum. The more constant those low mids are (the lower the air), the less loud they should be, else it is like somebody is grabbing your ears and hold them stretched wider, it is a bit uncomfortable.
Another big area about the sound to focus on is the dynamics. The high end has a quite hard bite and the whole mix is kind of forcing itself onto the listener. This is a result of too much compression, too fast attack, too fast release and dynamic unbalance. Typically this comes from lack of transient design in combination with one or several limiters applied ineffectively late in the process. This in turn distracts in the creation of certain mix qualities, that I will now explain.
Mix.
Since the compression provides so much energy, it becomes difficult to notice that the mix actually lacks quite a lot of emotion. It is good if you reduce that energy and flat out the depth while you mix, so that you really concentrate on the emotion of the mix. Obviously the hallmark of R&B is in its rather hot, smooth and emotional vibe. This requires softness at the right places, so that it becomes tender, it requires glue and warmth. Once you have that in the mix, you can begin to enhance that vibe/emotion. And once that is done, you don't have to add as much energy, hence you won't end up over compressing the mix.
The issues relating to sound and mix above, are all fixed earlier than the lateness when they were introduced. So this means for instance that to get hotness, you need something like an acoustic guitar in the production. To get more warmth you need to harmonize the low end, which you can do through low end harmonic excitement and advanced gain staging in an A/B configuration. To get a more rounded comfortable stereo shape you need to improve the balance on multiple stereo dimensions and their sub-dimensions (= different signal routing). To get less poking of frequencies, you need to have higher quality monitoring, spend more time on the rough mixing, perform transient design and hence due to all of this apply compressors differently later on in the process.
Here is what I find sounds good and works well in your mix:
The sound of the bass guitar is good. The depth of the various vocals is nice. The overall loudness is good. Your use of mono on some elements, is good. The presence is far from perfect, but it could be much worse. Your mix intensions are also good and tasteful.
So what we have here is a production that is not done in terms of recording, that has overall pretty good sound but leaves a few basics in sound and mix unaddressed. The focus and hard work is definitely there, but now the engineer wants to take this to the next level, and that requires to offset the focus earlier in the process, so that the pro audio remains preserved later in the process.
Here is a good technique you can practice to step by step improve your mixes from here, because although you have some basic issues in this production at some point you are going to have to "lift" it on the deeper level in order to close in on the very good sounding commercial mixes and that you do not only do from gear and technique, but you do so by using your ears:
Instead of working hard to break into new mix quality levels, listen to more great and not so great sounding music and describe what good qualities you hear about the great sounding mixes and what not so great qualities you hear about the not so great sounding mixes. Stay totally transparent when you do this, the aim here is to refine your analytical skills. You should compare this to a good wine taster. When you can describe your mixes in a very refined way, you better know what mixing moves to make.
Ultimately what makes a mix great is in how much pleasure it provides.