Two mixes for upcoming album.

[Silverlode]

Hey everyone. Here are 2 mixes appearing on the upcoming Maxel Toft album. I swtiched from Pro Tools LE to Logic halfway through, so some tracking may have been done in PT. Everything was recorded and mixed in my basement "studio" What do you think? I'm at the stage where I'm worrying about bass levels, overall sheen and compression, etc. But if anyone has any comments at all, I'd love to learn from them.

The Stranger

Half Full

[evan]

Both songs sound good. "The Stranger"'s drums and bass occupy a very pleasant little nook in the center, and everything is tastefully restrainted and clearly in a space of its own, both frequency- and panning-wise. The vocals sound naturally distanced, and sit well with the instruments. The chimey bell-like stuff and backup vocals have that nice pull-away effect, when they appear further left and right than you might expect. Overall I thought it was unobtrusively produced, yet clearly set up in the most flattering way for the song.

Most of what I said for "The Stranger" applies to "Half Full" as well, although with a few critiques. I thought the acoustic guitar was a bit too swishy-sounding when it was alone -- maybe slightly different mic placement would've counteracted this effect (or it could be the MP3 encoding, actually, since the hi-hats seem to have the same issue). There's a good dramatic effect with the instrument drop-in, but the drums' representation threw me a bit off; they seem spread out rather thin, and feel uncertain in the stereo field, maybe due to too much of the room sound. The vocals are spot-on again, with a good sense of distance and breathiness. I also thought, overall, the song might've benefited from a slightly more distinguished production from "The Stranger". I'm not really sure exactly how you might've accomplished this, but I felt that the two tracks were a little too alike in their approach. Whether this is a consequence of the material or the mix is arguable. Maybe encouraging the band to try an alternate working of the song, or adding novel elements would've been in order.

All in all, well done. Trying to achieve a good sense of dynamics in more low-key music is tricky, and I think you did a very commendable job at that.

[Silverlode]

Thank you evan. The band is me and my friend Max with some female vocals done by friends of ours. When we were writing and arranging the material I pointed out that most of the songs start with acoustic guitar and voice, then the band comes in - not something you want to do on every track. There are 3 songs that do that and these are 2 of those. There will be more coming, with some different production values. I'll post them, too.

I am actually happy, though, to hear that they sound similar, as I used the mixing process to even out the differences on purpose. I think the drums will sound different on every track, as the mic setup and drum tuning was all over the place throughout the months of tracking.

Thanks for listening.

[Brian]

Very Nice!