Twenty One Pilots - Blurryface - The highs peaked and exceeded a little.
Slash - You're A Lie - lows went below, in low Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California - exceeded high mids and dipped below in the lows Nickelback - Someday - went below in the lows, and exceeded the high mids I got an almost random cross section of tracks including different decades spanning 1985 or so to 2021 so - of course there's a lot of variation!Īs far as what surprised me with Izotope Tonal Balance:īlack Eyed Peas - Get It Started was riding the top and exceeding the top of the "high" category.ĭef Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me - it went below in "low" and rode the absolute top of "high-mid." I have to work with what I have at the moment, though, given what this project is.Īs far as mix variation - part of my problem was not curating my references well. Your first paragraph is spot on, and makes a good case for hiring someone. So you need to trust your vibe, or you have no vibe worthy of trusting.But you came this far, so trust the vibe that got you this far. So? You need to please yourself, trust the music gods within, and stay true to your vibe as best as you can- in the now. I guess one fear is that years down the line, you might have a situation where you think there should’ve been or could’ve had more or less high end. If you don’t want too harsh or too dull high end, then just don’t do it. You can’t sacrifice your vibe just to incidentally sound like other music. If the music is good, then your vibe should come across. So if you have the situation, “Got it where it sounds best to me, BUT high end is not as my reference music.”, then fuck the but. Overall, though, the intended vibe is ideally how it’d be mastered. You obviously know what too much high end is, as well as too little. “Maybe I should meet halfway and call it done?” Maybe it's as simple as "Be man!!! Make a decision and MOVE ON!" Thanks for your advice if you have a suggestion. but I'm stuck, and I've spent more time "deciding" than I would care to admit. How do you get perspective in a situation like this? My reference tracks only told me that the window of "normal" is quite literally all over the place. I suppose I should roll off a hint of high end, and call it done? Sorry for the lengthy question, but hopefully the details question can help get me targetted advise on this final decision. Maybe I should meet halfway and call it done?
I tried Izotope Tonal Balance, and I like the idea of it but it just told me that a lot of the professional mixes that I felt were fatiguing actually have high end that far exceeds Izotope Tonal Balance's recommended amounts ( ! )īut if I take Tonal Balance's recommendations, my high end is too dull. I just don't know how much treble I should have. I know Voxengo SPAN very well, and that helped me balance my mixes so I don't have major problems. This is a DIY project and I need to do it myself. What I'm experiencing is a classic example of why it's ideal to hand off your work to a proper mastering engineer - to get another set of ears for these decisions.īUT. But not enough leaves my mixes dull compared to mainstream work.
But the music he mixes is in a very different genre from my own, which is more "industrial/electronic/rock." Louder, more aggressive. I personally like Tchad Blake's mixes which mostly tend to be warmer.
However, I don't know how to make the final decision - particularly in the amount of high end.Ī LOT of professionally mixed & mastered music is overloaded with what I would consider fatiguing high end. I understand the basics - I have no issues getting my mixes to translate pretty well across listening devices. Obvious answer #2: "Use reference tracks."īut what if using your ears is too subjective? And what if using reference tracks just tells you that there is no "right" answer - that professional mixes are all over the place in terms of tonal balance? You have no problem doing whatever is necessary to make them sound "whole" as a group of songs. The tracks at mixdown are within the ballpark of each other, no major issues. You have to (or want to) do the final mastering yourself. You are finishing your personal project, an album of X number of songs.