Let me suggest what I heard in the Jimmy Buffet mix vs. your mixes. The YouTube compression could be coloring my impression, but whatever...

First, up front and center is the vocal. I didn't hear that in all your mixes, and where I did, they often felt compressed.

By the way, your harmonies sound fantastic. If you're trying to match what other people do, though, I suspect you'll need to dial them back a bit. It kills me to hear that in a song, but everything is subservient when it comes to the lead.

Next, it's surprising how much space there is in the Buffet mix. When the instruments do play, they pay attention to each other and (mostly) stay out of the way.

You do this quite effectively in some of your songs.

It might be the YouTube compression, but the background instruments really are background instruments. They don't stand out, and are relatively quiet.

In the Buffet mixes, the instruments feel natural. That is, they sound loud because it feels like the musician is playing loudly. They are soft because they are soft, or they're turned down.

In contrast, there are places in some of your mixes where the instruments sound hot - turned up too high. I don't hear that in the Buffet mix.

It sounds like the vocal in the Buffet mix is actually dialed back a bit. You obviously can't do that. You are a soft singer, and the arrangement needs to support that. To me, the goal of the arrangement is to make you (the vocalist) sound awesome. And a lot of the times, they do.

Because one size fits many, but that only gets you part of the way there.

Once you're 90% of the way there, I think the other 90% is tailoring the mix to that particular song. Make sure there's one focal point at any one time, and when that vocal/instrument is the star, make sure that there's nothing that's casting shade on it.

But to run with the "big dogs", you'll probably have to get another pair of ears working with you, because you're already very good.

That's my totally-non-professional opinion, anyway. laugh

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?