OK, another thing that I have noticed: Most (or all) of my favorite tunes (that I am using for references) just don't have drums in them. They also have congas, bongos, shakers, hand claps, finger-snaps and whatever else they can find laying around.
Doesn't having anything to do with mix quality, but it does help with song interest.
Kevin, you should download the Ozone trial and simply install and try a few presets to see if it immediately improves your mixes (I suspect it will surprise you how much better they sound!)
The trial is 10 days...software fully functional...comes with a ton of presets...no learning curve at all if you just try out the presets...so all you really have to lose is a couple of hours to download, install and check out the presets. If you like the result just keep your work and buy Ozone for the next CD!
WARNING WARNING WARNING.......
If you do this be sure of one thing. Check to see that you have the money available to purchase the full version. No "if" about it, Ozone will make the mix sound better. I was an owner before the trial was up.
Don't fall into the trap....
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
I recently joined Dueling mixes (www.duelingmixes.com) by Graham from recording revolution. I think it is about $29 per month but you can cancel anytime and the first month is free.
Graham and Joe mix a song for you, do an instruction video and then give you all the raw tracks to practice on and compare to their mixes. You can get feedback from other members of the forum on your mix.
I have mixed three songs so far.I think (I hope) it is improving my mixing.
PS I am NOT affiliated to the recording revolution or dueling mixes.
Ozone: I think I will spend a week or two making some of those changes I need to do and then I will get the 10-day trial version. If it works out, I guess I'll have to get the standard package (on sale until Nov 2nd for $199).
In the meantime if anyone want to "ozone" one of my tunes, I will gladly make the wav file available. rharv took one of my songs and did that -- but I already had a compressor, stereo imager and limiter/maximizer on the master buss, so there was no real headroom to make any significant improvements.
If you want to try one, I will remove all the master buss plugins (double check that there is at least -6db headroom) and place it out on dropbox.
Don't try and do any real work, though (ha, ha). Just use a preset and if that works, fine. If not, try another preset. No need to go nuts for this simple test.
I don't consider myself to be great at mastering... mixing is tough enough for me! Anyway... if you want to send me a link to download the wav, I'll give it a go. My email is listed in my profile (click on Noel96 and that should take you there).
It would be interesting to see what Herb does with your file, too. He's got more experience in this arena than I have.
Is there any particular song you wanted to try? Remember I am not really looking for a finished product -- just something that might give me feel for what ozone can do before I get the demo.
I dunno, even though there was limited room to work with, when I A/B your file (from Soundcloud) to the Ozone wav I created from it, I hear quite a bit of sonic difference. Measurable actually. I've never heard the original wav file though to make any 'real' comparisons... and I spent very little time on it. I said it took about 5 minutes. My point was to do exactly as you are now requesting; just do a quick 'one preset does this' type of example.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!
I dunno, even though there was limited room to work with, when I A/B your file (from Soundcloud) to the Ozone wav I created from it, I hear quite a bit of sonic difference. Measurable actually. I've never heard the original wav file though to make any 'real' comparisons... and I spent very little time on it. I said it took about 5 minutes. My point was to do exactly as you are now requesting; just do a quick 'one preset does this' type of example.
Not downplaying at all what you did (very much appreciated), but I just assumed that because there was only 1 db of headroom, any additional limiting was going to adjust the sound a little artificially. It was louder and sonically different -- but it was a tad more "brittle" (and I thought because of too much compression). I just figured that a test with 5 or 6 or more db of headroom would make more sonic sense.
Noel: Here are the two songs that I didn't have to add any compression to allow it to have any headroom (you may have to right click on the link and do a "link save as"):
You have to be aware that while Ozone can take a song and make it 1000% better sounding, it's also possible to have it do the exact opposite very easily.
You can have a decent sounding song to start with and slap some Ozone on it and ruin it ending up with a brittle, thin, weak sounding mess that's worse than the original.
To use Ozone properly you really do need to understand what is happening and what you are doing to the frequencies when you turn a knob or adjust a slider. If not.... you can just as easily ruin a song as fix it.
They do provide some downloadable PDF documents on mastering and on Ozone..... it's well worth the time to DL and print them and read, study, understand, what they contain.
Remember also, a preset is not a destination, it's the first step on a journey. Presets essentially give you a good starting point. But that's all they are. I have custom presets in it that I have saved. I have never popped on in and let it roll. Every single time I have used my favorite preset, I have had to tweek it to get it to fit the new song.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
JEL, thanks for the video. A great mixing tutorial going on there. Trevor
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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This video demonstrates how to use the new AI-Notes feature together with the AI-Stems splitter, allowing you to select an audio file and have it separated into individual stems while transcribing each one to its own MIDI track. AI-Notes converts polyphonic audio—either full mixes or individual instruments—into MIDI that you can view in notation or play back instantly.
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
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