Russell,

I think this is a really great debut and I applaud you for the use of the live played instruments with the band in a box tracks.

You are off to a really great start.

I have a few simple tips for you that I use all of the time when I'm trying to produce a complicated mix such as you're doing, especially one that's in the rock and roll vein.

1. First, mix down the bed with nothing but the instruments eqed and sounding exactly the way you want them to sound and creating a single stem from that.

One of the commenters was right in that if you export the band in a box tracks flat, dry and center they usually sound better in most cases and you can apply subtle effects to them later. (Or keep the reverb mild.)

Now take the master bed of just the instruments you mixed and put that on a single track in your DAW all by itself as an audio reference.

2. Now start to blend in the vocals, only using the instrument bed with all the other instrument faders down for now. Easy on the reverb. You have a great country voice and it's probably going to sound much better if we can hear those vocal chords on the raw vocal track. Feel free to use other vocal tracks (copies of the main used as doubles) with effects on them, just keep the raw vocal higher than those in the mix, fiddle and fool around with it until you get the right blend. You will find a sweet spot where your raw vocal track blended in with vocal tracks that have effects on them will begin to sound more powerful especially when they're sitting on top of the mix.

3. Next, when you're listening to what you have so far, you may want to pull those other tracks for the guitars, bass or whatever up or down a little bit in the mix using your own mastered instrument track as the reference. For example if you want a little bit more acoustic guitar then pull that acoustic guitar up against the master and find the Sweet spot where the instruments are enough but not too much and the vocals are predominant.

4. Once you've done that you can either keep the instrument reference track the way you have it with the other instruments too or you can completely fade it out and use the newly mixed tracks that you are adjusting against your own instrumental reference.

In this way you'll be able to achieve a really great separation of instruments and get the type of dynamic range that you're looking for.

It will also help you keep things simple and create that space in the song that you're always looking for.

Anyway just my two cents and a couple of things that I had to learn how to do over the years with complicated rock mixes such as this.

Rock and roll (or country rock) is really really hard to mix but I think you're doing a great job.

David Snyder
Songwriter/Renaissance Man
Studio + Fingers

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