Warming up mixes

[Ryanmf]

That was kind of rad. I've only listened to it on my shitty iPad speaker at this point, and by the end I felt like maybe it could use a bit of tightening up structurally, but there were a lot of sounds in there I liked. I did not see the funk carioca drums coming on the first pass, although I guess in retrospect I should have, but you mangled the horn part so much (in a very cool way) that it didn't seem familiar.

Anyway, this thread is about your mix, which I have no way of judging on a tiny dual mono speaker, so I'll shut up for now.

[Khazul]

I sometimes mic up my studio monitors (not close mic) and room to add a bit of vintagey live room recorded feel to some parts or a submix - then blend the result back in to taste.

Works best if you have a few mics including a matched pair, isolating panel (or reflexion filter is useful too) to isolate direct sound from ambience - ie exact opposite of what its intended for - I usually use 4 for the job, two on monitors (a matched pair), an ldc to pick up the sub and another distant mic to capture ambience.

You can approximate with reverb, eq and some mangling, but I just like the crap multi-micing the room adds.

Waves kramer mix tape plugin is nice as well when use gently on a mix - also ghood for stick your room mix through too.

[zenlikethat]

That was kind of rad. I've only listened to it on my shitty iPad speaker at this point, and by the end I felt like maybe it could use a bit of tightening up structurally, but there were a lot of sounds in there I liked. I did not see the funk carioca drums coming on the first pass, although I guess in retrospect I should have, but you mangled the horn part so much (in a very cool way) that it didn't seem familiar.

Anyway, this thread is about your mix, which I have no way of judging on a tiny dual mono speaker, so I'll shut up for now.

Thanks, man. The positive words are what keeps me going at this point.

[Ryanmf]

I sometimes mic up my studio monitors (not close mic) and room to add a bit of vintagey live room recorded feel to some parts or a submix - then blend the result back in to taste.

Works best if you have a few mics including a matched pair, isolating panel (or reflexion filter is useful too) to isolate direct sound from ambience - ie exact opposite of what its intended for - I usually use 4 for the job, two on monitors (a matched pair), an ldc to pick up the sub and another distant mic to capture ambience.

You can approximate with reverb, eq and some mangling, but I just like the crap multi-micing the room adds.

My bedroom/studio is a regular octagon with a peaked (almost parabolic) ceiling. Shit for mixing, but I have to try this sometime.

@zenlikethat No problem man, keep em coming. (iPad tried to correct that to "keep me coming"--do you guys think my iPad might, you know, be "in to" other iPads? Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

[simmerdown]

reaaly liked that corpus tutorial...been looking for a long time for a plug to tweek/phatten my live bass recs, that does a very nice job... .......

[Roca Da Burn]

I use Corpus sometimes on single tracks, mostly drum or percussive tracks - because I don`t like the result of corpus on tonal / melodic material, but for drums it`s ok... after bouncing my mix to stereo, I use the SPL Vitalizer (Plugin or Hardware both the same great job).
Very nice for both low and high frequency emphasis. It`s own compressor and input gain are useful for shaping the sound as well. I recommend everyone to try the demo, it really sounds amazing

[dbfs]

low pass filtering

/thread

[volx757]

this is mad late after the post, but yeah definitely roll off frequencies rather than straight kills. the mix is clean, but there is not enough overlap of frequencies. this part of mixing all comes down to what you hear. turn off your monitor and just listen for what you're looking for.

[Martin Gifford]

I'm a bit clueless regarding the nuances of sound quality. When I think of "warmth", I think of You're My Best Friend by Queen. Lots of toms, Rhodes piano, sighing vocals, etc. Lots of overlapping frequencies there, I reckon.

[Vios]

I agree with what most people have said: there's always a lot going on in any track and defining "warm" is a really hard thing to do in the audio world. Thinking warm = always good would be mistake. That being said, my goto recommendations for warming things up are:

Modern Analoger part of the Antress Modern Plugins set downloadable here

The 1976 plugin preset in Live for compressor.

I also use dynamic tube, overdrive, saturator, erosion, and vinyl distortion. However with these if you're looking for a warm effect you need to use very very mild settings: 1-2% wet/dry, 0.02 distortion, etc.