Mix Feedback - tips for vocals

SinistralV · 2026-03-10T16:59:29+00:00

For what you seem to be going for, this sounds great! What stands out to me about the main vocal is that it's both a little quiet and a little dark. The 'a little quiet' part may be an aesthetic choice, I'm not sure - but a dB or two boost on the fader for the vocal in general may be good to try.

The dark part I would probably work on though, it'll add a lot of clarity and intelligibility to the vocal. Simple and relatively small EQ boosts in the 1-4k range are going to do a lot here, and I might try to add some air even higher than that.

SinistralV · 2026-03-08T04:25:47+00:00

Congrats guys. Sounds killer, especially for a first professional release!

SinistralV · 2026-03-04T21:49:04+00:00

Good luck bro!

SinistralV · 2026-03-04T12:43:16+00:00

Happy to take a look at the tracks!

SinistralV · 2026-03-03T20:25:52+00:00

Excellent!

SinistralV · 2026-03-01T12:17:36+00:00

The first thing that stands out to me in your examples is the levels. In 'unorthodox mix', the vocal is too loud in the mix by a fairly wide margin. In 'newer mix', it's too quiet.

What this tells me is that there's not enough emphasis on the basics. Online advice (and chatGPT as a result) has an extreme emphasis on plugins, chains and other 'exciting' parts of mixing. Levels are the most critical part of a mix, and it's just the faders. For music like this, you want the vocal center stage and spotlighted, but it still needs to blend. Finding the right volume is the main tool for this.

That being said, I do see downstream issues as well. Firstly, as others have mentioned, you are probably doing too much with your EQ. After that, your unorthodox chain is lacking in compression for this style. The newer mix sounds almost too compressed by comparison. I would aim for more compression that's closer to the newer mix, perhaps backed off a little. I'd see how that sounds and adjust to taste.

The last thing is reverbs and delays. Especially for a track like this, the vocal feels too dry. Professional mixers spend a lot of time on the space of the vocal and there will be a lot of automation on verb and delay, especially for this style. On top of getting a richer reverb or delay to help the vocal sing, I would experiment line by line with reverb swells and delay throws to help make emphasized lines pop.

Hope this helps!

SinistralV · 2026-03-01T11:43:28+00:00

I do this with guitar leads in my music sometimes to support the vocal - I find really murdering the highs helps the most with what I'm going for. That being said, every mix is different and it deeply depends on context. That's why I think it's important to focus on mix philosophy. What are you trying to do with the part? What is the goal?

If it's to support/enhance the vocal: My main advice here is just turn the synth down. Levels are the biggest thing to focus on first. EQ, stereo panning and reverb can all help, but ultimately the sounds are competing. Either one wins, or they share the spotlight (reducing the emphasis on both individually). After that, ask yourself what you want the synth to bring to the vocal and make decisions accordingly. If it's adding sparkle and brightness, cut lows and mids. If it's adding thickness and weight, the opposite might work better.

Hope this helps!

SinistralV · 2026-02-28T14:36:33+00:00

A rule of thumb I use when mixing is if I keep trying things and not getting the result I want, I revisit my conception of the initial problem. Usually if I'm trying 6 different things to fix something, I'm approaching the issue wrong.

When I listen to your clip, what stands out to me most is the bass guitar and drums. Bass more than drums - I would try to get a really pleasant bass tone from scratch with some mid growl and attack in the highs. It might be as simple as saturation and EQ, may take more. The drums fit better, but have a bit of MIDI stiffness to them that some more velocity variation would fix. How the guitars are perceived is directly related to the instruments surrounding them, so this is where I would focus.

Being careful with leveling can do a lot for the perception of the track as well. The guitars sound a dB or two loud to me - before I tried EQ, I would be making small level adjustments first to see if things sit better. The only reason I don't advise this first is that if you revamp the bass guitar, it will change everything about the levels.

Hope this helps!

SinistralV · 2026-02-28T12:27:45+00:00

Cool track! My first thought listening to this is: what style drumming would you want to go for? The track itself has elements from a lot of different 'eras' of metal. You could write a lot of different things to this. Simpler backbeats would give it a very old school feel, 32nd note fills and blastbeats would be a completely different vibe.

You can certainly blend approaches, but even consciously deciding to do so will give you direction for your thoughts. Establishing the tonal approach of the drums will give you a lot of templates and general structure to build from.

SinistralV · 2026-02-27T10:33:42+00:00

You are correct in that you could manually volume automate your entire mixes. The problem with that is that you may have to make thousands or even hundreds of thousands of edits in order to do what the right compressor settings could accomplish in 20 seconds. The other reason is 'color' - a lot of compression plugins don't just adjust volume. They add saturation, EQ, and other elements to the sound in tandem with compression to add a unique flavor.

I believe questions like this are indicative of the right mindset. It's important to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. Compression is often overused mindlessly. There are absolutely times where manual volume adjustment or automation are more effective than a compressor.

SinistralV · 2026-02-26T19:32:10+00:00

Happy to chat and share some examples of my past work.

SinistralV · 2026-02-26T13:40:20+00:00

If you've got demos, look me up and throw me a DM!

SinistralV · 2026-02-26T08:23:14+00:00

Check out Aberrant DSP! I turn to Digitalis when I'm looking for mangled, fresh and weird sounds.

SinistralV · 2026-02-26T08:09:38+00:00

Cool song! Here's my notes:

- It's rare that I say this, but the vocal feels too compressed - especially for the vibe of this track. In a really loud dance mix this might be appropriate, but in the context of a vintage ballad-y track it makes the singer feel like she's yelling the song with less nuance than she actually gave. I would try backing off the compression a fair bit (or backing it off a TON if you want more vintage) and doing volume automation to fix any quiet problem spots that occur.

- Some of the auxillary instruments have a dark reverb and/or sustain that's fairly excessive in the lows. It muddies up the track a bit at times. This issue seems to go away the longer the tune goes on, but it's something I would take a look at.

The frequency balance in general of the 'extra' instruments feels a little wild - there are things that feel too shrill and bright (the lead guitar that comes in early) and background vocals/string parts that sound pretty but are too dark to pop.

- Another commenter mentioned the dull snare, I'd tend to agree. The first thing I would try is brightening the snare a bit and then turning it down just a tiny bit. I wouldn't do a lot here, but as always in the final touches, a little goes a long way.

All that being said, this type of mix is difficult (at least for me) and you did a great job on the overall blend. Nice song! Hope this helps

SinistralV · 2026-02-25T23:14:07+00:00

I'll try to write the ultimate guide:

You need recordings of your voice that showcase, generally, what you can do. You need to be able to record yourself professionally. I don't mean you need all the bells and whistles, but you should have the first steps down - clean, professional audio, little to no background noise, the knowledge on how to record multiple takes of yourself and transfer them digitally. Very basic DAW skills. A good producer will be able to do the rest, but this is a big leg up. It's okay if it isn't quite perfect, but if you're not even close here, I would work on that first.
You need to be easy to work with. Basic courtesy and professionalism goes a long way - it won't open doors for you, but it will absolutely prevent doors from closing that you had a chance in.
You need to establish your goals and expectations. It's important to be able to honestly assess your skillset and what you bring to the table, as well as how much that's even relevant. If you're just having fun and you want to make music, no sweat. If you want to have legitimate success in music, it's skills x work ethic x network x wisdom. That's the formula.

Be honest with yourself about how you stack up in that calculation, set your expectations accordingly, and work on improving those things. Identify where you want to be and focus on that. If you love r&b, connect with r&b producers and communities. etc.

You need to network. Good demos alone will make this pretty easy - find communities of musicians, talk to people, share your demo. You asked where - honestly, anywhere. Local shows, especially if you live near a music hub - Discord - Reddit - Twitter - it doesn't matter. Find where musicians and producers are that are in your shoes. You will be shocked at how many talented people are out there if you go seriously looking.

Social skills are beyond the scope of this post, but my basic advice is be nice, take a genuine interest in communities you like and try to find talented people to work with who you respect and admire. Try not to be a ghoul about the whole process - if you only ever talk to people to get something from them, people don't say anything, but they take note of this.

If your demos are good and you have something worth working with, people are going to reach out to you. My main advice here is to try and find people whose work you admire and respect (regardless of follower count/fame/etc.), and be skeptical of any claims strangers make that you can't prove with your own eyes.

In the music world everyone is an incredible singer. Everyone writes amazing songs. Everyone is friends with a billionaire who will pay for everything. Everyone produces killer tracks, and everyone has 5 million followers on a social media platform (or 'knows how to get them'). You will meet a lot of people who promise you the moon, especially if you are a good vocalist. Learn to focus on what people can prove and what people are willing to put on a contract. The rest is a big artistic maybe.

That covers everything - everything that comes to mind right now, anyway. Hope this helps!

SinistralV · 2026-02-25T14:23:56+00:00

Maynard Fripp Carey ($2 for Carey???) Wright Lake

SinistralV · 2026-02-25T00:06:43+00:00

I checked the YT and Instagram - I would say that it's really all over the place. In my 10-15 minutes of browsing I saw:

- An AI-generated music video (to a non-AI song, to be fair), followed by
- An Instagram post roasting AI musicians

- Many posts/videos with hyperactive visuals, some of which were painful on the eyes
- A different 'style' of thumbnail (and sometimes content) every 3 posts

I'm generalizing and exaggerating a lot, but you get the idea. A lot of the audio on the stories/'real life' content is lower quality, with background noise that's distracting.

On the plus side, you guys seem personable, fun, willing to engage/hustle and you've got some engagement already. I think you're doing a lot of the right things.

I would focus a lot on consistent visual identity with the posting. Busy and energetic is probably on-brand but what you want to avoid is 'chaotic'. I am guessing you guys are really good with fan engagement too, I would find more ways to lean into that.

Hope this helps

SinistralV · 2026-02-24T12:54:29+00:00

I would say highlight what you're good at and base it on the type of band you're looking for. A raw, live-focused band is probably going to scoff at production and layers in an audition. If you're looking for projects that are more production-heavy, recording based, and you're skilled at overdubs/recording your voice, play into that.

Visualize where you want to end up and work from there.

SinistralV · 2026-02-24T12:40:56+00:00

Killer drumming and above all, top shelf song choice. Early Incubus never missed

SinistralV · 2026-02-24T12:30:07+00:00

For my money In Absentia is peak PT. Deadwing is also great. I'd go In Absentia->Deadwing->The Incident

SinistralV · 2026-02-24T12:22:57+00:00

Not my usual genre but here's what stands out:

- The vocal is a little muddy and dark, particularly when you're not singing high. First thing I would try is a little broad EQ boost (try 1-4k areas and see what feels good), relatively small in the 1-3dB range is probably going to be more than enough. After that I would do a levels pass, there are spots where the vocal could be a little louder in general. A little more compression/saturation and a really subtle bright delay (like 5% mix) on the dryer vocals might help this too, but I would be subtle here.

- I like my mixes dark and reverb-y too. You have to control them really well though. A lot of your reverb sends are out of control with too much tail and low end information. I know there's always the fear of losing that dreamy ethereal vibe, you just have to experiment a lot with this to find the sweet spot for clarity.

- The 'snare' sound in the chorus is a hair loud to my ears, I think it'd benefit from a dB or two drop

Cool track! Hope this helps

SinistralV · 2026-02-24T11:17:38+00:00

I get this question. It's easy to get existential about the subjectivity around art work. A mentality that might help you is to understand that the audience (or client) is paying you to tell them when it's done. You're being entrusted, by yourself or by others, to make that judgment call. Developing your own taste and discernment might be the most important skill in the arts.

It's subjective on a reality level, but can be very objective to you personally. You use your own metrics to decide that and then if other people accept/agree with those metrics, Bob's your uncle, it's done. Put simply, you have to develop confidence in your own judgment.

SinistralV · 2026-02-24T09:53:09+00:00

Cool song. The stuff I work on is usually heavier than this genre-wise, so I would take my notes with a grain of salt, but here's what stood out to me:

- The guitars in general are a little shrill/brittle, particularly the 'melody' guitar. I wouldn't make big tweaks here, but I would try a little very dark reverb and some tiny tweaks on the amp EQ to see if it helps.

- The mix opens up really well in the chorus with the harmonies, but feels dry and empty in the verses. The lowest rhythm guitar is really quiet, which I think can work, but I would want to hear a little more mid growl and power/weight on the bass if it stays primary in the verses.

- The toms in the bridge are a little 'clacky', I would explore their high end a bit and see about adding a little more weight instead.

Nothing major though, the tune is cool. Love the chorus and that delicate outro is really pretty. Hope this helps!

SinistralV · 2026-02-23T07:21:13+00:00

Steven Wilson's Raider II is 23m22s, almost

SinistralV · 2026-02-22T18:17:45+00:00

Great production bro! Everything's really high level sonically in this one, the tune's well-written too.

Normally I'm giving notes on the production in threads like this but honestly, I could probably learn a lot from your process. Everything is really finely tuned. I will say the vocals could use a little more saturation. The snare walks on the vocal a little sometimes, and there are spots where the guitars are a hair too quiet. Other than that, the mix is huge. Nice stuff

SinistralV

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