Mixoff Contest with Mike Senior - Win Mike's New Book!

[ALivingSight]

Here is my mix. I haven't completely finished automating things and I have a few small problems with this, but anyhow let me know what you think.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/324577/Young%20Griffo.mp3

First post here so I would just like to say I think I am going to love this place! Cheers!

[Mattski]

Here's my MIX

[slater05]

Thanks for the feedback! all very good points. You're note about editing the re-into I especially agree with, I tried playing around with it but couldn't get it shorter without taking away from it...

Although one thing is that I actually spent very little time monitoring loudly, but my mixing environment isn't exactly pristine  lots of tweaks to do!

http://soundcloud.com/slater05/blood-to-bone

Happy to see someone try their hand at editing things here, but while shortening the first instrumental chorus is an idea which I can see some good reasoning for, by the same token isn't the reintro a bit to long too? I agree that it's tricky to come up with a coherent editing strategy for this song once you open up that can of worms, which makes me wonder whether editing isn't the whole solution to making the structure as a whole work.

In terms of balance, it feels like the guitars are too loud in the stereo balance (but probably a bit quiet in the mono balance, as discussed below!), but otherwise most things seem pretty well-judged. I like the body to the snare sound, which gives it a nice sense of weight to compete with the guitars, but it does then end up sounding a bit dull-toned compared to the cymbals. The bass fret squeaks poke my eye out at times, but it's nothing a little automation couldn't solve. The floor tom seems to have too powerful a fundamental, and risks eclipsing the kick in the fill in the middle of chorus 2, for example. As far as overall tonality is concerned, the bottom three octaves or so of the mix feel light overall, though, and I think this is more the fault of the bass than off the kick. I think you could afford to put in a good 3dB of extra low end without bloating it out. The upper octave 'air' band also feels underplayed, and could benefit from some livening up.

There's a lot of interesting effects stuff going on. I really like the delay spin you've got going on the verse lead vocal. Very effective, and actually longer than I'd have thought of going for -- good idea! I like your concept of thickening the chorus vocals to contrast with the verses, although it sounds like something's getting a bit scorched in the process. It's not a particularly pleasant distortion, so I'd try to troubleshoot the gain-staging there if possible. This effect certainly helps with that tricky transition into the start of the final choruses, but the downside is that things begin to feel a little cluttered in the choruses as a result, and I'd recommend reassessing the EQ on the guitars, backing vocals, and effects returns during that section to see if some well-targeted narrow-band cuts might clarify things and bring out the details more. The vocal effects also recess the singers well behind the drier guitars in the mix, which doesn't seem quite right.

Whatever effect you're using to widen the guitar parts is causing fairly serious mono-compatibility problems, which means that the balance changes a good deal between the stereo and mono mixes. Even if you disregard this issue, though, having such wide guitars in this particular stereo mix is also problematic on the basis that it emphasises the narrowness of the drums and their ambience.

My biggest criticism can be summed up in one word: blend. Although there's lots of good EQ and effects work going on here, the parts just don't feel like they hang together, especially in the verses. The width issues I've already mentioned have a part to play here, but short 'ambience'-style reverb or delay slapback would the first things I'd look to add to this mix, to try to make things gel together more convincingly. Again, the overall tonality and blend issues here make me suspicious that you might be monitoring too loud for too long.

I'm glad to see that a certain amount of multing and automation has already occurred, but I think there's quite a bit you could still do in terms of nailing down the lead vocal intelligibility. I also wonder if the final backing vocals could come more to the fore once the lead is out of the way, as they do have a nice little line of their own, and there's nothing else going on in the outro to keep people any better entertained.

Thanks for submitting this -- it brings a lot of great ideas to the table that haven't been explored by the other mixes so far, and also dares to reevaluate basic issues of structure and balance. And as every mix engineer knows, mixing is often a case of 'who dares wins'!

[triviul]

Although one thing is that I actually spent very little time monitoring loudly, but my mixing environment isn't exactly pristine

Ah, I see. I'm guessing then that maybe some LF resonances and HF splash might similarly affect the audibility of these overal tonality and blend issues. Always tricky to tell remotely! Glad the other comments were helpful, though!

[vvv]

http://soundcloud.com/vvv-4/blood-to-the-bone-vvv-mix

[triviul]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14142004/YoungGriffo%20-%20Blood%20To%20Bone.mp3

Another good mix, and probably the clearest vocal presentation so far. Excellent! I really like the verse. Nice sense of width and space to the guitars, contrasted against the quite upfront drums, yet the blend nonetheless feels pretty good. The vocal effects are just my cup of tea too, and are well-suited to this context: enough delay to give a bit of atmosphere, but still keeping the vocal right out front. The harmonies help, of course, just because I like their line! The drummer's stick clicks seem a touch too aggressive/upfront, so I'd maybe get busy with a bit of micro-automation there, and I also think that you could improve the kit's blend using stealth reverb/delay treatments without compromising the upfront 'no reverb' concept. Even when the kit is upfront, you still want it to sound like a cohesive kit, in my view. The toms are panned very wide too, and while this kind of '50-foot-wide kit' idea is popular with some engineers I've never really got on with it. In this case it's particularly odd because it makes the toms image a lot wider than the crash cymbals! That apart, though, the stereo width overall is pretty well-judged in this mix, and seems to translate quite well to mono too, which is another plus point.

Once the chorus gets going the snare feels a little too thin-sounding, and could do with some thickening and widening, as I've commented on with previous mixes. It's trying to compete with the strongest frequency areas of the guitars too much, so it'd probably be better to give it a touch more weight so that it can work around the guitar textures. I love the kick drum sound during the verses, but it doesn't really seem to be coming through well enough in the choruses on small speakers, so I might be tempted to mult it for extra high end at those points. The lyrics are good and clear in the chorus, which means that the singer's performance gives a good dose of energy to these sections, and helps with that make-or-break moment when the final choruses arrive. (The more prominent BVs make a difference there too.) This is slightly at the expense of the subjective size of the backing track, though, and this is always a very fine line to tread. Also, if you fade up the vocals this high, you really can't afford not to tune them. In general I've not noticed tremendous amounts of attention to timing or tuning issues in the mixes so far, and I know this kind of corrective work would certainly be on my list of things to do.

I like the general sparkle to the mix tone overall, but I wonder if the vocals are contributing a bit more low mid-range than they should compared to the guitars. It takes your mix closer to the vibe of the Death Cab For Cutie reference for me, but I think that might be taking the parallels between the two tracks a bit too far. I reckon that this mix probably wants the vocal to be upfront in the choruses, but with the guitars 'feeling' bigger, in the sense of carrying more of the chunky midrange frequencies. (You've done a good job of rivalling the DCFC bass sound, though, including that sneaky little dash of surreptitious stereo width. Maybe a bit more 1kHz would make it cut even better, and lend the tone more 'wire'. I'd almost certainly reach for Stillwell Audio's Vibe EQ for that application, because it's great at creating a harder tonal edge on sounds, rather than just adjusting the frequency balance, and its very affordable.)

Hope some of these suggestions help. Again, this is a good solid effort, and makes a good impression right from the outset. Thanks for submitting it!

I did not do any mastering but I can if it's a good idea.

No need. I loudness-match as a matter of course when comparing the different mixes/references. The main mastering issue that should concern most people with this particular mix is that if peak-limiting is used to increase the loudness, then a snare which is heavy on spike and light on sustain will tend to suffer unduly in the mix balance.

(Just one quick further point I forgot to mention -- the vocals in the choruses seem over-sibilant. Some simple de-essing should probably sort that out, though.)

[triviul]

So heres my mix.

Another very assured mix vision here, and with quite a few new ideas to offer. The switched panning for the main guitar is a nice thought, creating an appealing call-and-response vibe which somehow keeps the guitar higher in the consciousness than in other mixes. In fact, I almost wonder whether it might be backfiring a bit, simply because it seems to drag a bit of attention away from the vocal. However, this might just be because I'm now so used to the vocal performance that it doesn't pack the same immediate emotional punch it once did. Only time can tell with decisions like that.

Given the wetter overall feel, it's perhaps not a surprise that, to my ears, the drums seem to gel together more successfully in this mix than in most of the others. However, it's not just the general wetness -- the toms feel sensibly panned; the kick sound has more room to it, so that it combines a lot better despite a fairly high level in the balance; and the snare appears to have some kind of dedicated ambience patch on it to widen it and glue it in with the overheads, the latter making a respectable stab at dealing with the 'snare spikiness' issue that's come up a lot already. That said, I think you could still afford to make more of the room and/or layer in some parallel compression so that the kit sound itself has more sustain even in its dry state. I think you're maybe relying on the artificial reverbs a little too much.

I don't know what you're using for your vocal chain, but I love what it's doing to the lead vocal character in the verse -- there's a real growl in there, which enhances the performance a good deal for me. You can really hear the sound rattling around in the back of his throat! The verse delay and reverb work nicely too, with what sounds like a proper helping of predelay between the dry signal and the reverb onset. Good call, because it keeps the vocal well upfront -- notwithstanding that the vocal's also pretty high in the balance. In fact, I reckon that the vocals are probably too high in the balance overall. Although they seem alright within the context of the drum peaks, the rest of the arrangement feels underpowered by comparison. Try muting out the drums completely and see if that makes this aspect of the balance easier to resolve. (This is also an issue that loudness processing won't help, because it'll tend to punch the drums back into the balance, thereby exacerbating the dominance of the vocal.)

The stereo picture isn't perhaps as wide-screen as some of the mixes we've had so far, but it's still well within the ballpark of some of the references, and inevitably offers the advantage of reasonable mono-compatibility. Overall tonality could probably do with a bit of a rethink, though, as both the low-end and high-end seem significantly recessed (I dialled in 4dB of each before I had something which felt more suitable, and there's an additional 3-4kHz emphasis that doesn't particularly flatter the middle-section guitar/cymbal workouts. However, even if I put a master EQ over the mix to tweak those things, the bass guitar still feels too low in the balance.

Irrespective of any of the above niggles, though, this mix probably gives the most convincing account of the final choruses entry of any of the mixes so far -- although fHumble fHingaz's original version is also strong in this suit. Definite kudos for that! That said, it sounds a little bit like you mixed the verses before you mixed the choruses, which makes the latter feel like they're pushed a bit too hard somehow.

Thanks for providing another fresh vision of this track -- a good contrast to some of the other representations which provides a lot of useful alternate perspectives.

[triviul]

I just wanted to say that I'm trying to deal with the mix critiques in the order the mixes were posted, so please post if I seem to have skipped over your mix in the running order. I almost overlooked broman's mix, in fact... 

[Fishmed]

Here is my first mix on the forum. This was a great song with so many possible directions. I have picked my mix to death and have decided to stop with this version:

http://soundcloud.com/fishmed/blood-to-bone-mix-contest

Enjoy!   

[ExpressMix]

Here's mine.  More for the feedback than anything else... I'm trying to get better at rock.

http://theaudiocave.com/mixes/Blood2.mp3

[Minorhead]

<a href="http://www.minorhead.com/resources/Bloodtobone_minorhead_lim.mp3">This </a>is my mix.

You can find a no-limiter version <a href="http://www.minorhead.com/resources/Bloodtobone_minorhead_clear.mp3">here</a>.

Thank's
Enjoy!

[RobRokken]

Here's my mix, I'm a newbie, so if theres too much to talk about its ok  

http://www.robrokkenaudio.com/stuff/mixoff-1.mp3

EDIT: Just noticed i missed the automation of the Main snare coming in by a hit or 2.  I like to automate the snare, so instead of killing it completely, you hear the roomy snare or room track with no main snare...
~Rob.

[triviul]

http://soundcloud.com/a-r-8/blood-to-bone-a-r-mix1

Nice bold move with the verse vocal, giving it an immediately intriguing telephonic mix sound with obvious delay/reverb special effects. However, I'd query the decision to pan it so far to the left, because anyone listening to just one side (people in a lot of small restaurants/shops, people sharing earbuds, people with defective audio hardware, to mention just a few) will lose quite a lot of intelligibility as a result. Even were this not a concern, I'd suggest if anything panning the vocal to the right, rather than the left, simply because otherwise both the vocal and guitar are panned to the same side, making the overall soundstage left-heavy. The extreme vocal panning in the chorus is fine, given that the two leads are balanced, but the BVs feel too dry, and are too easily confused with the leads for me. Also, if you're going to wide-pan like this, it's probably best to edit the vocal timing of the two leads to match more closely -- there's some distracting stereo ricochet on some of the consonants in particular.

Widening the bass in this mix is not a bad tactic (it's something that the famous rock mixer Andy Wallace often does, for example), but in doing so you've introduce phase mismatch at the low end of the mix. This can lead to low-frequency inconsistencies in mono, or in stereo systems that use a single subwoofer, so is best avoided. Try simply high-pass filtering the widener effect's return at 100Hz or so -- you'll still get the width, but without the risk of bass problems.

Just by nature of the fairly wet overall mix sound, most things are already blending quite well, but the snare in particular could do with some further blending effect in addition to the longer reverb, so that it sits with the rest of the kit. I'd instinctively go for a shorter stereo ambience, and probably restrict its stereo width a little to try to match the overheads image. The lead vocals in the chorus also feel a bit too separated -- upfront's alright, but if they're going to be as loud as this in the balance (and panned as they are), I think they do need a little bit more blend to really belong with everything else. The toms seem a bit over-resonant and overpowering. Maybe a bit of automation might help here to keep the balance more consistent if you like that level of those mics for their spill contributions.

Love the idea of a transition effect before the second chorus, although the execution of it doesn't quite feel on the money yet. Perhaps its the right-heavy imaging of it, or the way the following snare feels a little bit thin, I don't know. It's very difficult to judge what exactly will smooth it out without tinkering with it directly in the project. It might be that you need to let the transition effect go to the kick, rather than the snare, even though I do like the general concept of stopping it on the snare -- it gives that upbeat a kind of extra psychological power.

Serious props to you for being the first person to run with the idea of adding something new to that final chorus entry, and it doesn't half make a difference! It's certainly the most successful take on this particular long-term dynamics challenge so far. (The transition there is also part of the recipe, but again it feels like it needs a bit more tweaking before it really delivers properly. Those things can often be pigs to nail!) That said, the specifics of what you've added could probably be managed more successfully. The first thing that bugs me is that you've effectively added a seventh to the first chord in the process, which seems to destabilise the harmony significantly, making it seem less powerful. The second thing I'd say is that the sound feels a bit too sustained and synth-pad-like to me (although I suspect it's guitar -- it's pretty well buried so it's hard for me to tell), and something which is matched a bit more to the existing bass or guitar rhythms would probably reinforce the band's original intent more effectively. Finally, the additions are bunched mostly into the centre of the stereo picture, which narrows it and also muffles the drum details a bit much for my liking. (It also clutters up the vocal range quite a bit, despite the wide vocal panning.) Adding pads (synth or otherwise) at the mix is almost always most successul if you very carefully target them to specific frequency ranges.

I found the stereo image very appealing, and the stereo treatments also assist with the blend to some extent. However, mono-compatibility is a bit suspect, and both the cymbals and guitars seem to lose a lot of treble in the conversion to mono. Overall tonality isn't bad at the frequency extremes, but the general mix warmth (and the bass guitar balance in particular) seem to suffer from a bit of a spectral dip in the midrange, particularly at 350Hz or so. I'm not a huge fan of this frequency range myself, because it's the most common place for muddiness to reside in a mix. However, you do need enough going on there if you're going to avoid things sounding brittle, especially in the abrasiveness 'danger zone' during the middle-sections of this mix.

Well done for trail-blazing so many valuable new ideas! All grist to the mill...

[triviul]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24395697/gagemix.mp3

Crumbs -- the spirit of the Floyd is clearly alive and well! Lots of great off-the-wall ideas here, although it does take us almost into remix territory. As such it's perhaps not that sensible for me to compare too closely to the references, so instead I'll try to evaluate what you've got a little more on its own terms.

For a start this is clearly not designed as a radio single: bass auto-panning; extreme panning of other parts (including lead/backing  vocals) and frequent stereo imbalances; screamo distorted vocal layer ("I'm a frog" -- Diamond!); tonally distorted drums with  muffled snare; prominent bright slapback vocal delay -- all these argue strongly against, I'd say. The total sonic overhaul provides a great new perspective on the possibilities for the multitrack source, though, and I loved the trippy opening overdub; the change of emphasis between the verse guitar lines; the 'Pulp Fiction' guitar sound; the distorted tom fills; and the raging solo guitar line.

Although this is obviously not designed to be something glossy, I'd still say that you might nonetheless showcase the evocative internal details of each of your reinvented sounds more effectively, in particular by attending more carefully to EQ masking issues, not least in terms of how the liberal mix effects fit in with the dry sounds. At the moment things feel a little cluttered, and there's only so much that stereo separation can remedy, even under ideal listening circumstances.

Thanks for submitting this mix. Although it's not likely to take first prize in the competition , it offers a lot of good ideas for re-evaluating the possibilities of this set of raw files. I particularly liked the guitar timbres and contrasts, and I think aspects of them could work well within a more commercial-focussed context too.

[a.r]

Serious props to you for being the first person to run with the idea of adding something new to that final chorus entry, and it doesn't half make a difference!

Haha, that was actually just the part Guitar 2 (I think, but I don't have Pro Tools open right now) played in the middle eight thing - copied and pasted. It's a bit weird because the part's naturally very different, and using it there pretty much fights against any normal musical sense. But I sort of liked the weird harmonies it added to the chords. It also seemed to introduce something new to the song and I felt repeating the chorus exactly like before was getting a tad boring.

Thanks for the tips, they're very helpful and interesting for a complete mixing newbie like me!

[JoshERTW]

Alrighty, here's my take on this song - I'm still pretty new to mixing so I was going for something "listenable"

Have mixed it down and listened to it back through 3 times now on my crappy speakers and finally settled on this one. Tried not to overdo the FX stuff, but got a bit experimental near the end with harmonies and stuff. I mixed this with headphones unfortunately, and I apologize for that - real monitors are the next piece of gear on my aquisition list

http://soundcloud.com/red-room-recordings/young-griffo-blood-to-bone-mix

I appreciate the time/feedback Mike and cheers to the band for the tracks too, very cool song and fun to mix.

Edit: @ Lastrite - Dude, I totally ripped off your ending - I thought the end needed some 'closure' and thought that one lyric would fit nicely, and I love adding weird "radio" and "telephone" effects to my own music - was just listening through all the other mixes again now that I've finished mine and heard your ending.

As such - for the purpose of judging - I defer credit for my ending to Lastrite - I must have heard your mix already and the idea trickled back in from my sub-concious or something (I was clicking through a bunch of mixes while I was at the office last week crunching numbers to get a feel for the song but don't recall which ones I heard and which ones I didn't)

That said, great mixes so far everyone - its cool to see so many different approaches.

[Fishmed]

Alrighty, here's my take on this song - I'm still pretty new to mixing so I was going for something "listenable"

Have mixed it down and listened to it back through 3 times now on my crappy speakers and finally settled on this one. Tried not to overdo the FX stuff, but got a bit experimental near the end with harmonies and stuff. I mixed this with headphones unfortunately, and I apologize for that - real monitors are the next piece of gear on my aquisition list

http://soundcloud.com/red-room-recordings/young-griffo-blood-to-bone-mix

I appreciate the time/feedback Mike and cheers to the band for the tracks too, very cool song and fun to mix.

Looks like a dead link. 

[JoshERTW]

Fixed, should work now

[The Elf]

Of course I couldn't resist this - it's catnip to our kind! 

Here's my mix - I had great fun with it. Some, erm, interesting challenges in there Mike!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/853804/BtBElven.mp3

[Zabrilla]

Great competition, I have listened to a good many of the tracks and really enjoying listening to them all. I will be honest, I struggled with a couple of aspects; the bass and the vocals. Really struggled with the vocals!! Bass I think is ok, but not happy with the vocals in the second half of the track! I found some cool things to edit (well in my head anyways!)

I think it would be interesting after the competition is over to have a discussion on mixing this track? Could learn a lot!

Anyhow, here is my competition entery.

http://www.romelpotter.com/Blood_to_Bone_Zabmix.mp3

Big thanks to the Young Griffo's and all involved to bring this to us all.

[Kman]

Hey all,

Here's is yet another mix.

http://soundcloud.com/user6197371/bloodtobone3

Major props to all involved in the contest!  

It's great to hear all the these mixes.  Facinating really.  I learn something everytime I listen to one and then I learn something again when I read the critique!  Thanks again.

Kman

[triviul]

I think it would be interesting after the competition is over to have a discussion on mixing this track?

I'm sure there'll be no shortage of discussion even before the competition is over! However, my current plan is to post a general summing up once I've finished off all the critiques, recapping the main issues and highlighting anything that's typically being neglected by most people. Once the competition is complete, I'm also planning to create a page on my site, hosting as many of the mixes as people are happy for me to host, and including links to each track's critique post on this forum. Detailed critiques of multiple different versions of the same mix aren't exactly thick on the ground, so I'm hoping we can create a unique resource for mixing students -- good for ear training if nothing else. (It's certainly keeping me on my toes! )

[Zabrilla]

Once the competition is complete, I'm also planning to create a page on my site, hosting as many of the mixes as people are happy for me to host, and including links to each track's critique post on this forum. Detailed critiques of multiple different versions of the same mix aren't exactly thick on the ground, so I'm hoping we can create a unique resource for mixing students -- good for ear training if nothing else. (It's certainly keeping me on my toes! )

Good idea, as you say there are lots of differeing mix's of the same referance track, each with a critique that is specific, and of real value. That potentially gives people an opertunity to read, hear and tangabilly  understand myriad aspects of the art of mixing. This would be of huge benifit to students trying to develop a good ear.

[triviul]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/324577/Young%20Griffo.mp3

The biggest thing that this mix lacks for me is clarity. There's a lot of masking going on between the parts, and also a measure of low-midrange frequency build-up which is muddying the mix tone as a whole. This makes me suspicious that you're not giving enough consideration to this aspect of EQ. Assuming a decent recording, most mix EQ is actually about balance, not about tone -- you can't have a mix where everything sounds as fantastic as everything else, because you'll just crowd yourself out. Particularly in the choruses, you've got the bass, guitars, vocals, snare, and toms all competing for space around 300Hz or so, and there can't really be five winners in a battle like that! Pull things apart a bit, and look for areas of character in each instrument that don't overlap as much, and I think the veil will begin to lift a bit. To take another example: does the opening bass sound really need all that high end? I can understand giving it some midrange to cut through on small speakers, but there's a lot of hiss in there too which is doing nothing useful -- on the contrary, it will probably be masking things like vocal details. Low-pass filter that out, I'd say.

In terms of the subjective nature of individual sounds, there's little to criticise. I like the nice delay patch on the guitar at the start -- a little bit of a stereo 'bump' in there to tickle the ear! The kit blends rather nicely with itself, and also with the rest of the arrangement -- a highlight of your mix version for me, and very similar to how I would probably do it myself. The longer reverb/delay patches are also well-managed for the most part, although I think I'd like a bit more reverb width surrounding the instruments, especially when the chorus kicks off. In fact, the stereo field in general feels underused, and the one place where you widen it out using the guitar overdubs is in the middle sections, undermining the 'size' impact of the significantly narrower final choruses.

The bass feels a bit underpowered in the low end, and although I can understand the thinking behind that given that the low-midrange is already so packed with contributition from other parts, I'd try to give the bass more room in the mix so that you can bring its low end further forward. The kick is great -- just enough bite to cut through the merrier sections, but not too slappy for the verse. Very well judged that. The snare is a little bit of sticking point, although it has some nice midrange weight to it, because of the high-frequency density/sustain issues most people have already come up against.

I think there's some stray vocal lip noise in the re-intro before the second verse, and the lip-noise is perhaps a little pronounced for my liking overall. Automation or editing is often the only way to deal with this, I'm afraid.

Beyond the issues I've already mentioned with masking/muddiness, the overall tonality of this mix also feels a little stifled in the air department, so a couple of decibles lift of the upper octave wouldn't be a bad bet, especially if you can fill out the low end of the bass guitar to balance that, expanding the reach of the mix's spectrum.

Thanks for that submission -- the blend is particularly impressive, and is worth having a listen to for anyone still thinking of entering/updating your own mix.

[triviul]

Here's my MIX

Hah! I wondered how long it would take for someone to have a go a drying up the lead vocal as a drop into the chorus, and here it is at last! This dodge came to mind almost as soon as I heard the song, and I'd certainly have given something like that a go myself. (Ah... It's like an old friend... ) The difficulty pulling it off in this particular song, though, is the funny snare upbeat that starts the chorus -- which also caused problems for the reverse transition effect in a.r's mix previously. Exactly how and when you turn off the effects, and how the decay tails of the different instruments interact with that can make a huge difference to how well it works. In this case I'd experiment with editing down the tails of the bass and guitar sustains under that last vocal word. Shortening one of both of them would be my first experiment, I think, although I might alternatively choose to extend them more into the chorus itself.

There are several other great little effects spins here. Good thinking with the feedback repeats midway through the chorus -- there's a little lull in the melodic interest at that point in the proceedings which you're filling beautifully. You could make it even better by fading it down when the guitar moves up for its little fill, and then fading up the fill a bit too. It's this kind of 'listener direction' with automation that can really breath life into a mix.

The snare is a definite talking-point in this mix too, because it seems to me to represent one of the better attempts to give the instrument that extra high-frequency sustain I'm hearing in my head. However, like karumba's barn-storming show-opener on this thread, a little more low mid-range feels necessary in this particular mix for me, so that the snare doesn't have to be as loud in the upper frequencies as this. Despite the advantages of the snare sound, though, the overall kit feels a bit skeletal and lacking in body. This is partly that there doesn't seem to be much buss compression going on (either on the drum buss or the whole mix) -- this is definitely a style in which I'd expect to hear a fair amount of compression, because if it's handled correctly it can lend a sense of urgency and thickness to the sound. If you're worried about dulling the drum attack, by all means use parallel compression, but I for one have an almost unconscious expectation that the cymbal tails will have a certain touch of wobble -- if not straight-out suck-and-breath pumping! I think you're trying to compensate for this at the moment by using a little too much longer reverb, which only really distances the drums, and also makes them feel less 'authentic' somehow. Blend isn't bad though, with the exception of the snare, which feels a touch too upfront and disconnected during the verses.

You've kept a tight rein on the low midrange of the vocals, and while that does aid the clarity of the mix as a whole, I think you might have gone a bit too far with it, especially during the choruses, where the singer just feels a bit like he's pushing too hard too early. I'd save that character for the choruses, where it's most needed, otherwise you'll always find it tricky to make the choruses seem harder-edged. Some good corrective tuning work on the vocal too, although it sounds to me as if the doubletrack might still need to be tightened a little more in this respect. (I'm surprised how few people have attended to the tuning: it looks like fHumble fHingaz and Lastrite are the only others so far who've had a proper stab at it. The choruses are never going to blend properly in this production unless they're in tune.)

There are two main points where the long-term dynamics need particular attention, the first of which is our old friend the start of the final choruses, of course, for reasons I've gone into before. The other is the beginning of the outro, and this could be because you've chosen really quite a high level for the lead vocal in the balance -- higher that I'd probably go for. The moment the lead vocal goes, your track loses quite a bit chunk of level and performance energy. The backing vocals are quite well-judged in relation to the lead, though, and feel nicely nailed into place, but somehow their tone seems a bit too upfront for me. Maybe they just need more blending effects, in addition to their added sustain tail. Hearing you ride those BVs up during the outro confirms me in my opinion that this is a good tactic for making sense of that section, and I'd almost certainly follow a similar approach myself. I'd probably also make more of the guitar solo, though, too, as the potential of that seems a little wasted at the moment.

Lots of good ideas there, everyone, and plenty we've not heard before either. Just goes to show that mixing's never obvious!