Lizzy B

[Liquid Len]

Kind of a ballad. Lyrics inspired by a friend who thought I should write a song about Lizzy Borden, who he had just heard about. Did a bit of googling around, and thought, now that's a subject that's been thoroughly beaten into the ground. Wrote the lyrics anyways.

Featuring guitars by Scott Smith. The electric piano is EVP73, I think it's stiil the best fender rhodes plugin ever made.

[garyb]

i really like the orchestration and arrangement, the vocals and performance. i thought the mix seemed just a little flat(2d) and missing something in the bottom and mids.

[hubird]

I hate it, but it's amazing how far you get it

Gary has absolutely right btw., I'd say a vision about the lows completely lacks, that's the mainpoint.
The long intro doesn't make clear what the song will be (New Age perhaps?).
I think you just need to have that bass synth heavy and fat during the intro already, and keep it there (mastering compression).
De drums will follow easily, as you have to get the picture right.

Try three verbs, an 'ambience', a 'room', and a 'hall', and apply them decently on the different tracks to your taste.
two or three delays will do half of that job, often a better choice on rhythmic parts by the way.
Cut the highs of the effects sound for more (or different type of) '3D depth'.
choose send levels that make you just hear the difference, unless you want more (!).
That'd make 3D-Gary happy

not making myself popular this way, I know

[Liquid Len]

Nah, I appreciate the input. Judging from the music you obviously prefer, it's not surprising you find this particular STYLE 'not pleasing'. I like that kind of song - when it's done right. I could listen to ELO, Elton John or Billy Joel all day - but I react to Bryan Adams or 80s hair band ballads the way a slug reacts to salt. Techno (your interest) isn't particularly displeasing to me, but a lot of the time I don't notice it - to me there's not enough variation to perk the ear, and I 'tune it out' automatically.

I consider this a primitive mix, one of the first that got done after I got proper monitoring. Your comments are helpful, I actually got a friend to help remix this because I couldn't seem to get a good kick and bass sound - my mixes were too boomy. We went too far in the other direction, I guess. And I don't like the way the strings just lie flat in the mix - I haven't figured out yet how to get them to sound like strings. The intro doesn't have much to do with the song, it was just an intro I stuck onto it, but when I had the synth bass cranked in the song in previous mixes, it went together a bit better. I like albums with little interludes between the songs that make them flow together better, I was trying to do that (there's another song that comes before this one where the bass takes a turn at the end and winds up dovetailing into this one). If this was going to be a 45 I'd trim out the intro and just leave it on the LP.

[AudioIrony]

O.K - well here's what I think.
First, I like the idea and I like the song .... however:

To me, the mix seems flat simply because there's just so much going on in the arrangement.
In parts, the instruments seem to be fighting for space and jammed up against each other with no room to breath.

There's a really nice guitar solo (the arpeggio bit) in there somewhere that's just totally lost amongst the other instruments. You might get away with a cut at 300Hz and a little boosting somewhere near 5-6kHz - it's hard to say - you have to play with it and hear it yourself.

I still love the vocal treatment - but the performance seems to suffer towards the end - almost like you got tired of the song.

If I were mixing it dry (first run without effects sends) - I'd just simply strip it right back in places by deciding which lines / phrases were more important and then maybe start adding stuff back in, one track at a time.

Use group tracks for instruments in similar freq ranges.

Then start working on Bass comp/ limiting and EQ.

One trick I learned with bass in particular - and it doesn't always work - is applying little boosts / cuts - Frequency to Pitch.

I don't know what key your tune is in - but say for example only - you were working on a bass line in D.... Freq Ranges are : D1 36.71Hz ; D2 73.42Hz ;D3 146.8Hz.
You could start applying small boosts or cuts at these frequencies and judge the effect for yourself.
( I got that from CM Magazine so if you like the idea I can send you the reference)

Then when you have that sorted, start adding some verb / delay sends to taste to your other instruments.

Not very technical advice - a bit trial and error - but for what it's worth - this is how I work.
Regards
-EDIT-
I forgot to mention that once you start adding verbs and delays into the mix - it will colour your sound as well - so you might have to do a little further filtering.