Maybe sharing this I'll help some to get better mixings.
A friend of mine know a guy who his band is recording in a big studio but recording engineer wasn't being able to get the sound he wants for his heavy rhythm guitars, my friend told him to call me.
I asked him to bring me his band session, I'd try to get what he wants.
I listened to the session and asked what he wanted to change.
He said his heavy rhythm guitars were too harsh, when they cut treble, it got muffled so they weren't able to find a solution.
He went to work and I kept working on his session.
First thing I did was soloing his guitar tracks, they weren't harsh the way he said.
When I listened to the whole mix I realized they were harsh.
Well the problem was obvious, I posted here a lot of times that instruments depend on themselves in a mix, an amazing bedroom tone could sound terrible in a mix and a bad bedroom tone could sound perfect because instruments complete themselves so what was the problem?
That harshness he couldn't cut off was coming from hihat and crashes, I just cut -3.5 db 2KHz which barely changed crashes tones BUT the whole mix stopped sounding harsh.
When he got back from work, I told him I wasn't able to work on it so i asked him to listen to it again with me.After 20 seconds he stopped it and screamed "you mofo you fixed that problem!".
We laughed and he was all laughing and happy.
I explained what was happening and he got really mad cause they're spending a lot of money with that studio.
I told him what matters is not how many gear a studio has but what knowledge an engineer has, a studio can have the most awesome gear ever but if engineer don't know how to use them, you'll just waste your money.
This is a problem that I see very often, people take their bedrooms tones to studio and think mix will sound perfect, that never happens, in fact the majority of mixes I did, almost all musicians didn't like their instruments tones solo'ed, they hated them but they loved them in the mix.
A friend of mine know a guy who his band is recording in a big studio but recording engineer wasn't being able to get the sound he wants for his heavy rhythm guitars, my friend told him to call me.
I asked him to bring me his band session, I'd try to get what he wants.
I listened to the session and asked what he wanted to change.
He said his heavy rhythm guitars were too harsh, when they cut treble, it got muffled so they weren't able to find a solution.
He went to work and I kept working on his session.
First thing I did was soloing his guitar tracks, they weren't harsh the way he said.
When I listened to the whole mix I realized they were harsh.
Well the problem was obvious, I posted here a lot of times that instruments depend on themselves in a mix, an amazing bedroom tone could sound terrible in a mix and a bad bedroom tone could sound perfect because instruments complete themselves so what was the problem?
That harshness he couldn't cut off was coming from hihat and crashes, I just cut -3.5 db 2KHz which barely changed crashes tones BUT the whole mix stopped sounding harsh.
When he got back from work, I told him I wasn't able to work on it so i asked him to listen to it again with me.After 20 seconds he stopped it and screamed "you mofo you fixed that problem!".
We laughed and he was all laughing and happy.
I explained what was happening and he got really mad cause they're spending a lot of money with that studio.
I told him what matters is not how many gear a studio has but what knowledge an engineer has, a studio can have the most awesome gear ever but if engineer don't know how to use them, you'll just waste your money.
This is a problem that I see very often, people take their bedrooms tones to studio and think mix will sound perfect, that never happens, in fact the majority of mixes I did, almost all musicians didn't like their instruments tones solo'ed, they hated them but they loved them in the mix.