mixing techniques

[chahende]

I have been recording and mixing with a decent setup for a year or so, and have worked on several projects getting great feedback from most who hear the product. I just have problems here and there i would like to tweek to make everything gravy.

I am having a problem with the vocals sounding great on soft backing parts but not as present when the heavy guitars kick in. Not really sure of what to do other than volume automation to bring em out. Is this what others are doing?

I am also having a problem with the drums. although I do get a great sound by itself, they are always sounding weak when I get the rest of the mix sounding as loud as I want through the monitors. I usually use the new york compression trick on em to get that punch, but somehow they end up sounding a little weak when everything else kicks in heavy. Am I using my compression wrong?

Just would like any feedback I can get, hopefully some good.

[Realizm]

Hmmm...exactly what is the "New York" compression trick???

You can parallel process your drums and they will never, EVER sound weak. Heck, you can parallel process your BVs (and anything else you care to) as well and just automate gain rides ---

[Yig]

Something that helped me is carving out a place for everything, especially the bass and drums, and if you have heavy guitar then that as well. Alot of these instruments have overlapping freqs. You can actually get rid of some of them and make your mix kinda piece together a little better. It definetly helps with being able to hear the individual instruments in the mix as well as the mix having continuity. (sp?) Hope that makes sense.

[chahende]

yes, I am also experimenting with trying to find a place for everything in the mix using eq. This would be so much easier with a faster system that would allow me to get more plugins without an error message. I am running an athlon 2800, with 2 gigs of ram, but guess I need a 64 4000 or something to handle all of these tracks with plugins, especially the verbs and delays. and it almost seems like ive lost power after purchasing this command 8, but i guess its because I want to use the flip mode on the fly.

[chrisk23]

try some of these links--

http://web.archive.org/web/200212070.../articles3.htm

[Realizm]

Whoa....please tell me you're not using reverbs on inserts....

[tantejo]

i slam my drums in a sub through waves l3 and like it !
maybe a multiband compressor/limiting will do the trick ?
too much reverb on the kit as a whole will mudy the sound too much...
greetings, johan.