That was freakin' great!!! I'm not familiar with the song although I am somewhat familiar with Audioslave and Chris' voice. I'm not comparing you because it didn't matter....I don't know the song anyway. But that was very good imo. "IF" anyone points out anything wrong with the vocals I say screw them Forgetting I know anything at all about singing and just listening to that as a listener I loved it. I heard nothing wrong with that. The vocals were good bro.
Ok...well, other than the vocals were too low in the mix...I wanted to hear you more. Excellent job quentin.

Well excellent as always Quentin!

I also noticed your accent is pretty much absent here. It seems you're really mastering the "singers accent".

wabba_treads420 said

Well excellent as always Quentin!

I also noticed your accent is pretty much absent here. It seems you're really mastering the "singers accent".

Agreed. Quentin I love how you are starting to sound a lot more "commercial" because of the singer's accent, but at the same time you haven't lost the good qualities of your original accent coming through in very subtle traces and adding to your unique sound that gets stuck in people's heads as we mentioned in the other thread. This is the same kind of quality I hear in a lot of famous international singers - the singer's accent dominates but it's almost like their speech accent gives them their own flavor in how they go about it. In other words, keep doing what you're doing, it sounds really cool.

Phil Moufarrege said

I have to say this cover you did is fucking badass Quentin!!!! One thing, raise the damn volume of your vocals...they are buried underneath the song, they need to be on top!

A word about this, definitely for a vocal cover you CAN go ahead and put the vocal on top even at the compromise of hearing everything else, IF you're a great singer which you are. Being a cover, everyone's listening just to the vocal so why not, you know? Again only reason not to would be if you didn't sing very well and you need to hide some subtleties.

But for normal full band mixing (which will also work for vocal covers if you choose, definitely good for this song) there is a fine balance where I would say I don't actually like the vocal to sit completely "on top", it's more of a careful blend where I may trade some intelligibility of the lyrics to hear some detail from the instruments AND VICE VERSA (don't forget to look at it from both perspectives) but whatever the trade off is, it's equal amount both ways.

Quentin, one thing that can help you for this song specifically to reduce the compromise in that process is to turn up the ratio of your compressor more so there's not much dynamic change at all from verse to chorus. Furthermore you can shorten the release time to really minimize the difference from medium loud to loud to very loud even within the same phrase - you will still hear these intensity changes in the tone of the singing but the volume won't get louder and throw off the blend of the mix. I think this is controversial but I'll often put my release time as short as 10 ms for vocals - it's borderline distorting at that point (if you were to really crank up the ratio), but it just makes it that much more successful of a dynamic flattening job, and then you don't have to crank the ratio as hard so you can retain the general shape of the originally sung dynamics, just on a much much smaller scale.

Then after any compressor tweak, check the vocal volume all throughout the song. If it all sits right in the mix after adjusting the level and doesn't sound weirdly flattened, you have the right amount of compression. If it's too close to your original dynamics, not enough compression, too flat and bland sounding, too much. You can also make manual volume changes if necessary but you won't need that for this song because the verse and chorus instrumentation are similar dynamics and hitting the compressor hard creates an aggressive sound that's very admirable in the rock genre.

Quentin, IMO your second version has a better compression setting but now the overall vocal volume is too loud. What you got here is a great example of what I consider a vocal that is TOO on top of the mix.

If you find a volume in between the two mixes you did I think that would perfect. If anything maybe err on the louder side just not this loud.

Try backing it off just enough so that if you set the instrumental at a volume that you normally listen to music you love (that medium loud sweetspot), then when the vocal comes in, you don't feel like you have to turn your listening volume down to adjust for the added vocal.

quentin said

Lol yeah thats what i was thinking

Ok, heres another mix. I think i got this medium loud spot, although on certain passages the voice is either too loud or a bit burried. But it seems that with my current mixing skills, i came to a point where if i want to modify something, it will screw up another thing, being too loud here and too low there.

https://app.box.com/s/2xw6im8aets5dd7e73vy

On first listen I don't hear anything too loud it just sounds like maybe the first verse is still buried a bit.

Keep in mind I am listening on a different system than you in a different environment etc. so I am not necessarily entirely correct in my critique.

But if you are finding some parts are too loud other too soft that's still a compression thing but maybe you will need to adjust the threshold or release time. I think I will make a thread explaining the controls of a compressor and how they work and maybe eventually take a phrase or song of mine and do sonic comparisons of the sound of a high ratio, low ratio, low threshold, etc. You definitely want to get used to adjusting compressors entirely manually.

Basically any processing that is supposed to be heard specifically as an effect is okay to just slap on a preset, but the whole purpose of compressing and EQ usually is to make things fit together right in that individual mix - so it depends and you just need to experiment each time but with a knowledge of what parameters you're adjusting.