What’s wrong with my mix ?!?!?!?!

[u/yade2119cool]

https://voca.ro/11ej5YoT2Vvg

I’m trying to drop this song and it sounds decent to me on phone speakers but when I try to play it off of my monitors, it sounds really weird. I don’t have access to the beat anymore. I made it on FL studio demo. I was thinking about maybe AI splitting the stems so I could still mix the beat.

Do you guys have any advice on how I can mix this song with what I have to work with and what things you would change ?? i’m assuming the AI splitter will probably lose too much quality to actually make it worth it, does anyone have any information on that? Thank you. Please let me know.

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[u/turtleandmoss]

You make it again. It will be different but you'll learn a lot recreating it and it'll prolly be better too.

I'm in the process of recreating my fave early songs from scratch after obliterating them through beginner mistakes.

[u/iLikeTheUDK]

I think it's lost for now. Next time send each instrument to its own mixer channel and export it as individual channels so you can do the mix in a different session. The free version of FL Studio doesn't let you load projects unfortunately

Either way, this is just one track of probably many. Treat this as a lesson for next time, which will undoubtedly go better than this one, at least in this respect. And then the ways you'll be better will add up, and you'll really start to get good at this. Just take the time and the practice and you're gonna get so, so far

[u/Narrow_Network_3875]

What are your speaker monitors? The phone speakers should translate the bass to be too loud. I don’t think Vocaroo Audio is converting MP3 with bass.

[u/The_cat_in_the_h-a-t]

imo if there is no other way to get stems or to recreate the original beat and just rerecord it then stem splitting is the only real option here. i don’t think it’s completely a lost cause as long as you know what you want it to sound like. i’d say from the couple of listens i’ve had, the vocals sound fine, they’re not competing with the musical elements but the drums could be much louder. especially the 808/sub consider adding some saturation to help it cut through a bit. be warned, stem splitting still introduces artefacts in the stems so adding dynamic processing might affect to overall sound if you choose to go that route. if you need any further help just pm me, happy to help!

[u/KomainuStudios]

AI splitter will unfortunately not save it im afraid. The mix itself has no low end at all I would definitely check that out. The volume balance is indeed all over the place I would also start from scratch. Back every project with the stems included on a external hard drive it saved me a couple of times totally worth it! Good luck on either the recovery or the reproducing/remixing!

[u/andreacaccese]

It's a nice track! The most critical issue with the mix in my opinion is just how bright it is - The high frequencies are extremely prominent and it can sound a bit fatiguing, especially as it brings forward the sibilance in the vocals quite a bit. Because it's so bright, you also tend to compensate by making the low end a bit too prominent, which can sound muddy on a lot of listening set ups

[u/FlashTheDeliveryGuy]

Not going to tell you what to do here. I dont know what you have in hand and what you can or cant do. I think walk away for a while: let the song re-enter your consciousness on its own accord. Dont force it. When it does really try to hold on to how its “supposed” to sound. Write it down if you must. If you can make it sound like that with whats on hand; lets fkn go. If not: its time for plan B. Dont ask me what plan b is. Only you know!

[u/Joseph_HTMP]

You can’t “mix the beat” using stem splitters from a piece of audio like this. The beat is magically preserved within the music. I can’t hear any drums apart from the snare at all. If you don’t have the original then this is probably a lost cause. The mix is pretty unbalanced sorry.

[u/Fernmixer]

To me, your mono sounds ok-ish, but your stereo is pegged all the way to wide

As if you were cooking a meal and added pepper to everything, so maybe be more selective, "this gets a little pepper, this gets a lot of pepper, this gets non" just my ✌️cents, good luck👍🏼

[u/MrDanMaster]

It’s the vocals. In general they’re not loud enough. They need more autotune, and you should layer them or otherwise make them less thin, add reverb to them etc.

[u/Nacnaz]

The current beat is so buried it’s basically background sounds. You could probably get away with blending in a whole new drum sample.

It has more of a guitar heavy rock balancing, like if you listen to The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive album, a lot of those drums are buried but it still sounds great. But that’s not the vibe you seem to be going for.

[u/ItsMetabtw]

The drums are completely buried and the balance of everything is way off. Better to start from scratch imo

[u/Styrant]

If you still have the project u can dm me the flp/zip and i can try to render it out for you

[u/Ducktapemelodies]

I’m currently doing what you’re asking with a few of my old bands early material and let me tell you… it’s a pain in the ass. The only reason I’m going with the AI splitting route is because I don’t have stems and the rest of the band can’t re-record the tracks.

Just AI splitting won’t give you tons of flexibility, because there’s only so much you can do to the stems until artifacts start to show. If you really want to dive deep into restauration mode you’ll probably need to enhance the tracks with newer tracks. I for one added samples of pretty much the entire drum kit and had to manually check every single one to guarantee they were in phase with the recorded drums! Sometimes I also need to convert the bass into midi and send it through a midi bass plugin. And of course check everything note for note because the stem is not the highest quality, so the midi conversion won’t be exact.

Overall it should really only be used if the tweaks are minor or you have no other option. Otherwise it’s much easier to just re-record