Reinz Bill Dugan (icestorm_rb) – Dead To The World Mix

I’m not entirely sure if this will get anywhere (it probably won’t to be honest). I didn’t really go for a specific sound, though I did use Suicide Silence’s Unanswered as a quick reference.

The provided tracks did come with a kick sample track already, but I decided not to use it since maybe I can actually learn something by trying to mix those kick tracks. And tried to mix, I did. It was a doozy to say the least. I did so much to make those two kick tracks work with each other (parallel Dynamic EQ + compression, transient shaping, dynamic EQ, heavy compression, etc…), and it still sounds too inconsistent for my taste. Oh well, a challenge it really was.

Mixing the snare was alright, though the bleed from the china was much worse than the hi hat which was surprising. Had to automate the input for this one too since it was also quite inconsistent. Gating it removed a lot of the ring though, so I tried adding it back using a duplicate of the snare track and adding some EQ, compression, and small reverb to it.

Toms were probably the weakest part of this mix. They were clipping, but were somehow lost in the mix, and I really didn’t know what else to do at that point, so I just mixed them to the best of my ability and moved on.

The bass was alright too. I didn’t use the amp track at all and decided to use the DI instead. I split the bass track into a lows track and a mids + highs track, limiting the lows and distorting, cabbing, and EQing the mids + highs.

Guitars? It’s probably the place with the least effort put into it. Literally just an EQ cutting the sub-rumble + extreme top-end, taking out some harshness, and adding some treble. That’s it.

For the vocals, I didn’t put much effort into it since it sounded good as is, though I did add some EQ and compression to control it a bit more.

Some reverb + delay throws, room reverb, EQ automations, and that’s it.