Logic Pro Final Mix Disappointment

[Fognozzle]

I have completed the Udemy audio production course and completed my first recording, obeying all of the advice, and I have found the course thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening. However, my first recording disappoints me for the following reasons.:
*It is overall much quieter than commercial tracks
*It lacks treble
*the balance feels wrong compared with, for example Don't Cry Sister by Eric Clapton. His track gets the drums clear and crisp without them conflicting with the vocals, while my track has the drums either too low, or too loud and overpowering my lead piano.
I feel that there is more to do, but what?

Foggy

 

[Peter Ostry]

After an audio production course and, as your description tells, with practically no experience in recording, you compare your product to a piece made by worldclass musicians, recording-, mixing- and mastering engineers. You are unfair to yourself ;-)

If you scan the net for the song Don't Cry Sister, you find original recordings of JJ Cale. Listen to them: great spirit, well balanced and not loud (don't forget the volume knob for you monitors though), old-fashioned if you want. You find a live performance with Cale, Trucks and Clapton which is a little more modern, still not loud, but lacks a bit of the spirit. Finally you find a Cale/Clapton recording with heavy bass, loud drums and irritating vocals, pumped up in the lows to serve the musical taste of many people today, but for my feeling the song itself got lost. We can still wait for a modern but better interpretation.

Let's go more technical according to your points of criticism:

1. Tonal balance
   In Cale's recordings, voice and feeling are most important, everything else steps back, including the thin guitar. In the brutal Clapton release I mentioned above, everything else but the voices is important, the voices got even damaged to give more room for the rest of the gang. For your own interpretation, you can go in any direction and set your target anywhere between these extremes, or completely different. You just have to know what you want to achieve. It's not so much a matter of turning knobs, but rather a matter of your vision, arrangement, instrument sound, playing style and recording. If the recording is how you like it, you can make it better and maybe great. If the tonal and rhythmical balance in the recording is not ok, you may not be able to get what you want.
   
   
2. Lack of treble
   Well, this is what Equalizers, compressors and good ears are for. For example, if you push the bottom frequencies up and cut drums and bass below 1 kHz, you will never get an open feeling by other elements. Don't concentrate on single instruments, listen for the whole thing to decide which frequencies on which element you have to attenuate or to emphasize. Not too much detail in the first steps, for a good start you may try with just hi/lo shelf EQs or "Tilt" EQs on instruments to get an idea where you need more/less treble and bass. Generally pushing the treble far up is seldom a good idea. Rather pull the bottom or the mids down and increase the overall volume to compensate. The feel of treble greatly depends on the difference and interaction between musical elements. The timing is also important. You got to hear if sounds at the same time (or in one phrase) are working together or not. If a lower tone with less importance tries to mask the higher tones, it has to step back. But be careful with your mids. A mix with just bass and trebles does not sound full.
   
   
3. Not loud enough
   This is the main complaint of most beginners. To make a mix really loud, you basically squeeze it with a compressor or limiter and turn it louder overall. Do this as much or as often as you want. With each step you will gain loudness and lose dynamics and details. Again, your decision: do you want it loud or detailed? If you want it like a certain commercial production, listen carefully and use a frequency analyzer to find out what those people were doing. There is certainly a tonal difference between a loud piece from Metallica and ancient but equally loud pieces from Jack DeJohnette or Terje Rypdal (if you just turn your volume knob up). In your case, with the song Don't Cry Sister, you don't want sheer loudness, that's why analyzing and listening is so important. You want a detailed but full mix. The tonal and loudness balance must be evenly distributed over almost the full frequency range without losing too much dynamics. Listen at low volumes – do you miss something? Bring it up. Listen at high volumes – got something disturbing, too aggressive, does it drone? Bring these elements down and probably you have to attenuate deep frequencies which just push the meters without contributing to the sound. Listen at your standard volume – Everything ok? Then try squeezing with a compressor or limiter and increase the volume by the gain reduction you got. Limiters usually do this in one step.

 

[sonnykeyes]

Peter gives great advice above, but let me ask you: did your course include the advice to use your own judgement to modify the sounds until they sound the way you want them to? If so, that is the advice you have missed following, because it is by following that advice that the final production will sound the way you want it to! For a quick fix, however, you may want to invest in Ozone or some similar mastering plugin.