The Song I Mixed Twice

The first song I released as sunny*r was called "Changed," and I mixed it badly enough that I ended up releasing it again.

I recorded it in my college apartment, in a small, untreated bedroom, with a large diaphragm condenser microphone. That's a sensitive mic in a bad room. I also sang quietly, because I was trying not to bother my roommates or my neighbors. So the source recordings weren't great, and I knew it. I just wasn't worried, because I had plugins.

I processed everything. Every individual track sounded great when I soloed it. Then I put them together and got a muddy mix where you couldn't hear the vocal or tell what the words were.

Here's that first version.

What I changed

I bought a dynamic microphone, which suits a bad room much better. I'd also started taking audio classes by then, so I had better ideas about how to tighten things up.

Here's the second version.

You can hear the words now, and it sounds like an actual song. By any measure I could name, it's the better mix.

The annoying part

The first one has a vibe the second one doesn't.

I still can't fully explain that. The muddy version got something about the song that the clean version missed, even though it has real problems. This is why I say the right mix isn't always the correct mix. On a daydreamy song I worked on later, I pushed the saturation until the mix was bursting at the seams, and that was the right call for that song, even though it isn't what anyone would teach you to do.

Neither version of "Changed" is my best work, and I'm putting them up anyway. If you're reading this because you're fighting your own muddy mix, try fixing the recording before you add another plugin.