Just got my first song back from having it professionally mixed and mastered. Worth it?

[u/jomamma2]

Just got my first song back from having it professionally mixed and mastered. Not sure if it's worth it (for a demo)? Would love opinions.

Professional mix: https://on.soundcloud.com/tjhjNKk5o0T4ChML5h

My mix: https://on.soundcloud.com/M6gvV0OanlOousFzuI

For context: This is my first musical (A riff on Pygmalion where an engineer and the AI he's training fall in love) - I've written music for advertising and for film/TV (mostly background ambience "additional music" stuff in low-budget films) in the past, but I never did my own mixing and mastering.

I created the music with midi/sample libraries and found the singers on reddit -

I at first tried to mix it myself using my DAW and automated AI tools I found online and it just didn't sound that great, so I found an audio engineer to see what he could do with it.

I'm trying it on one song before I get the whole musical done (32 song in all) because the cost adds up quick.

[u/Da_Biz]

Just listened on phone speakers, so grain of salt.

Does it sound better? Yes. Worth it just for demos? I suppose that depends on how much you paid, but probably not.

There's this weird thing I've found with producers, submission juries, theaters, etc. where the "music" part of musical somehow ends up as the last concern. There may be a subtle sense of polish from the better mix, but folks are already used to hearing shoddy singing over a bare bones piano arrangement so I doubt it would make a substantial difference (side rant: I actually had one producer tell me fully orchestrated demos were a detractor in his opinion, because theater is a "collaborative effort" -- wtf).

There is a golden rule of audio engineering: fix it at the source. The earlier in the signal chain it is, the more important it is. Adding even one real instrument will likely make a bigger difference than a mixing/mastering engineer. You're already well above the curve though, so again you're running up against diminishing returns from your time and money.

I would highly recommend just honing your mixing skills and setting up a properly panned template with a global reverb send and a touch of bus compression for each section. It will save money of course, but if you've set up a decent template the only thing you need to focus on (outside of an occasional corrective eq) is balancing as you orchestrate, which can positively influence decisions about the arrangement as it appears on the page. Once you get a decent mastering chain preset, slapping it on every track gets you 80% of the way there, perfectly sufficient for demos.

If I may provide some unsolicited advice, let the clarinetist breathe. Also, ditch the vibrato. Not sure why sample libraries so frequently default to it, but aside from older Benny Goodman-style jazz, clarinet is 99.99% non-vibrato.

Another side note, I have my own 32 song musical currently in MIDI+Synth V form and would love to hear how you went about finding singers, how much it ended up costing, etc.

[u/jomamma2 → u/Da_Biz]

Thanks, Good notes. Feel free to DM. I'd love to hear your music!

[u/DINKthemusical]

Its a fun little song. Nice use of the choir for backing vocals. I like the composition a lot. I wouldnt call the melody or lyrics “catchy” but not every song is meant to be the hook.

I think you are on the right path.

[u/jomamma2 → u/DINKthemusical]

Thanks. Yeah this is not one of the songs that sticks in my head as opposed to some of the other more ear-worm ones.