Pretty good song to mess around with, I feel it suits you, very open to do whatever. Mix sounds good.
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This mix is worth a listen as I rested my ears then remixed it to be more of a mastered version and less of a production version (I turned down the drums).
This mix has been deemed suitable for all manner of delivery into the acoustic pathways of the human brain for processing through our individual mental filters/biases/egos and rhythmic acculturation - and especially for the purpose of refined what-evering . . .
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Not sure what this song is about but it sounds happy and you should get up and shake off the blues with it and move around like you are still alive (dance?).
Going for the mix again on this one and I did a lot of what-evering on it too.
Needed an open, angry, airy tune to try out some mastering mix skills using more compression, inverting phase on the bass guitar and a LOT of other nuances to arrive at this first mix after 4 takes - !st time I have heard this tune was last night.
Drum kit looks like this:
It should sound much more commercial than most of my past efforts - let me know if you like it or not.
Sounds pretty good to me. Maybe more crack on the snare? Or might just need a touch more volume
Nice job
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OK, Danno: (life-long multi-instrument-musician/songwriter/recording buddy / student of Joe Barresi → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Barresi ) explained why I might have decided to reverse the phase of the bass guitar on that 1st mix and after some serious cogitating concerning his response it finally made sense so I replaced/re-tuned the bass drum and then put the bass guitar in back into normal phase then all this other stuff came together (in my ears) resulting in a complete re-tuning of my drum kit and the entire song’s mix/combination of tracks.
Also, Eric of the 6th Planet (skilled songwriter/multi-instrument-musician / amplifier builder/electronics guru) suggested that the snare needed some more presence/smack, SO - I boosted the bottom mic on the snare and added more compression, tape distortion and a bit of noise - and - slowed the tape speed emulation.
On my current home built 3 way monitors (kick ass speakers 
) using an Acoustas DSP amp https://www.acoustas.com/ this mix sounds like listening on good quality headphones right now.
Very defined.
Turn it up a bit and see if sounds nice and full/defined to your ears.
On the Border - Al Stewart - SJL Drums - 3-23-2026.T1.M1 . . .
Take-1, Mix-1.
(I’ll probably need to remix this later one as my ears are tired and this track is tough to mix for some reason . . .).
Hope you enjoy it . . .
Consider that 
last tune a production mix and sample this next one as a mastering mix . . .
Huge difference with this mixing effort of 3 hours focused work and it has my rested ears happy.
Too many edits to go into detail about but every source-track and drum kit sound has been redone on this mix - worth a listen.
OK - Dan pointed out some stuff and I have to agree with his assessment after resting my ears again so this next mix is tonight’s result (I did say that this was a difficult tune to mix, didn’t I?).
It made me go back and reassess my studio monitor DSP settings for the better too!
Hope I’m not boring you but this song has always been an awesome tune to me and I want to do the mastering mix efforts some due justice. (The bowed strings are hard to get the levels/EQ right upon while that Spanish nylon stringed guitar work gets my blood moving - I love it!).
Brought the drums up/re-leveled their individual voices to add back the missing bass & attack to get the groove defined . . .
Last Mix at that last one . . . On the Border - MIX-4 . . .
OK, I have redone this tune again [humor me - mastering audio is a highly iterative process as I am finding out] but it has more depth and the drums & cymbals have been re-leveled/re-tuned/decayed, etc.
It sounds good on all my speaker systems now - smaller speakers sounded muddy before - sounds smooth on headphones/buds.
Comments welcome & encouraged.
Special thanks to Dan over at Spent-Aces.com for his continued feedback and friendship.
Just for REFERENCE - I check my mixes on what are an inexpensive & ubiquitous set of headphones –> Sony MDR-7506 just in case you decide to buy some decent sounding headphones without breaking the budget.
7506 always sound great!
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This song by Alannah Myles is some country person listening to Elvis Presley. They seem to be expressing some deep thoughts/synaptic meanderings of those times while walking around burping a baby with a cigarette dangling from the lips, right? 
Only 10 takes to get this one presentable and a lot of calibration microphone work in my studio/man cave on the speakers - plus a lot of sweating the details on the mix - hope it has good impact on your head/ears.
Turn it up - I got her screechy vocals under control finally.
Lyrics for reference:
“Black Velvet”
Mississippi in the middle of a dry spell
Jimmy Rogers on the Victrola up high
Mama’s dancin’ with baby on her shoulder
The sun is settin’ like molasses in the sky
The boy could sing, knew how to move, everything
Always wanting more, he’d leave you longing for
Black velvet and that little boy’s smile
Black velvet with that slow southern style
A new religion that’ll bring ya to your knees
Black velvet if you please
Up in Memphis the music’s like a heatwave
White lightning, bound to drive you wild
Mama’s baby’s in the heart of every school girl
“Love me tender” leaves ‘em cryin’ in the aisle
The way he moved, it was a sin, so sweet and true
Always wanting more, he’d leave you longing for
Black velvet and that little boy’s smile
Black velvet with that slow southern style
A new religion that’ll bring ya to your knees
Black velvet if you please
Every word of every song that he sang was for you
In a flash he was gone, it happened so soon, what could
You do?
Black velvet and that little boy’s smile
Black velvet with that slow southern style
A new religion that’ll bring ya to your knees
Black velvet if you please
Black velvet and that little boy’s smile
Black velvet with that slow southern style
A new religion that’ll bring ya to your knees
Black velvet if you please
If you please, if you please, if you please
OK, rested ears, lots of experimentation with the sound of it on different playback devices both emulated and physically tested using my ears/brain and this one sounds the best over-all.
Very smooth, sweetness added to the snare via reverb, re-tuning /additional leveling and just right in playback/listening on the Sony MDR-7506 headphones.
This ^ mix should be fine for anyone using earbuds/headphones.
Aside>
If you have the Audio Technica M50 head phones this will sound good.
I don’t seem to care for the playback sound of the Sennheiser HD650 headphones at all as it is too hot in the mid-range for me - seem to be boosted in that area so they may be good for mixing but not for playback/listening/enjoying. YMMV. They are just like the universally hated by audiophiles; Yamaha NS10M Studio Monitors - good for mixing but not for listening.
Find something that follows the Harman 2018 curve as closely as possible for listening enjoyment, IME.
. . . However there are new studies out there that tout the newer independent curves:
"5. Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrate that current industry standard headphone target curves, such as the Harman targets, are significantly less preferred than alternatives such as the PEQdB and HiFiEndgame target curves. Intriguingly, the HiFiEndgame target curve performs at the top of the rankings despite being created by a single individual based on his intuition. Considering the HiFiEndgame target curve sits on the edge of the parameter bounds of the PEQdB listening tests, reworking the PEQdB listening tests with an improved set of parameters centering around the HiFiEndgame target curve may result in a better-sounding target curve. Future work would include in-person listening tests with controlled listening conditions, using the same target curves for both the in-ear and over-ear tests. "
https://peqdb.com/wiki/PEQdB-Comparitive-Evaluation-of-Headphone-Target-Curves.pdf
In the end - it’s all subjective - we get used to what we are familiar with and miss so much else available to us in life because we settle into a rut and stop experimenting . . .
I thought I was done with this ^ song but the referencing system developer I use (SSA VSX) just released a new plug-in for my DAW today that is supposed to add punch depth and air to an instrument or a mix.
So just for kicks I installed it, learned how it works and applied it to this drum mix and I will now leave it alone - the effects are striking and cleans the mud out of my drums very nicely without overpowering the mix.
OK, I 1st heard this song tonight after returning from visiting mum in the nursing today home and just HAD to record/mix it - inspired by my subsequent synaptic activity/considered emotional intelligence (The lyrics/vocals are incredible):
Getting the Bass guitar and kick drum tracks cleaned up to stop tripping the monitoring amp took some effort on this 1st mix.
I may come back and remix it, if it sounds-off to my rested ears in the future.
Enjoy.
That last effort sucked in retrospect so I redid it from scratch including the drumming and mixing - this one should be fine on everything you throw it at - got the screechy vocals/guitar under control too:
A mastering practice mix for this one:
I think this one is a keeper:
It has been completely remixed with fresh perspective /ears to include re-tuning/replacing drums and remixing the original tracks.
I’m pretty happy with it on all of my playback systems now [even at high volume levels] so it should sound balanced on yours.
Neat track! Listening on my phone, everything sounded pretty cohesive. I dig it
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Truly appreciated and awesome feedback 
, dude! (Very encouraging).