advice needed: mixing/mastering a track to send to a label

B

boze

New member
so my deejay friend wants me to clean up a few of the tracks from a live laptop set i did and produce them as start to finish singles for him to send to his label mates.

what i'm wondering is: what will these folks be looking for and how shall i tailor the tracks to suit them?

currently the tracks are just loops from reason and logic that i was triggering on my ibook using Ableton Live while playing jazz guitar.

the url for the live set is here btw http://www.boze.net/mp3 <-click on the track called 'secret garden' at the bottom.

so anyway, i've read in sound-on-sound and other places that when mixing a track one should leave out compression and other types of stuff that would be better done by a real mastering effort in a studio.

should i make this track as if i was going to be the last person to polish it up or what?

i've mostly just done reason tracks, normalized in Peak and then pumped things up in T-racks.

as part of the process for these tracks i'll likely be moving to Nuendo as a place to combine my reason loops and rewired stuff with some live trumpet, guitar and bass. so starting from there, what should i do to the track and what should i not do to it so that the label ppl can still master it properly if they need to?

hope this makes sense and sorry for my lack of familiarity with all this.
 
as if that wasn't enough questions...

jeez, i almost forgot:

i also need help on recording techniques for the live intruments!!

as i said: there will be a trumpet, guitar, and bass. i have a nice setup here with a yammy o1v, a motu 2408, some event 20/20bas monitors, two AT4033 condenser mics, a shure sm58, and a Digitech Genesis3 DI box/effect processor. kind of embarrassing that i've had such quality gear for so long and been doing so much of my music on screen, but better late than never....

how shall i mic the live players?

how shall my mixer be set up? totally flat with just the mic input? shall i use any compression or eq or save all dsp to after the source is recorded?

should i try to get a tent made out of egg crates or something to create a nice dry enclosure for the recording? my walls aren't treated but i'm willing to invest in some sort of approach to make my apartment more recording friendly if it will have big impact on the results i get in these tracks.

lots of questions, but i figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

also, what are the best books on this stuff? i figure with the pricey hardware i have i should be off to a good start if i can learn some stuff about technique and have a tried and true plan from other producers to start with.

thx so much for attempting to answer any combination of these questions! :)
 
if this is a real big label i would imagine they would wanna remix it in a 'professional' studio
 
You have a steep hill to climb

Without sounding too, um, pretentious, maybe you need to recruit someone with more engineering experience to help produce this, trying to learn all of this if you're on any time table will be a real PITA, and I cannot possibly answer all your questions in a few easy sentences/posts...

Also, by being around the more experienced producer you will likely learn some things you could apply later. In much the same way hanging around here and just reading through posts and not even posting helps me with my home recordings.

What you need to get done is possible, anything's possible nowadays. I think you need to focus your major areas of concern and maybe do some keyword searches on this site (search button top-right). I know that I found a lot of info with a cakewalk XL software issue I was having doing a search...
 
nice idea, but

if i had a few local friends who were producers i wouldn't need to be asking for books on mixing at message boards though, ya know?

i appreciate your perspective, but as an aspiring producer who's invested in a bunch of hw and sw i'm not trying to pay some studio producer to let me watch over his shoulder while he mixes my tracks. i'm sure working with more experienced producers would be invaluable, but it's not feasable for me now- i'm flat broke for one thing:)

that's why i was asking about books, just because they're a traditional way of getting some codified advice from professionals with techniques and tips and stuff.

you get the idea, i'm sure. i know it's a lot of questions, but i really can't pay anyone to answer them for me and the out of town internet producers friends i have were just like, 'just do the best you can and learn as you go, it'll be fine'

what are the best pages here to look at for mixing techniques?

ha- _another question! =)
 
once again

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=19596&highlight=mixing+secrets

This is sonusman's oft-linked opus on mixing...I ignore the argument about whether these are secrets or not but the straight up advice he gives has been an invaluable stepping stone for me.

Now if you bought all this gear, you probably know a fair share of this. I'm not going to discourage you from trying this difficult project. If you wanna try, go for it. You just know from the people here that the odds are stacked against you...


good luck and best wishes.

miles
 
that's what _ah'm talkin' 'bout!

thanks maxwell-

that's a great thead to give me some guidelines going into the process.

i'm printing that out and using it as a reference.

i'm also gonna do some tests to hear the results of all the onboard eq on my o1v so i understand how that can be tweaked a bit during tracking to fit things in place earlier on.

great stuff and thx.

.. oh, and never tell me the odds! :)
 
If the song sucks , the mastering has no meaning.......
So do your best ,make sure it sounds good on different speakers.


Amund
 
=)

the song doesn't suck:) i'll definitely do that though, thx nave. i was just asking my deejay friend and he said we could check it out through the big system at the club where he spins on wednesdays as well. that plus a few home stereo's and my event monitors and headphones and my gf's car should be a nice combination.

wish i had a sub as part of my kit though....

thx again
 
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