The Deepest End - alternative rock - feedback puhlease?

andrushkiwt

andrushkiwt

Well-known member
Hey guys,

Just got Amplitube 4 the other day along with a Superior Drummer SDX (The Rock Warehouse). I recorded this one prior to the purchases, but I had time to replace the hard panned rhythms (previously Lepou through Recab) with Amp4 Mesa Boogie stuff. Oh, the bass too...I replaced with Amp4's Acoustic360 through Ampeg SVT 810. How does the new gear sound? The next track will feature the new drums plus all the guitars will go through Amp4.

Got help from G on the guitars here, though...amp sims...so, yeah. Doing the best I can with what I've got. I also spent considerable time on "mastering stuff" - compression on the 2bus (used about 3-4 comp's with SMALL amounts of gain reduction, slow attacks and releases close to the rhythm of the kick/bass). I actually got to about -11 (come on -10! damnit!) RMS by using multiple and just shaving pieces off here and there, slowly. It should be a little pumpy/punchy. Hopefully. Possibly. Well, I thought it was.



As far as I can tell, there's a patience here.
I can't explain so well, and things are so unclear.
This ship is sinking in the waters deepest end.

Never thought you'd feel like this anymore,
every time I lose my mind I'm sore.
I have bruised my bones behind this door.
They said "hold on and wait forever" -
all alone you're wanting so much more.

You saved a place for me, but I have turned against you
and all your company, so tell me what can I do?
I feel it burning in, beneath my guilty skin.

I broke my back, I stumbled in,
you said this fear would never end.
I saw your eyes, you tore out mine,
and now we're back where we began.
 
andru, my rule of thumb is when hitting play does anything stand out [negatively], and it doesn't. so that means it's a good overall balance. now after that i usually go and listen to each instrument individually to see if any can be improved. about all i can hear is the vocal can come up about 1db, maybe a slight boost to brighten the snare; there's a slight muddiness overall. so maybe in the master phase reduce around 250-400hz a few db and roll off the bottom. or, check each instrument again and see if any one is the problem. i think that would open it up. i like this song -- it's getting into the harder rock/superchunk arena. one day you need to send me tips on how you program tom fills. if you're bored one day pm me with how you do it. i am never sure where to start the tom fill...like on which beat. i can't get those right ever. nice drum programming, btw. i like that we both program and both are improving a lot with that.
 
Yeah, this good. The version I heard before was pretty punchy, but this more so. The chugging rhythm guitars sound great. Bass has a lot of drive. You harmonized the solo I think. The track is finished from what I can tell.
 
Robus said:
The track is finished from what I can tell.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I was trying to say, too. I think it's done, but in mastering he can probably clean up the low end a little to open it up a bit more. That's about all I hear that it could use.
 
Really like how the vocals sound on this one, this must be the new mic. Chorus is real catchy. Nothing jumps out at me, sounds well-balanced. This is the clearest I've heard the vocals on your work, I like it.
 
Nola said:
... or, check each instrument again and see if any one is the problem..
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think it's the bass. I had it set all fine and good then I switched out the amp at the last second for the acoustic360 and it doesn't have a mid knob, just bass and treb. I played w EQ for about 10 mins on it and called it a day. I'm guessing any blurriness is coming from there. Thanks!! I'll msg you about fills, though really, I just write what I hear when the space is empty.
 
andrushkiwt said:
Yeah, I think it's the bass. I had it set all fine and good then I switched out the amp at the last second for the acoustic360 and it doesn't have a mid knob, just bass and treb. I played w EQ for about 10 mins on it and called it a day. I'm guessing any blurriness is coming from there. Thanks!! I'll msg you about fills, though really, I just write what I hear when the space is empty.
Click to expand...

cool glad that worked
 
Robus said:
.. You harmonized the solo I think.
Click to expand...

I actually had it like that last time - I just turned the harmony part up here. You mentioned it was anti-climatic, but I thought the harmony part helped so I thought maybe it was too low previously. Hopefully it comes to a better head here.
 
easlern said:
Really like how the vocals sound on this one, this must be the new mic. Chorus is real catchy. Nothing jumps out at me, sounds well-balanced. This is the clearest I've heard the vocals on your work, I like it.
Click to expand...

Yup, AT4040. It's a bit dark and there's a ringing in the 750-2khz area. It may be a combination of my room and technique though. I lifted the master bus around 6khz on a 2db slope to brighten things up a bit. Quite a bit of cutting in the upper mid freqs that were harsh, before the lift.
 
I think you are really close! Nicely balanced mix! I would say it could use a little more overall clarity, but that can be safely saved for the mastering stage if you've take it as far as you can.

I would try lowering the snare's gain 1-2db, and maybe lower the kick 1/2 dB. The attack of each seems to be blasting through the limiter (the snare more than the kick at this point). You should be able to hear the snare's snap, but not so much that it overtakes everything else. That should give you enough headroom to push the limiter to achieve DR9 without much compromise.
 
Sounds great to me. Cool sounding guitars.

The only thing close to an issue I can come up with is that the bass is covering the kick. I can hear more of the bass than the kick.
 
RedStone said:
.. The attack of each seems to be blasting through the limiter (the snare more than the kick at this point).
Click to expand...

Actually the kick was pushing the compressors more than anything. I already lowered them (there's in, out, and sub) quite a bit just so it didn't pump too much. The snare is kinda cracky, I think. But the kick was the main instrument moving the comp. I tried using the sidechain on one of the compressors to start higher up, like 200hz, so it didn't jump on it so much. Thanks for the listen and comment!
 
mjbphotos said:
I like the guitars, but the bass is buried to me, kick is fine.
Click to expand...

I think so too. It's not well defined. I need to play with these new amp sim settings and cabs. Figure out which mics are good for bass...think I used a 57 and the 414, blended. I can move them around in any way too, kinda cool.
 
I like it. Whatever technical nits people could come up with are overshadowed by your skill in songwriting, performance, production etc.
Me, with regards to your stuff, i just listen to the song.

I realize this is a "tear apart the mix" forum. But I find myself just grooving wirh the tune and listening to it develop.

Besides, I just do stoneage rock and roll, and think Free's Mr. Big, and the Stone's Give me Shelter are great mixes.

Oh and Hendrix's Voodoo Child is a GREAT mix!

What the hell do I know? I'm obviously biased towards a great song which kind of disqualifies me for giving mix critique.
:D

Anyway, good stuff.

Oh, btw, I'll get back to your pm. Sorry been busy and forgot.
 
Andrush, that's a brilliant mix. I used to listen to a fair bit of this style of music (an ex bird of mine was into it) - it sounds a fuck of a lot better than anything she listened to. Any advice I could give you on that would be personal taste as opposed to constructive.

When you get a mo, can you check something - about 2 fifths of the way through the song there's really cool bit with some epic drumming. Sounds like you've gone a touch octopus (or at lead quadropus). Sounds like you've got two cymbals being hit at the same time as a double hit on some of the drums - cool fills though and the sound of the drums sounds pretty amazing. Did it take you a long time to get into Superior Drummer X?
 
JDOD said:
Andrush, that's a brilliant mix. I used to listen to a fair bit of this style of music (an ex bird of mine was into it) - it sounds a fuck of a lot better than anything she listened to. Any advice I could give you on that would be personal taste as opposed to constructive.

When you get a mo, can you check something - about 2 fifths of the way through the song there's really cool bit with some epic drumming. Sounds like you've gone a touch octopus (or at lead quadropus). Sounds like you've got two cymbals being hit at the same time as a double hit on some of the drums - cool fills though and the sound of the drums sounds pretty amazing. Did it take you a long time to get into Superior Drummer X?
Click to expand...

Ok, yeah it's possible I didn't take something out. I'm always working the fills up until it's time to bounce the drums out, and sometimes I'll change something last minute and oops!...didn't see that cymbal mark way up there because I had to scroll up on my MIDI grid. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll try to find it.

That's funny - what is "this style of music"? I honestly have no idea what some people think it fits into genre-wise. I try not to give it too much thought. The next track is way different from this one; I just kinda go with what vibe I think the track is calling for, but even that is just an image in my head, not sure how it translates.

Superior Drummer "x"? what do you mean? I have Superior Drummer 2, and I just bought an expansion for it - though I didn't use any of the pieces in this track. The next one will have them. In general, I like it a lot but it's the only drumming program I've used. Miro helped me set up the x-drum feature so that I could use cymbals and toms, or whatever really, from other expansions and make a personalized kit. I did that on the next track. I now have 3 different Black Beauty snares, in addition to the other 15 or so overall from the standard kit and 2 expansions I have. Tons of cymbals, though I need to get better at finding which cymbals are better suited for which parts. I still have a lot to learn with mixing and writing drums, and Minerman has been helping me a bit with that as well.

What I can say for sure is that you should get into the MIDI grid as much as you can. My typical plan is to 1) listen to the bass/guitars and come up, in my head, with a drum part in as much detail as possible. I'll imagine I'm at the kit smashing away and then 2) find the closest possible preset groove to what I'm hearing in my head. Undoubtedly, I'll then 3) edit that groove more precisely. Chances are I won't find that exact option in there, so I'll move kicks and snares around to fit, but the base-groove I select should be very close to the final one I want. If there is nothing close to it at all, I'll write it out by hand. The nice thing about selecting a groove as the base though, is that the hats are already humanized, so that saves me time and effort. Fills I do the same - look for the closest, edit it, or write manually. The intro fill here I wrote out. Longer ones were probably grooves that I moved and added/removed things to get what I wanted to hear. Mixing-wise, I need to consider how I apply reverb to the kit - right now, I only use a small amount of verb on the snare and toms. I might try making a general "drum verb" bus and varying the send amounts of each piece to it, though I'm not sure right now if I would want my snare to have different properties (pre-delay, dimensions, etc).
 
Not sure what the genre would be called but it does remind me of a few bands - when you go telling people what you think they sound like you invariably piss them off I find!

I haven't fully got to grips with EZ Drummer yet so I don't want to upgrade to Superior Drummer as I think I'd just get option paralysis.

I've not tried using the present groves or fills at all yet - I've just been building my own beats, couldn't seem to find presets that were close enough to what I was after... although saying that the song I'm working on at the moment is a lot simpler.

I think I generally go about coming up with the drums parts the same way as you (just think a beat along with with my riffs) but you're way better at this MIDI sequencing than me.
 
JDOD said:
...couldn't seem to find presets that were close enough to what I was after...
Click to expand...

alright, but just keep in mind that you can move those kicks and snares around a little. If you have to totally change the whole thing, then just skip that one. If the kick hits on 2.5, and you want it on 2, though, then just grab that one and move that kick - as long as the rest is pretty close. By the way, each new expansion adds more grooves as well. The groove included in the stock NY Avatar kit are pretty good though, and there's a shit ton really. There's more in that one than the Rock Warehouse expansion I just bought.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top