A Before and After Mix

[gatorhaus]

Last Spring I recorded a band in my living room, with an Aardvark Q10, My second attempt as an "engineer" (and I use that term loosely)

In Bloom Old

After studying and trying to learn I have remixed using the techniques I have read mostly here and getting some help from other engineers.

I boosted 80 hz on the kick and cut at 150. and vice versa on the bass.

I also used my DAW to line up the snare and kick track with the overheads. (Now this is a crappy drum set to start with so I know it won't get much better.)

I also tried to bring the vocals more up front and even out the transistion into and out of the solo.

Here's the new version.

In Bloom New

They are a local kids, still in High School, but were very fun to work with, even said yes sir and called me Mr.

Let me know what you think.

thanks,
larry

[gatorhaus]

bump

No Comments?

[Blue Bear Sound]

Larry -- I listened to both.... to be honest, neither was better than the other.... very demo'ish sound.... each mix was different but the 2nd wasn't necessarily an improvement.

If you haven't already - take a peek at my mixing article on my studio's website - it should give you some tips!

[gatorhaus]

Thanks Bruce,

I'll check it out and work on it some more.

larry

[Pinky]

You captured the frequencies fine, so your engineering is probably okay, but your production skills could use some fine tuning. The mix is very hollow, and the distorted guitars are supposed to jump at you. Was surprised to hear the decent cobain imitation . You can tell the boys they did pretty good, heard some decent playing going on... drummer needs to practice the song a bit more, he can't quite get those odd Grohl kicks...

There's a lot wrong here, but all of that can be corrected as it does sound like there's enough recording there to play with. Trying taking the mix an instrument at a time, get each instrument sounding exactly as it should individually, then bring them together and fine tune from there.

[deemic]

They sound similar.....

Definitely needs more guitar up front and the vocals were overpowering the entire mix.

[gatorhaus]

Originally posted by Pinky
You captured the frequencies fine, so your engineering is probably okay, but your production skills could use some fine tuning. The mix is very hollow, and the distorted guitars are supposed to jump at you. Was surprised to hear the decent cobain imitation . You can tell the boys they did pretty good, heard some decent playing going on... drummer needs to practice the song a bit more, he can't quite get those odd Grohl kicks...

There's a lot wrong here, but all of that can be corrected as it does sound like there's enough recording there to play with. Trying taking the mix an instrument at a time, get each instrument sounding exactly as it should individually, then bring them together and fine tune from there.

Thanks Pinky,

Well I guess its only going to be as good as it sounds at the source. They were using a very cheap drum set (I've never even heard of the brand, before) set up in my dining room (with the wonderful acoustics there, not). The thing that killed me was, when they came over they hadn't even practiced all the songs together. but we only had to do three songs and we were only shooting for demo quality anyways....

This is mostly just trying to learn more of the mixing art, I'll keep at it and repost if it changes dramatically.

larry