After all this time, I finally post a new one...

[tubedude]

And its not much...
This is from last week, a quick project I did for a local band and friends of mine called Odesa. They like to be known as dirty Ky rock, and they really favor an old Black Sabbath sound live and writing wise, and they insisted on maintaing a live feel to all the tracks and were not fond of overdubbing at all. Even mistakes were keepers in most cases.
The drums are recorded in a living room with no carpet, against the wall, next to a couch and TV... acoustics were fairly poor. I had approximately 15 minutes in drum setup, so I used the 2 stick technique for fast, easy and close in micing.
Unfortunately, I gave the singer a CD of the rough unmixed tracks the next day, and he thought the drummer sucked. He brought it up to the rest of the band, a fight insued, and he quit before we got to cut any vocals.
So, no vocals on this one, except for what bled through the overheads.
They wanted a rather dirty sound, and they actually opposed the sound of this song a little at 1st becuase it didnt sound dirty enough. When I tried to run the bass though the RNP, they thought it was too clean, so heres the signal chains...

Bass -> direct into cheapo powered P.A. turned up to some fairly heavy ugly clipping... somehow it works for the song, go figure... setup: 1 minute or less... I really hate this bass sound, the RNP sounded WAY better, but it wasnt my call...

Drums -> the 4 mic/2 stick technique, MXL 603's on overheads into RNP, 441 snare into RNP, TGX-50 kick into RNP, no sound check we just went for it. The beauty of that mic setup is that it works in a pinch. The downside is, the toms didnt cut very well. Oh well.

Guitar -> Warp 7 amp, 4x12 warp cabinet, MD-441 into RNP, backed away from the cab some to give some room sound, so it would have more of a live sound to it like they wanted. I also had a TLM-103 on it, but I'm not sure if we made a take with it or not on this particulr song. If so, then its a 441 left, 103 right. 2 guitars were overdubbed hard left and right after drums were tracked, and I left the scratch track in about 10 db lower than the overdubs. The scratch track was cut from the bathroom, with the full amp stack in the bathtub, with a packing blanket over it and a Sennheiser 504 with the door closed. The overdubs were done in the living room after we tore the drums down. Setup: 7 minutes max.

Sound checks were not an option, as I was sitting in the living room directly next to the drums, and I had no control area whatsoever and time was WAY too rushed to be picky. Considering I had drums right next to me, and my headphones are open backs, this sounds pretty amazing. Hard to get good sounds that way, it really is.
So we have 8 hours recording 7 songs, including setup and teardown, and I have about 1 hour in editing and mixing on this one, which is about 3 hours less than I need to even get close to what I want.
I will tell you right off that I scooped too much mid from the final mix and it made the guitar sound lower in the mix, and the MP3 conversion did it no favors at all. It almost sounds like an overal ldistortion was added to the mix after conversion. I dont like it.

I'm posting this cause its been a LONG time since I posted one, and I REALLY like this song, as well as thier other stuff. If anyone wants to hear another, let me know and I'll put one up. I think these guys jam thier dicks off, mistakes and all. I wish I had the vocals for it.
Actually, you can hear the vocalist screaming some rough tracks out if you listen really closely, he bled through the overheads.

I think that www.nowhereradio.com/odesa will get you there.
As this wasnt a particularly picked over project, I'm not really looking for much in the way of advice or whatever, I would rather hear what people think about the song in general. I think it rocks.
Some of my own stuff coming VERY soon... real nervous about posting THAT.
Peace!
Paul

[tubedude]

Well, now I cant get the damned link to work...
Anyone know whats going on? Is nowhere have trouble again?
I'll see if I can find another place to put it for the time being. Any suggestions?

[chrisharris]

THIS SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY HUGE!!!!!!!!!

Who the fuck are you, and where did all of your posts come from? lol.

There's maybe something a little weird going on with the kick/bass...seems to clip every once in awhile...maybe not...it's just kinda of a snappy kick sound.

Okay, I'll get out of the way and let others talk.

needs vocals

Oh, and I haven't read your post yet, so I'll do that.

[chrisharris]

and the link worked fine for me.

[chrisharris]

Okay, so it was the bass that was clipping....lol.

Song rocked. Post more...get them to make up.

[tubedude]

So it works for you? Heres what I get...
"Cannot open 'http://media.nowhereradio.com/cgi-bin/playsong/10979/cDckxoEEjb4v/n/m3u/risemp3.m3u'. Please verify that the path and filename are correct and try again."

I've been here for awhile, just lately I havent been posting much except in the Cakewalk forum, although I am here reading every day. I've gotten a bit tired of spilling the same advice over and over again, really, and I've been really busy too, so I've been learning the ins and outs of Sonar, Dxi2.0 and midi instead. Really loving that stuff. My last post on this forum was probably 2 years ago, you can go back and find it pretty easily, and its one of my own songs. I'll have more original stuff up soon and I'm real excited about my new stuff, in a big way. Cant wait.

Anyway, how come the link doesnt work for me?
Glad you like the sound, by the way, did you like the song? I can post another one that is really realy really rough mixed, as in mixed on the spot so that we could overdub stuff with good headphone levels. I'm not going to mix anymore until I find out if they are going to get a new singer or not. The other song is real cool, too, though, very sabbathy.

Peace!

[CDT-sHaG]

i copied and pasted the link you listed just now..sounds awesome..i love the kick tone especially...

man i need help with my drum sound..i love the tone you got..

and the guitars rock..great job..

take a listen if you have time..

http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthr...threadid=79738

thanks...

[tubedude]

Have you tried the 2 stick method that I use? It works great in the following situations...
time limited... very fast setup without worrying about phase issues too much
acoustics... if the room acoustics arent very good, this method allows you to get in close and and not get so much room. And, the cymbals ususally come out fine.
Also, with this technique, you can ususally leave your snare at 0, kick at 0, and bring the overheads down to -10 and have an almost perfect mix that easily(considering you recorded everything at proper levels in the 1st place) so that you can move quickly in getting headphone mixes after the take.
This dudes drums sounded very dry and flat, rather old heads and cymbals, which again, works for them and thier sound I guess.
What are you using in the kick and how are you placing it? Good mics and preamps make all the diffrence, but I'm preaching to the choir I guess.
The kick on the last 3 songs we did sounds like ass because someone kicked the wire and made the mic fall over inside the kick.

[coplinger]

Song kicks ass. Gives me faith in the drum recordings I'm getting ready to do-in a very small room with no acoustic treatment using 603's as oh's. Was this all played live in the same room? How many channels of RNP do you freakin' have anyway?!

[tubedude]

4 channels of RNP, and a Soundcraft M8, and an API that isnt working right now.
Use the 2 stick method and wathc how fast you are up and running. Rent some preamps if you dont have any good ones, and do all your tracks through them, big difference.

[tubedude]

I'm gonna put another song up later, and it has the Soundcraft preamps and a cheaper mic on the snare and kick, and you will hear a huge difference in sound quality and snap. They wanted a low-fi sound, so we ened up using mostly M8 preamps on the other songs.
Plus, the kick mic fell at some point and we didnt know until we tore the drums down. How nice is that?

[CDT-sHaG]

thanks tubedude..

well, my drummer has a bad room for one, we close mic'd with these CAD drum mics....i think they come in a kit..the kick mic was inside the kick..not good imho..

the drums are pearl exports, with new heads...but he has a pearl masterworks snare that sounds awesome live..the mic totally destroyed the tone...

i'm very curious about the "2 stick" method...if someone can point me in the right direction i'd appreciate it..thanks.

i put up an alternate drum vesion in my original post....

[tubedude]

Here...

--> 2 stick method <--

[darwinsdoggy]

Love that guitar sound...Bass sounded good to me. I didn't like the drums much though, and that may just be a matter of personal taste more than sound. Maybe it's just me but I thought the snare was a little weak.

Just my opinion, for what it's worth.

BTW, the songs kicks ass. Tell them I'm in eastern Oklahoma and would be happy to sing...lol.

[tubedude]

Well, they are looking!
I guess it sounds allright... I thought the snare sounded pretty slamming on this one though.
I'll post one that sounds totally different tonight, I think.

[Track Rat]

Good mix. Yeah, I can hear the living room in the dums but I like a room sound on them anyway. Guitars do sound fat. Too bad they bailed before the vocals.

[tubedude]

I might get vocals on it yet, dont have tim4e to post the other yet.

I think the drums sound pretty good considering... A nice kit and some Neumanns over it would have made a nice difference.
On the vocalist idea... I need one... who can recommend somone on here that has a top of the line commercial voice that can really nail it?

Peace...

[tubedude]

The other one should be up at the link that doesnt work for me.
This one is bashable, the kick mic had fallen over, and the snare mic was downgraded and run through the M-series preamps. Huge difference. Less mixed, too. Much less.
Great song though, check out the whole Sabbathy feel and sound at the beginning. Too cool.
Ok, I did pop that Waves Enigma onto the 1st 5 seconds to make it rise into the opeing of the song. That was about the extent of "mixing" other than panning and setting some close levels.

[Guernica]

Hey Tubedude,
Nice stuff man. The band and composition didnt really knock me out but the recording was cool. Nice work.
g

[SLuiCe]

Quite a story behind this one eh?

Guitars sound pretty nice! (Not commenting on the parts or performance.) Nice job...they sound huge. Do I hear voices around 2:18, just before the doubled lead?

You did a great job of capturing the old Sabbath sound...especially during the guitar leads. Shame the vocalist quit...would give us more to comment on. But this turned out pretty damn good, all things considered.

[W.I.S.C.]

Cool!A Fight!

Rise-GIGANTIC WALL OF SOUND!!!Very thunderous and ooww the bass is clippin something fierce.Funny to hear the dude singing in the way way back.Drummer needs a little practice,good take but a little weak on the fancy stuff.Rockin tha funk outta this tune!!Groovey in all the right spots.Can't wait to hear it with vox

[tubedude]

Yeah, the whole fight was over the drummer missing parts and stuff, and I dont really think he did, he's just not much on flow, really. Great guy though.
Yeah, if you listen real close you can hear him screaming in the background in several spots. Thats what happens when the only iso is the bathroom and a guitar amp is in the tub.
Thanks for the replies, builds my confidence that people can dig something so simply and quickly put together.
Anyone listen to the second one yet?