Contest: 8-channel drum mix

jmorris said:
http://www.24tracklive.com/untitled1.html

Ok, here is a link to my mix of the drums. Just came in from cutting the lawn so wko knows! :p It's kind of hard without knowing the style of song...unless I wasnt paying attention.
Jim
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I like your snare in this mix. Nice and fat. Reminds me of Butch Vig on Nirvana stuff.
Yeah tis hard to mix drums without the surrounding music. :)

Eck
 
jmorris said:
http://www.24tracklive.com/untitled1.html

Ok, here is a link to my mix of the drums. Just came in from cutting the lawn so wko knows! :p It's kind of hard without knowing the style of song...unless I wasnt paying attention.
Jim
Click to expand...

Thank you Jim! I've got all 3 of them lined up in CoolEdit, just going back and forth checking out all the differences. It's really amazing how different they all sound. I think the toms sound best in yours. There's a fill at 3:13 to 3:14 where Grant goes around on the large toms. Those Audix mics are absolutely brutal and get quite "slappy". On yours the balance is just right and recovers the signal well. How did you do your mix?
 
HollowMan1975 said:
Thank you Jim! I've got all 3 of them lined up in CoolEdit, just going back and forth checking out all the differences. It's really amazing how different they all sound. I think the toms sound best in yours. There's a fill at 3:13 to 3:14 where Grant goes around on the large toms. Those Audix mics are absolutely brutal and get quite "slappy". On yours the balance is just right and recovers the signal well. How did you do your mix?
Click to expand...
Thanks HollowMan1975. I imported all the tracks to Sonar 5P. Mixed the main tracks. I then did 2 stereo mixes of the drums.Comporessed each with Fairchild UAD-1 plugin. I pannned 1 hard left the other hard right. I offset the time very slightly on one of the stereo track. Then I mixed the main multitracks and the 2 stereo tracks to 1 master drum track and exported. I like to offset the time on 1 stereo track to give it a bit of a live feel. Seems to widen the stereo filed to my ears.I left everything rather flat with regard to eq. in case you wanted to add some later, a little brightness to over all I'm guessing.
Jim
 
There are actually just 8 tracks. When I originally posted, I accidentally listed the left overhead twice (track 3 and track 5 linked to the same file). I tried to edit the post but I guess there's a time limit on editing posts. I put in a new post shortly thereafter that had all the correct links.
 
Hollowman, how posting a version of your song for us so we can hear what the song sounds like. Any drums, I'm curious what the tune is like.
Jim
 
guitarboi89 said:
i had half an hour to spare so i thought i would give this a try, here it is:
http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=4879
as you will hear not very processed, it sounds a bit am radio compared to the rest of these :confused:
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Hi guitarboi89, thanks for your contribution. Again, I've got everything lined up in CoolEdit, and the first thing I noticed about yours was that the kick isn't quite as boomy as mine was, and the snare is much more crisp, very dry.

But, when I listened for the panning, I couldn't hear any at all. I even went to that drum fill at 3:13 and everything is straight up the middle. Did you do it this way on purpose?
 
thajeremy said:
Im not sure how many folks are still working on this...but I have the .wav files if anyone would rather mix them than the mp3's...

tracks 1-4
tracks 5-8
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is it possible that you simply converted the mp3s to wavs? I was hoping to get "real" wavs but judging by ear these are the converted mp3s... are they?
 
Yikes, that's probably my fault. At one point I tried mixing with mp3 copies of the original wav files. When I sent the 2 zip files to Jeremy, I made .wav mixdowns of each individual mp3 track, instead of realizing that I had the original, unconverted .wav files sitting right there in the directory in front of me.

When I get home tonight, I'll zip up the original wav's. Sorry Jeremy, I had a case of "long weekend brain freeze".
 
No responses about the live cut? Was it that bad? :)

So far we've got 4 different submissions:

Ocnor
JMorris
Guitarboi
Trackrat

So far, I think the one by JMorris gives the most improvement to the original tracks and keeps the best balance between the kick, snare and cymbals. It might be a bit heavy on the reverb. Jim, did you compress it at all or maybe run it through a limiter? The waveform peaks throughout the waveform are pretty uniform.

I hope from the livecut you can tell our sound is sort of a prog/pop (Rush/Foo Fighters) hybrid. We're not going for the all out aural assault, we're trying to be a little delicate in some of the passages and let the song breathe a bit.
 
Hope it's Ok If I send you an email of my mix also.
Let Me know what you think.
The song sound pretty good, hope the recording is going good.

I'll mark the email "DrumMix ds21" so you know it's mine!
 
I listened to the live track but I forgot to post. I thought the recording was really pretty good. The drums sounded good. My drum mix is very compressed. I figured I would slam it so it may possibly fit better "potentialy" in any mix situation. Reverb is very present but I thought it would not be "as" present in the mix. I figured the tune was as you stated like a rock/prog thing.
Jim
 
Track Rat said:
My disclaimer is it's impossible to mix drums outside the context of the tune they'll sit in.
Click to expand...

That's fair, I think I'd be the same way. We're tracking the guitars and bass in the next couple weeks (half this weekend, half next weekend), and "Something To Believe" will be done on Sep 17th. After that I'll have the singer come over and track the vocals, then the week after I'll get the keys done, then it will be time to do final mixing.

Are people interested in sorta following the progress of this song as the pieces fall into place? I certainly am :) I can post the guitar, bass, and other tracks as we get them done. In the end, it might be really cool to hear how the song evolved with each different person and what the final outcome sounds like. I'm hoping to take all that I learn here and apply the same techniques across the other 9 songs for the album. Each song will require a slightly different treatment obviously, but I'm hoping to create an album that has a consistent sound quality throughout, and I thought this tune, in particular, would be a good one to base everything on, as it is sort of our 'signature' song.

jmorris, I may PM you later and pick your brains about the exact mix settings you used. I'm going to try to duplicate it at home to make sure I've got my head around the procedure.
 
HollowMan1975 said:
That's fair, I think I'd be the same way. We're tracking the guitars and bass in the next couple weeks (half this weekend, half next weekend), and "Something To Believe" will be done on Sep 17th. After that I'll have the singer come over and track the vocals, then the week after I'll get the keys done, then it will be time to do final mixing.

Are people interested in sorta following the progress of this song as the pieces fall into place? I certainly am :) I can post the guitar, bass, and other tracks as we get them done. In the end, it might be really cool to hear how the song evolved with each different person and what the final outcome sounds like. I'm hoping to take all that I learn here and apply the same techniques across the other 9 songs for the album. Each song will require a slightly different treatment obviously, but I'm hoping to create an album that has a consistent sound quality throughout, and I thought this tune, in particular, would be a good one to base everything on, as it is sort of our 'signature' song.

jmorris, I may PM you later and pick your brains about the exact mix settings you used. I'm going to try to duplicate it at home to make sure I've got my head around the procedure.
Click to expand...
Sure ,thats fine. As far as the mix with compression I used. I did use a limiter at the final mix only for the purpose of hoping it sounded better on computer speakers. I have had issues with mixes sounding great in my studio then, after listening to it on computer speakers it sounded like crap. I'm thinking maybe cheap electronics with 'puter speakers cant handle the quick freq. changes...Maybe, I dont know. It can all be removed! :)
Jim
 
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