Noisey drum and bass duo

A

analogdrone

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So I have been trying to tackle these mixes for a while. The bass in these is pretty gritty and since its only a two piece I'm trying to recreate the amount of space this project fills live. I know its all super smashed but there isn't any dynamics so I just tried to make it powerful, but is it a little too much? Any suggestions on how I could make the kick a little more present?

I recorded the kit with an old fostex digital 8 track and mixed them on there and exported the to my PC. Don't have the model number right now a friend is using it. I used a tascam DP-008 for the over heads as well as the bass tracks.

Mics- kit - Shure PGDMK6-XLR with a SM57 on the snare
bass - SM57 and CM 217 for some grit in the room about 4 feet off the amp
vocals - audix fusion 15 -> dd3 -> fender champion 30 -> mxl 990 -> mbox 2

I'm using Logic as my DAW

I'm pretty bad at EQ'ing in the DAW so maybe something I can try to perk that kick drum up?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

http://soundcloud.com/cheeze-birgir/transparent-nation
 
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Heya. Is this your first crack at recording live drums? They sound kind of dull and distant and the kick is definitely not there. I suspect mic positioning issues but if you can't retrack for some reason, try making cuts between 100-500 on the kick drum and maybe boosting a couble dBs between 1.5k-2k for more slap.

Also have you tried muting out the bass "room mic"? It could be introducing phase issues and muting it might help clear up the mix, which as it stands is pretty murky.
 
Wow, I'm impressed! I dig the song.

I agree that it could use much more kick, and maybe less bass guitar in general. What fat_fleet said makes sense to me (although to be honest I probably have even less experience EQ-ing than you do.)
 
fat_fleet, its my second project with live drums i'll check out those frequencies in the EQ. The "room mic" is pretty low in the mix it just adds some dirty to the bass distortion, there is no room mic on the drums. Some plug-in reverb to fill some space maybe?

airbagtester, thanks! And I used 4 inputs on the kit in the fostex digital 8track, two overheads in the tascam, bounced down the drums in the fostex and exported to wav, then usb to logic. tascam pulled both tracks off in wav then logic.
 
Wow. The bass sounds amazing to me on this. I would like to be able to achieve that exact same tone myself. It's a lot like Bulls on Parade tone-wise.

The drums do sound kinda dull in comparison though...particularly the kick which is sort of a muffled thump in the background. This is pretty cool though. Thanks for sharing.
 
Wow. This was not what I expected when I read "drum and bass!"

The bass tone is pretty cool.

I'm gonna echo what heat said about the kick drum. It could use some definition.
The vocals also get pretty lost in the second half of the song.

Otherwise, it's simple, dirty garage rock. You've done pretty well with what you have.
 
This is really pretty cool. The bass and the vocals are great. Your levels are out of balance though - the drums should be totally peeling my face off but I can barely hear them. Don't overcompress the drums. Try running them to a buss and compressing that hard and blending it in ( or just duplicate the drum tracks and compress the copies). Also try boosting the snare around 180Hz and rolling off below that. And experiment with your mic positions
 
Thanks Bulls Hit, as far as mic position goes this whole EP is tracked so I'm working with what I have for now. I've re-mixed the drums using a lot of everyone's feedback but wondering how do I get the "totally peeling your face off" loudness out of the drums? I can post a mix of what I've got so far later tonight if that will help.
 
analogdrone said:
Thanks Bulls Hit, as far as mic position goes this whole EP is tracked so I'm working with what I have for now. I've re-mixed the drums using a lot of everyone's feedback but wondering how do I get the "totally peeling your face off" loudness out of the drums? I can post a mix of what I've got so far later tonight if that will help.
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i think the type of compression you are using is making the drums smaller
 
The kick definitely sounds better, but the vocals are more buried.

Having the vox be so lo-fi throughout the entire song gets a little old too. (Don't ask me to define hi-fi or describe how to achieve it though. I have no clue!)
 
analogdrone said:
sigh, how to avoid lightning bolt comparisons with drum and bass.
Click to expand...

Truthfully the second I saw "analog", "drone", and "noisey drum and bass duo" I thought, "this is gonna be a LB-clone", and was surprised you guys kept it so brief and structured, avoiding their sprawling sensibilities....but you can't mask the Chippendale in those drum fills around :55, and they do rock.
 
2nd mix is better. Try flipping the phase on the snare and see if that makes it pop better. Maybe try starting the mix with the drums and vocal. Dupe your drum tracks, and apply liberal EQ and compression to the copies. Then bring the bass up. Seems to me most ofl the energy in the track is being consumed by the bass. I can understand you want it prominent and loud but you can still have it loud without using up all the headroom
 
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