Not a clip but a question aimed at you

[alanfc2]

hi,
I was just doing a search for the keyword "harsh" in this forum, thinking I'd learn some info off other peoples problems, got 500 matches. Still perusing .

But, I figured with so many uses of the word "harsh" there may be =some= info you can share when you hear a full mix that is harsh. On the EQ scale where do you find that home projects tend to build up the bad stuff.? I'm thinking of the shallow telephone-y type harshness that keeps you from being able to turn the song up in your stereo.
Assuming tracking cannot be redone, and assuming the only changes that can be made, will be to the fullmix stereo file.

I don't know hopefully my question may be a nice diversion here. I got lost in the BAZZLAD thread and lost way too much time. I'll go back to my Harsh search results soon enough. I remember a couple years ago JAKE gave me a similar critique (I'm the artist formerly known as ALANFC) and my response was "thank you for your time, with such a big list of problems, which would be the best place to start?". From that thread I got alot of good suggestions and learned alot.

I ask you all here because you go through so many good and bad recordings... hopefully you can point out some trends?.

thanks

 

[jeap]

hi

its really hard to tell you what freq range causes harsh...

if you cut the telephone range, which i think is centered around 1000 to 3000 hz and is like a bell curve, then you will be cutting some of your most important information and youll get unnatural timbres.

in my own experience with computer recording harsh has come from low resolution and sampling rates. once i figured out how to change the default settings the harshness went away.

another common problem is having levels too high and clipping the signal. analog clipping is harsh and digital clipping is ultraharsh. you probably already know that though.

the simple way to attack a problem like this is to record and playback a pure tone. a relatively pure tone could be a sustained piano note or a synth tone without effects. something smooth and clear. work on recording that and getting back the same sound as you put in. if you can do that then you can add muliple tones together and mix them together and try to keep the tones sounding the same as the source tones.

at any rate you should list what youre using and what your strategy is. harsh could be anything from your sources to your speakers.

to conclude this attempt to be helpful i have to say that this is not the proper forum for questions like this. general recording would be better. this forum should have nothing but songs up for feedback as anything else pushes those songs off the first page. you may want to delete this thread right away.

 

[alanfc2]

Thanks alot for the note
My reason for putting it here was precisely to get an idea of the everyday home-recording problems the regulars hear from everyones stuff =here= on this forum.
THanks
/edit/ I don't want to push other peoples stuff off the front page, I'll just let this one die off unless other experienced folks have more to add.

 

[jake-owa]

I find that a general harshness comes from mixing each track isolated to it's "fullest" and then recombining them. What you get is a desire to hear more "sheen or sparkle" on single tracks that amounts to a severe harshness on the mix. You love to hear that guitar with a bit more 3-4k and that vocal sounds great with a bump at 5k, oh we need to bump teh kick up at 3k and the snare just loves that 2.5 k....
Mix in context. listen to the tracks as a song, don't make the most of a guiatar with nothing else playing unless it's gonna be heard that way. Another thing that adds to this problem is people don't have great monitors so they over EQ each thing....making the whole effect that much worse.

I remember burning your song, it deserved it from my memory. I always love it when I rip somebody's hard work apart and they come back with a "thanks". I find that a very refreshing attitude and usually say so.

Glad you're learning, let's hear some of it...hehe.

 

[alanfc2]

Thanks Jake-
I think I'm just about ready to put up something from our band's CD once I get done with revision #2 on all the tunes. Major revisions in the low end, and alot of other stuff was simplified. I think it'll take 3 or 4 rounds and then I'll just have to walk away. Its just for fun and giving out at gigs. Its for my band there in my sig.