Bigness

Pinky

Pinky

and The Brain...
The name is fitting. This is now our largest single project file out of many songs (38 tracks of various guitars and overdubs :eek: ). The name came about after tracking the first rhythm guitar (which wasn't even kept for the final mix). It had such a "big" sound that we decided it would be a fitting title. From there it grew and grew, until it got huge. But we were commited to being just big, so bigness it is. We were going for Bombastic, but that's a lame name for a song. lol

Bigness

Lots of other material on the site:

www.the-boogiemen.com



Comments on the mix in particular would be useful. It's very thick sounding to me.
 
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Harder panning

Levels are good i think as far as i can tell.
i would do more extreme panning on the guitars to give them more room too breathe, and too make it more exciting.


my 2 Cents.
- Heath
 
I can see what you mean. The distorted guitar can be panned more if I want, so I'll try that in the remix. See if it makes it bigger. :D

Thanks for listening and providing feedback.

Anyone else?
 
Wow 38 tracks?!

That may be why it's thick sounding.

Sounds like a whole lot going on. Pretty cool song though. Maybe trim some of the fat out of it. Do you really need 38 tracks of guitars?
 
Greg_L said:
Do you really need 38 tracks of guitars?
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There's a number of punch-ins, specially effected tracks, pans for stereo separation, etc. I think at any one time no more than 5 or 6 guitars (including bass) are playing at once.
 
On this recording it's the ibanez 6 string, alvarez acoustic, and a cheap slide guitar. I use software to drop the bass lines played on the 6 string an octave, and mix the raw 6 string and octave dropped tracks together for a full bass tone.

Exact makes/models and effects:

http://www.the-boogiemen.com/credits.htm
 
dude, this song is fantastic!!!
it seems to me, based on the title and your description of it, that the sound you got is just what you were going for, and it sounds great! the mix seems perfectly balanced, if that's even possible.
i wouldn't change a thing.
what an original and fun tune.
 
The arrangement supports the 1/2 doz playing at once so I'd stay happy with that though a little EQ carving might get some air into it around the mid section.
The only other tweak would be some 3kh for the bass as it doesn't stand too clearly - could be it's octave source. Did you use a pitch shifter or octave pedal?
Nice performance.
The maraccas, (I use rice in a medicine bottle), worked well too.
 
rayc said:
The arrangement supports the 1/2 doz playing at once so I'd stay happy with that though a little EQ carving might get some air into it around the mid section.
The only other tweak would be some 3kh for the bass as it doesn't stand too clearly - could be it's octave source. Did you use a pitch shifter or octave pedal?
Nice performance.
The maraccas, (I use rice in a medicine bottle), worked well too.
Click to expand...

I did some EQ'ing for separation. There's a duplicate electric guitar panned slightly left that helped to fill in the main rhythm guitar. It had a lot of the higher-mids trimmed out. I may just raise that in the mix more and see if it helps.

Not sure if I can get a cleaner bass sound. It's a pitch shifting software plugin. The octave pedal in the ME-50 I use isn't good enough for realtime recording. All the bass in the bass sound is post production. I'll try EQ'ing the original guitar track and bring it forward in the mix.

The maraccas, as were all the drums parts in this song, were samples.


drossfile, thanks for the compliments.
 
hey i listened to your deal last night and i wrote a response and i went to post it and it said sorry dragon is switching out the software blah blah
 
ill see if i can can remember what i said... something about getting into the guitar sounds starting to enjoy the whole thing...

i like the layered guitar sounds. well played and reminding me of bebop deluxe.

then the drums came in and i puked

they sound like a bad drum machine. way too punchy.

i had to listen to zep's no quarter to get my head back into a decent drum sound. the great drum sounds can sound huge and whomp you without any of that stock drum machine punchiness.

i would isolate the punchiness and cut it out then run the drums through a jimi sim to bring out the harmonics. i dont know if that would salvage the sounds you have though.

i would have liked it a lot better without drums. the drums kind of ruined the whole thing for me.
 
groovyisland said:
i would have liked it a lot better without drums. the drums kind of ruined the whole thing for me.
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I appreciate the feedback. Unfortunately, as I previously posted, the drums are mostly canned in various pieces. The main parts are loops and while I can trim certain frequency ranges in acid, it will only buy so much production quality. I actually did trim the lower and higher ends a little (-2db if I recall). When remixing I'll take that into consideration, but to be honest the drums were never really something I was disappointed with.
 
surely the drums are on their own track and you can apply a parametric eq right? its as simple as cutting out the proximity effect of close miking by setting a narrowish band, turning it all the way up, and sweeping for the ugliest boxiest sound and cutting it 7 or 9 db or whatever sounds right.

to polish drum sounds a lot of purists still use analog tape. what do you get with tape? harmonic distortion. you can fatten up the harmonics which will make the drums sound more like drums in a mix and it also takes out more of the boxiness of the proximity effect.

i say jimi sim as my way of saying harmonic distortion generator or simulation.
 
groovyisland said:
surely the drums are on their own track and you can apply a parametric eq right? its as simple as cutting out the proximity effect of close miking by setting a narrowish band, turning it all the way up, and sweeping for the ugliest boxiest sound and cutting it 7 or 9 db or whatever sounds right.
Click to expand...

That's what I did, and often I adjust snare hits in the drums using this method. It's great advice, and I'm going to tinker a little in the remix. But I won't spend a heck of a lot of time on the remix overall since the next song is already in development now. So I'll try a few ranges and see if it helps.
 
Some interesting stuff. Howver, I got the feelin' that that drums really need to be way more ballsy/driving the tune.
 
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