First time mixing a full band together

R

randyfromde

New member
Hey everyone-

If someone could take a listen to my clip, it'd be greatly appreciated. This is the first time I've mixed myself where there has been more than just acoustic guitar, bass, and voice. Now I've got 16 tracks with drums, guitar, bass, vocal, background vocals. Needless to say, it kicked my ass!

Specifically, I am wondering about these things (although any comments are greatly appreciated!):

1. Does anything stick too far out, or not enough? I sometimes think the vocals might be a touch low, some of the cymbal hits a bit high.

2. Does the acoustic guitar sound too "brittle" in the opening of the track?

3. Any effects stick out as overdone? I was pretty sparse on the reverb, tried to be easy on the compression as well.

The mix down track is the raw mix just how it is on my computer, no feable attempts at "mastering"!

 
I'm not a studio pro or an audiophile but I think it sounds pretty darn good! I like the guitar espescially, how'd you get that tone?? nice strong snare too. The vocals are done well too, did you process them dry?? This track really sits well with me because I don't listening to a whole lot of vocal processing. Well done in my opinion! can you give some specs on how you recorded/mixed it? (what microphones were used, was it recorded via computer? etc..)


Adam
 
Hey Adam-

Thanks for listening!

Here's how the song came about:

1. Went to a practice space/ "better than home recording (maybe), not quite a 'real' studio" to record the drums.

- Drums were tracked using 8 mics, no real attention to setting them up. Tons of bleed between the mics. Seemed like a mismatched set of Sm57's, Samson dynamics, nothing to make anyone wet their pants. One mic on kick drum, mic above and below snare, one on hi tom, one on low tom, two overheads, one on ride cymbal. All into a Mackie board with leaky preamps (the metronome was in some of the tracks!)

2. Recorded acoustic guitar.

- Engineer setup like 6 mics in front of guitar, all at different distances and widths. Main mic was a Shure SM81, lots of dynamic mics. He blended all these mics into one mono track, I just played while he tinkered with the sound until he thought it sounded good. I have no idea what mics were used in the final sound or how many.

3. Recorded bass

- Used a $179 Yamaha bass into a Gallien-Kruger head, recorded direct.

After this point, I had all of the recordings transferred to computer from the ADAT they recorded to. I took these recordings, loaded them into my computer, created a Adobe Audition session.

I recorded the vocals in my apartment using an Oktava MK-012 SD condensor mic. Just my "toy" room, no treatment or vocal booth. Even though I've got two LD condensors (MXL V67 and AT3035), I think my voice sounds best with the Oktava. There is a bit of compression on the vocals, pretty deep reverb. I tried to set the wet/dry on the reverb so that you could barely hear reverb at all.

The mixing part of this was brutal, given I had zero experience to start! As I said, the bleed in the drum mics is outrageous. What I tried to do was find any track where nothing should be in the mic. If this occurred, I cut that part out of the mix in the multitrack editor. I figured this was easier than noise gates (I'm still real new at setting those up). So if you look at my Adobe session, there's tons of places where there are only 6-7 tracks at one time, even though there are 16 tracks of different instruments.

Basically, I went at this real dry with effects. Bass has some compression and EQ, guitar is EQ and reverb, both panned dead center. I tried to think about panning of the drums like the kit was setup. Blue Bear has a good article on EQ, I used that to try and make things as best as I could. What sounds like a delay on the vocal at some parts is actually "copy and paste", lining them up by ear.

So for $300 total of studio time, I've got 4 songs worth of drums (this is track #1 so far). I'm trying to make this into a demo AND a learning experience. I now know why AE's make so much per hour, and why it pays to go to a good studio! While the results here seem to be okay, I can only imagine how good it could sound with good equipment, attention to detail, and someone who really knows what they are doing mixing...
 
I think it sounds great.

Love the guitar sound. I like the drum sound too. You can hear a little of the bleed, but I think it fits. Makes the drums sound coherent and full.

Sounds great.
 
Randy-

The quality of the recording sounds decent. It seems that it could use some "spicing" such as panning gtr1 left and bringing in a second gtr panned right. Maybe just a hint of stereo chorus on the acoustic gtr.

Not sure if you're asking for comments on the song itself (as opposed to the recording), but it seemed the verses ran long and that the chorus could've been brought in sooner, meaning shorter verses I guess. I ws also waiting to hear some more "dynamic" in the song, such as one software verse, or a changeup in the chorus.

Overall, good sound.
 
The quality of the recording sounds decent. It seems that it could use some "spicing" such as panning gtr1 left and bringing in a second gtr panned right. Maybe just a hint of stereo chorus on the acoustic gtr.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I wasn't too sure about having 1 track of guitar panned up the middle. I was thinking about doing a second track and panning it some, maybe I'll just try the stereo chorus first.

Not sure if you're asking for comments on the song itself (as opposed to the recording), but it seemed the verses ran long and that the chorus could've been brought in sooner, meaning shorter verses I guess. I ws also waiting to hear some more "dynamic" in the song, such as one software verse, or a changeup in the chorus.
Click to expand...

Yeah, any suggestions are great...

I know what you mean, the song is a bit long winded through the verses.

All of these songs from this session are works-in-progress. The funniest thing about this song is it wasn't meant to be recorded. I had only thought we'd get through 2 songs in the time allotted, since it was only the second time the drummer and I had played together. After recording a 3rd song, we still had leftover studio time, so the drummer and I just practiced it twice, then recorded it in one take. I went back, wrote a bassline, now it's my favorite of the four songs.

To make a long story short, the drummer and I are putting together a band, working out better arrangements.
 
Hey there, Randy.

I also enjoyed this song a lot! I like the lyrics, and it sounded like it was mixed nicely to my (admittedly inexperienced) ears. I dug the guitar tone! Good tones on most everything actually - I think the drums maybe could be a little crisper, but from what you've explained, you really tightened them up a lot from what you had to work with. I agree with the comments about the verses being a little long, and it would be cool if you could beef up the chorus to make it stand out a little. I actually "heard" a nice high harmony to it that could do it, or something like doubling the chorus vocals could do it or maybe adding some strings or keys in the background. The bridge sounded more like the "work in progress" you mention - just seems like maybe the melody of that section could be worked on some more - but the rest sounds pretty well polished.

Thanks for sharing that one! :)
-Jeff
 
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