Surf Rock Song - All Comments Welcome

ibleedburgundy

The Anti-Lambo
Hey there. I'm playing drums and bass and guitar on here. This is the first mix I've ever done using outboard compression in the mix phase. I enjoyed it and learned a lot. I know you don't really need anything that's not ITB these days but for me this was a great learning experience. Recommend if you have the capability. I also learned a lot about how I might set my drums for next time.

Drums have a bunch of mics. Bass is DI. Guitar is recorded with a pair of SDCs about 9 feet from the amp.

The outboard compression is all on the drums. One outboard compressor on the bass drum and another on an AUX track that has snare and toms. Both are parallel in a sense because the bass drum bus has a mix setting in Logic. I think I put it at 71% compressed signal. Something like that.

I actually recorded this tune a long time ago and posted it but I re-worked the format and it's better now.

I've listened to the mix on my home stereo and car stereo. Sounds decent to me but not finished. I haven't done any automation yet. There may be a few opportunities. All comments welcome. Thanks!
 

Attachments

  • Surf Rock Tune Mix 2 outboard.mp3
    4.1 MB · Views: 56
Sounds great to me, guitar might be a tad upfront or maybe everything else should come up a bit? Drums sound nice and cohesive, maybe a bit of verb to match the guitar? Bass is kind of vanilla sounding and a bit buried. I really like the breakdown when the second guitar comes in, really nice way to take out the tune. I didn't know what to expect with the guitar miking technique you mentioned but it sounds very good and natural to me. Would fit beautifully over a surfing video!
 
I agree with Strat. Guitar sounds great, just think the drums and bass could come up quite a bit more. BTW I was listening on headphones.
 
Count me in, too. I was expecting a much bigger, distant room sound and was pleasantly surprised with this. Sounds very good. I also liked the last min with the added guitar.
 
Definitely think the drums sound a bit dry and low. They also sound a bit small/mono. Maybe that would be helped with some more room/verb to match the guitar.

I really enjoy the guitar tone and playing.

Bass could use some more attack, IMO.

The pause at the end before the last chord was a bit too pregnant, IMO. I thought you had ended the song that way and had started to type "That ending doesn't work for me," and then the last chord finally came in. :)

Nice playing.
 
Sounds great to me, guitar might be a tad upfront or maybe everything else should come up a bit? Drums sound nice and cohesive, maybe a bit of verb to match the guitar? Bass is kind of vanilla sounding and a bit buried. I really like the breakdown when the second guitar comes in, really nice way to take out the tune. I didn't know what to expect with the guitar miking technique you mentioned but it sounds very good and natural to me. Would fit beautifully over a surfing video!

Thanks for listening.

I learned about this miking technique from Eric Valentine on youtube. Except he hooks up 3 different amps and has a reverberation room (haha). But the spacing is roughly the same. I have an okay room - 16 x 32 with 9 foot ceilings and it's well-treated. I probably have 4 bass traps or so. So as far as rooms go, I can afford to have some room in the mix. I actually used a small room reverb plug-in. I tried using a larger room but it didn't sound right. I'm thinking my medium sized room sounds (which you get some of on the guitars and drum overheads) just sounds awkward blended with a large room reverb. Whereas if everything is close-miked it's more of a blank slate.

Eric Valentine's Electric Guitars — Surf Guitar - YouTube

I did buy the overpriced variable capacitance cable he's pimping. It's a useful tool.

Agree on the bass. I put the least thought into it, and I'm kinda just a guitarist playing the bass, but really I need to work on my bass playing if I want to do it right. So that's probably why it's low relative to the mix. I'll kick it up a bit.

I might try tracking the bass guitar out of an amp instead of DI. Or I might try a bass extension plug in. Whatever the case, it could use some more body.
 
Definitely think the drums sound a bit dry and low. They also sound a bit small/mono. Maybe that would be helped with some more room/verb to match the guitar.

I really enjoy the guitar tone and playing.

Bass could use some more attack, IMO.

The pause at the end before the last chord was a bit too pregnant, IMO. I thought you had ended the song that way and had started to type "That ending doesn't work for me," and then the last chord finally came in. :)

Nice playing.


Thanks!

Yeah there's actually a lot going into that pause. I've got real room reverberation on the drums and guitar, reverb tank reverb also on the guitars, and plug-in reverberation on everything. I'm also auto fading out amp noise. Maybe that's all an unhappy blend.
 
Count me in, too. I was expecting a much bigger, distant room sound and was pleasantly surprised with this. Sounds very good. I also liked the last min with the added guitar.

I have two great preamps (millennia - which I bought for classical guitar recording because they have exceptionally low noise) and great mics (Neumann KM-184 spaced pair) and an okay room. I think that helps. I use the millennia / KM-184 combo on drums overheads and guitars. Everything else is Audient or FMR audio RNP - both of which are just fine. But the Millennias are on another level for sure.

The last bit has the same rhythm guitars as the earlier section but the lead adds a dissonance. That dissonance isn't what I was originally intending but it took the song in a different direction that I liked. I tend to prefer songs that go somewhere.

I was listening to a band recently called "Jazz Funk Soul." These dudes are amazing players, but none of their tunes go anywhere. They start out big pimping. Then they remain big pimping. And at the end they're still big pimping. Every song is like that. Amazing musicianship. Pretty cool riffs. But it ain't good song writing.
 
Well if you're going for an old-school 60s era mix then you nailed it save the panning.
Tones sounds fine.
Levels and panning of course are production decisions subject to opinion.
IMO it sounds fine.
 
The composition and arrangement is really cool. It might be interesting to take the guitar track and pan it hard to one side and then create a duplicate guitar track and pan that one to the other side with like a 10ms delay on it to create a feeling of stereo guitar. Then rebalance the drums and bass and the production aspect of the tune should sound bigger and more open.
 
Here's a new mix of this tune. I tried to make the drums and bass a little more forward. I did this by reducing the scoops on the EQs (which were significant) and turning up the levels. I also significantly reduced high and low pass filters on those tracks. I also increased the volume of the drum overheads significantly. I think this actually fattened up the drums because it supplemented the tones coming from the close mics.

Also reduced the volume to the ending chord. It was too much before. Better balanced now.
 

Attachments

  • Surf Rock Tune Mix 2.1.mp3
    4 MB · Views: 10
Last edited:
Now I can hear the bass really complimenting the guitar. I think it sounds better now.
 
I agree that the drums are dry and low, but that is how surf guitar rock is mixed. Listen to any ventures record. If anything the drums are too clean and the kick too well defined when compared to classic surf rock mixes. Surf rock was all about the echoy guitar and that was what dominated the mix.

I think you nailed it man.
 
I agree that the drums are dry and low, but that is how surf guitar rock is mixed. Listen to any ventures record. If anything the drums are too clean and the kick too well defined when compared to classic surf rock mixes. Surf rock was all about the echoy guitar and that was what dominated the mix.

I think you nailed it man.

Thanks! I am very satisfied that you got what I was going for. Big guitars while drums and bass a little more to the back of the stage. -That was a conscious mix decision based on the old surf rock albums.
 
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