A brick wall. PLEASE HELP

[Erockrazor]

You should post a demo of the best you can do. Then we can more directly comment on the actual sounds youre dealing with. A popular technique is to put a cut in the eq around the vocal focus in the opposing tracks.

So, put an eq on those huge guitars and cut out maybe 3-6 in the 2k, 3k range. Then maybe even boost your vocal track in that range by a few db. See if this makes any noticeable difference.

With EQ'ing there is an important aspect to look at called masking. Masking occurs when two different sources are occupying the same frequency. The louder one will really drain out the lower one (aka masking). This is a reason why I suggested to sculpt the mix around that range. You will make room for that vocal and the guitar and vocal wont be competing for the same space in the spectrum.

And don't trick yourself into thinking that your guitars don't sound big when on solo. Do this and listen to the mix, not the solo instruments. A lot of eq'ing is figuring out how the instruments are interacting with one another.

Also don't be afraid to use a low cut filter on the vocals. For me this often helps clear things up along with many other instruments. I'm done rambling.

Good luck, Eric

 

[Erockrazor]

The "secret" if you want to call it that for mixing a really big guitar tone is, perversely, NOT to make it so big, but rather to make it fill just the space that it needs to.

You beat me to it! Good post. Eric

 

[Mull]

More complex to mix, maybe - I think really intimate, sparse stuff is probably more complicated to "engineer" (and I hate using that term simply because let's be honest, you and I are just two guys fucking around in their bedrooms having a great time recording music and pretending what we do is anything more than that is kind of pretentious) simply because in such a sparse context, it's absolutely crucial to get your source material perfect.

Anyway, I think you missed my point, man. A huge, wall-of-sound guitar track on its' own sounds pretty fuckin' righteous- it's this massive behemouth of rumbling sound waves that can instill fear of god into even the coldest, deadest of hearts. Yet, the problem is that same huge guitar sound takes up an awful lot of bandwidth, and what might sound absolutely epic on it's own suddenly starts clashing like crazy when you start adding bass, drums, cymbols and, in your case, vocals.

The thing with the Smashing Pumpkins guitar tone, since you've mentioned it a few times, is it's not actually THAT big. Rather, it's very focused, with a ton of upper mids, fairly scooped low mids, and fairly tight bass. It just happens to cut like a knife betwen the bass guitar (which fills out the low end) and Corgan's voice (which is pretty high).

The "secret" if you want to call it that for mixing a really big guitar tone is, perversely, NOT to make it so big, but rather to make it fill just the space that it needs to.

I don't really agree. Although, I know I'm no pro, I don't really record for the fun of it. It's actually pretty frustrating and time consuming. I love music deeply and I feel the need to make it. I don't write for anyone but me, but if anyone happens to like it, then awesome.
About Smashing Pumpkins, I meant specifically Siamese Dream. Their other records were pretty straight forward and simple with the guitar, but Siamese Dream had massive layering and the tone was extremely thick.
The song is finished. I'm pretty satisfied with it. I didn't cut back on the guitars. I just kept on trying and trying.

www.myspace.com/mullecular The song is "Mechanize"

 

[didgijimmy]

I don't really agree. Although, I know I'm no pro, I don't really record for the fun of it. It's actually pretty frustrating and time consuming. I love music deeply and I feel the need to make it. I don't write for anyone but me, but if anyone happens to like it, then awesome.
About Smashing Pumpkins, I meant specifically Siamese Dream. Their other records were pretty straight forward and simple with the guitar, but Siamese Dream had massive layering and the tone was extremely thick.
The song is finished. I'm pretty satisfied with it. I didn't cut back on the guitars. I just kept on trying and trying.

www.myspace.com/mullecular The song is "Mechanize"

I wouldn't simplify the pumpkins too much. Alot of their songs had a tone of layering. Check out "rhinocerous" for example. It's pre-siamese dream and features something like 15 tracks of feedback alone! The thing that changed was that their music became less guitar oriented as they progressed, still plenty of layering, just not as much on the guitar... until Zeitgeist that is. I'm probably the only nerd that cares enough about this post anyway. peace
james

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I don't really agree. Although, I know I'm no pro, I don't really record for the fun of it. It's actually pretty frustrating and time consuming. I love music deeply and I feel the need to make it. I don't write for anyone but me, but if anyone happens to like it, then awesome.
About Smashing Pumpkins, I meant specifically Siamese Dream. Their other records were pretty straight forward and simple with the guitar, but Siamese Dream had massive layering and the tone was extremely thick.
The song is finished. I'm pretty satisfied with it. I didn't cut back on the guitars. I just kept on trying and trying.

www.myspace.com/mullecular The song is "Mechanize"

That's actually the exact Smashing Pumpins album I had in mind, man. Like I said, it's an incredibly focused sound - it sounds so huge precisely because it's not stepping on anything else.

Compare what you're doing to anything off that album. For one, I'll say that your track definitely doesn't sound bad - I second the Type O thing. Also, I'd say tonally and rhythmically this reminds me more of "Zero" than anything on Siamese Dream...

Anyway, I'm hopping back and forth between "Cherub Rock" and "Mechanize." For one, you're using significantly more gain than Corgan and Iha, and I've always considered the tones on this album to be pretty damned saturated, especially for their time. I'm sure it helps the guitars to sound "huge" on their own, but I suspect part of your problem is just that you're losing some articulation through all the "fizz" that comes with high saturation. You've done a pretty good job taming it, but you can still hear it in there...

Also, look where the vocals are falling relative to the guitars... Corgan has a pretty high voice - he's really singing over the guitar tone, whereas your voice is a lot lower. You're singing right in the middle of it, maybe a little below. He's pretty nasal and breathy, whereas you're more gutteral. The smashing Pumpkins guitar tone just works with his voice in ways it probably wouldn't work for yours.

You've also got a lot more low end here than they do - rolling the gain back a little should help that boominess, but maybe if you're low-passing this, move it up a few hz. It'll help your guitar sit against the bass better - this kind of stuff, your "guitar" tone is really the combination of the ba...

Ah-HA!!! What happens at 3:21? It sounds like maybe you've got your first two guitar tracks going on there, and then you put a third, gainier track up the center? I was listening to the guitar there before it kicks back in, and thinking, "you know, maybe it's early and my ears were just fucking with me, because that really doesn't sound so bad at all... Then the third guitar kicked in, and it got over-gained and boomy again. My money says if you pull that third track, then this mix would clean right up. It'd probably help with your vocals, too, there'd be less low and low-mid energy to fight against.


Also, since Type O's been mentioned a couple times now, A/B this against some of their stuff, because they're dealing with a lot of the same production challenges you are - deep voice, synths, electronic spaciness... I'm hopping between "Love You to Death" and "In Praise of Bacchus", and your guitar is WAY bassier and more rumbly than theirs is, and while I wouldn't hold them up as this landmark of guitar tone, exactly, you have to admit that the overall mix works pretty damned good... They're rocking more of a dark crunch, while your tone is full on saturated chunk, which just steps all over your vocals. It's worth thinking about...

Anyway, thing on "engineer" is, it's just a bit pretentious coming from a guy like you or I working out of their bedroom or basement and learning the ropes, especially if you have three songs under your belt, you know? Engineers are the guys working in studios who know this shit cold. You or I don't- that's why we ask questions on boards like this, in the hopes that the few guys who DO whill point us in the right direction.

 

[Mull]

Thanks man. I'm pretty satisfied with it. I wasnt trying to make the vocals stand out, I was purposefully trying to make them sit in the music.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Thanks man. I'm pretty satisfied with it. I wasnt trying to make the vocals stand out, I was purposefully trying to make them sit in the music.

Yeah, but they'll sit better if your guitar isn't fighting for the same frequency range as the vocals.

 

[Mull]

Whats your opinion of it on its own?

 

[DrewPeterson7]

The song? It's cool, man. I've got a thing for baritone vocals in metal. If somehow you DON'T listen to Type O, grab "October Rust" ASAP. Likewise, I spun "Rise" - Chroma Key would be another band you should check out, particularly "Dead Air For Radios."

The guitars are definitely a little fuzzed out for me (I'm a guitarist so Ipay attention to that sort of stuff even with commercial recordings), but inasmuch as I can tell from Myspace's uber-high fidelity rolleyes it's not too distracting.

EDIT - also, you have a great voice!

 

[Mull]

The song? It's cool, man. I've got a thing for baritone vocals in metal. If somehow you DON'T listen to Type O, grab "October Rust" ASAP. Likewise, I spun "Rise" - Chroma Key would be another band you should check out, particularly "Dead Air For Radios."

The guitars are definitely a little fuzzed out for me (I'm a guitarist so Ipay attention to that sort of stuff even with commercial recordings), but inasmuch as I can tell from Myspace's uber-high fidelity rolleyes it's not too distracting.

EDIT - also, you have a great voice!

Thanks man. Send me an add if you have a myspace. Of course I've heard October Rust. It's a classic

 

[Sailjunkie]

Well, in my case...

I'm a musician who has been hacking at home recording for a long time. You had an issue with the vocal track(s) and I simply thought of a logical resolution based on past experience. Nine will get you ten though, that the resident "engineers" on this website have a much more thorough explanation and that is why I subscribe. We are all trying to help each other out and I kind of like that...

 

[Hakea]

Hi,

Firstly, great track and great voice. Kudos for a top job. I can see why you'd be frustrated when you've got something really good going in both departments but can't quite get the match-up right.

Secondly, I know absolutely squat about mixing and recording so my opinions are based only on a few years of listening, so may be worthless.

What seems to be the problem (to my ears) is that you've got a whole swag of edgy, cutting, dominant sounds going on in the backing but your voice is more growly and a lot less cutting, so it's a tough battle to win on level terms. It's a bit like putting a banjo or bagpipes up against a nylon string classical guitar - the former two can carry for miles and cut through armour plating, so stopping them overwhelming anything in their path is tough. So I think that you need to rig the dice in your favour, more than you're doing now.

I just put on a CD of a singer, who also isn't up the piercing end of the vocal range, to see what the arrangers did there. (And I'm guessing that the lower the vocal range the more carefully it needs to be arranged, because higher end sounds can tend to grab your attention first. If I'm playing a keyboard I might put the melody notes at the top end of chords for instance, where they're easy to hear ). He had quite a big backing band but the use of "space" (mentioned in other posts) was amazing. He never competed directly with the band. The overall effect was of them playing all through but in fact they weren't. Most instruments vanished altogether for those little slices of time when the voice was in action. Those that remained were way back in volume. The voice was allowed to completely dominate each little piece of space (word by word, not whole lines). My ear tended to fill in the parts when the band had been pushed back, so it felt like they were still hitting it much harder than they really were, in those spots. Or so it seemed to me...

My guess is that you've still got room to push your voice forward a lot more, not just in volume but in how much you let it completely dominate relatively small bits of time. It's certainly good enough to hold its own. The technical details of how you do that are unfortunately well out of my ability to answer, but you've got a great product there so I hope you can find out exactly what you need to do.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Mull]

Hi,

Firstly, great track and great voice. Kudos for a top job. I can see why you'd be frustrated when you've got something really good going in both departments but can't quite get the match-up right.

Secondly, I know absolutely squat about mixing and recording so my opinions are based only on a few years of listening, so may be worthless.

What seems to be the problem (to my ears) is that you've got a whole swag of edgy, cutting, dominant sounds going on in the backing but your voice is more growly and a lot less cutting, so it's a tough battle to win on level terms. It's a bit like putting a banjo or bagpipes up against a nylon string classical guitar - the former two can carry for miles and cut through armour plating, so stopping them overwhelming anything in their path is tough. So I think that you need to rig the dice in your favour, more than you're doing now.

I just put on a CD of a singer, who also isn't up the piercing end of the vocal range, to see what the arrangers did there. (And I'm guessing that the lower the vocal range the more carefully it needs to be arranged, because higher end sounds can tend to grab your attention first. If I'm playing a keyboard I might put the melody notes at the top end of chords for instance, where they're easy to hear ). He had quite a big backing band but the use of "space" (mentioned in other posts) was amazing. He never competed directly with the band. The overall effect was of them playing all through but in fact they weren't. Most instruments vanished altogether for those little slices of time when the voice was in action. Those that remained were way back in volume. The voice was allowed to completely dominate each little piece of space (word by word, not whole lines). My ear tended to fill in the parts when the band had been pushed back, so it felt like they were still hitting it much harder than they really were, in those spots. Or so it seemed to me...

My guess is that you've still got room to push your voice forward a lot more, not just in volume but in how much you let it completely dominate relatively small bits of time. It's certainly good enough to hold its own. The technical details of how you do that are unfortunately well out of my ability to answer, but you've got a great product there so I hope you can find out exactly what you need to do.

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks man. I think I've got the track pretty tight. I brought levels down which gave me enough room to work with vocals. Then in mastering the track, I compressed and brought the volume up and added some high frequency. I also did dual vocal tracks. The hardest part of the track ended up being drums and guitar. It's pretty much finished. Give it another spin and see if you can hear the improvement. If you have a myspace, shoot me an add too. www.myspace.com/mullecular