Instrumental rock mix - feedback appreciated! (Satriani-esq stuff)

  • Thread starter Thread starter DrewPeterson7
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What I'm hearing on the updated mix: the drums aren't present enough, ditto the bass even more. You could just turn the guitars down 2 dB each. :)

Nice tuneage, nice playing.
 
Songs like this are all over my playlist ... I enjoy the arrangement quite a bit ... nice work!
I'm not qualified to critique the recording itself, nor do I want pick anything apart, but I gotta say the playing itself just lacks that one little element that seems to give it ownership/uniqueness ... maybe a few pinch harmonics here and there for spice.
All said, I could listen to this time and time again ...
 
Thanks guys - dobro, I'll go back and listen to a couple more reference mixes. I'm wondering if it's a genre thing, but a lot of harder instrumental rock and really metal in general tends to have the guitars pretty high in the mix, and leans more on the kick and snare than the rest of the kit. I'm trying to keep the drums a little more balanced here, and not have the low end TOO bass heavy (for example, Petrucci's Suspended Animation album seems a bit extreme to me, and has a very focused bass sound that seems to really poke through around 200-250hz in a way I'm not sure I'm wild about). I may be overcompensating, though...

Frets9 - thanks man! Well, there's another 12 tracks on this project, so I hope you find something that excites you a little more in one of those. :) I'll definitely be posting about it here once it's for dale, and I'm going to be tossing it up on youtube too, so watch for the rest of it in a month or two.
 
Thanks dude! Hoping to wrap up the mixing over the weekend!
 
I thought it all sounded perfect. Had you not said the drums were sequenced I wouldn't have paid much attention to them, but the tones are nice. At times though I think a real drummer would be inspired to "sing along" more, for lack of a better term.
 
Manslick said:
Had you not said the drums were sequenced I wouldn't have paid much attention to them...
Click to expand...

You know, honestly, IMO given my relative lack of prior experience sequencing drums and the typical drumming for this genre (seriously, I love Satriani, but barring perhaps his latest you'll never hear a drummer talking about the awesome drum parts on such-and-such song of his :laughings:), drums that you don't really notice one way or another were kind of my measure of success, so thank you. :laughings:

That said, since this mix I tried using the Reaper "humanize" function on the midi, on top of the humanize settings in superior. Man, it's subtle, but 4% variability on timing and 10% on velocity seemed to increase the realism somehow, and I think the mixes are less fatiguing to listen to for long periods of time if, say, the snare and the hi-hat aren't hitting at exactly the same millisecond. It's a little thing, and it's subtle, but it does a lot.
 
Drew--this is great. No, it's not great, it's awesome. If this were me, I'd quit and start carving my headstone. Seriously, I'd be done. I'm both impressed and jealous. Keep it up!
 
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Great tune! Makes me want to record some live drums for it. :)
 
Yea, what WhiteStrat said "I'm impressed and jealous". That sounds awesome!!!
 
:laughings: Thanks guys (and also, Whitestrat, what's up, man?!?). It may HAVE to be done as the computer it's on isn't booting up at the moment - it's been slowly dying for a while now and it might be toast. Thankfully I've got it all backed up on a flash drive, and have unmastered raw mixes so the project is still ok. :laughings:
 
dobro said:
What I'm hearing on the updated mix: the drums aren't present enough, ditto the bass even more. You could just turn the guitars down 2 dB each. :)

Nice tuneage, nice playing.
Click to expand...

Bump largely for this post - I disagreed with you at first, bro, thought, "no, its probably a genre thing, the levels are fine..." and then sent a mp3 of this to the guy I'm working with who's mastering it, who's initial impression was the whole thing was too midrange heavy, that it sounded great on the speakers that it should be harsh and tinny. So, I went back and did precicely this. :laughings:

Thanks for a great comment that I was too stubborn to fully appreciate at the time! :D

This is where the mix is now, if you're curious, and since I'm in the middle of moving and my increasingly-flaky PC is now in storage, this is the final mix, I think. Despite initial misgivings I'm much happier with it now.

[mp3]http://www.drewpeterson.org/mixes/2013/Reaper.mp3[/mp3]
 
Much nicer now drums and bass are up. Makes the guitar riff more powerful! Sounds very smart
 
This is radio ready.. if any radio station would play it :(

Good job. I really like the guitar tones. Nothing muddy, but yet meaty and separated. Cool. I also like the drums in the intro. good work on the programming.
 
drew peters, i'm new to recording. by quad tracked u mean u actually played the same guitar riffs, i mean the whole thing 4 times over and put them on on the other or just played once and copied pasted?
 
It sounded damn good. I didn't hear the first version, but this last one sounded great. The sub was hitting just right without being rumbly, mids were nice and highs where then should be. Really good job and great tune.
 
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