Alt/Indie Rock Band: Demo recorded ourselves

[dubsnack]

Hi, I've been playing drums for 3 years and playing recording for 6-10 months. I'm a frequent lurker here. This is my band's first attempt at recording ourselves, it's a DEMO.

Constructive criticism?

Pro Tools w/ digi stock pre's, vox and drum overhead through tubePRE. D112 on kick and floor tom, Beta 98 on rack tom, GT-55 overhead and vox, SM57 on snare and cabs.

Thanks for taking a few minutes of your day to listen, if you do.

 

[dubsnack]

Boy, I'm telling ya. I get some good response in my threads here!

 

[aspiring]

Great voice on "Anything at All".

The guitars swamp the mix though. You need to make them step back a bit and then have a listen to everything together. The song needs some tweaking of reverb and EQ to make all the instruments gel together a bit more.

And it's great to hear some real drums. Nice. There are some timing problems at the very start that jump out at me. Would be nice to get them sorted. Maybe you need to listen to a click track to get that start in sync.

Then it will be great! I like the song and delivery.

Similar problems on "Long Ways" too. And that isn't as pleasant a song for me

But overall, pretty cool.

Thanks for the listen
aspiring

 

[dubsnack]

aspiring, thank you very very much for taking the time to give them a listen. I really appreciate the feedback! And I totally agree with everything you about the guitars! It's a slight battle between me (the drummer) and the guitarist. A click is going to be a requirement for the next stuff we do, we had some issues with latency that need to be resolved that prevented us from using a click. It's definitely a must-fix.

 

[blind_sublime]

Eq

Hey,

Cool stuff, and we need more rock music PERIOD! I agree a lot with the previous poster, EQing between the various tracks can do wonders. It's always a struggle, I play guitars on our track, and I ALWAYS want more guitar, the drummer always wants more drums, etc... I've found the following tip that a friend of mine who works in a recording studio gave me. I don't know if it's a golden rule, but it has worked well for me: I ALWAYS cut down the lowest frequencies on guitar (up to 60-125Hz with a shelf filter, depending on the tune), and let the bass "have" it. When I individually play the guitar tracks it sounds really thin'd out a bit and not as good as I want it, but sounds waaay better and less conflicted when mixing it in with the bass. Sum greater than parts I s'pose. Similar stuff with other instruments, find out what frequencies they shine at, and EQ it to have it's space there. I'm really new at this and working on it, but I hear a lot of "fighting frequencies" in your mix between instruments. But, I DIG IT! F'ing rock on, and let us know how it goes.

 

[dubsnack]

thanks, blind sublime! I will definitely try cutting the lows out on the guitars, that sounds like a cool idea for sure.

So is it kinda standard to EQ each track individually then? We're only EQing the vox, kick, snare and drum overhead individually right now.

 

[blind_sublime]

more eq stuff

I think it really depends on the tune. It's kindof standard for rock music to create a bit of seperation between instruments. I'm certainly not experienced enough to say "it should always be like this or that". What I do know is that less than 60 Hz, audio is pretty much inaudible. It's "felt" more than heard. A lot of times it's good to cut everything below 40 Hz except the bass guitar and kick drum, because these need to be "felt". All other instruments, even if you can't hear them, start adding "gunk" (i'm not really technical, so I don't know what the right word is, mud?) in this frequency range when mixing them in. I'm tryin' to work on this right now. If you want take a look, there's a link somewhere on this page for some tunes my band is working on. It needs a lot of work, cause it sounds a bit muddy/dull right now, but I think the 'relative' instrument levels sound ok. Feedback is always appreciated. Thanx!

 

[breeeeza]

i never listen to this music. but i really like 'anything at all' Deffinatly a good job especially with the equipment you have. very good job!

 

[dubsnack]

Thank you very much, breeeeza, it's my favorite song too and the only one where I actually wrote my own drum part!