Budget EP, How can I improve this mix?

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Guitardude324

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Hello,

My band, Gravia, is recording our demo EP. Well, I'm doing all the mixing and production. We booked a studio for a few hours to get raw drums, and I've been mixing in my bedroom.

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/541870

The guitars are rough, I'm not happy with the mic placement, so I haven't mixed them at all. The drums are the only thing that are mostly mixed. Bass is my guitar pitched down, and is farting and not so great, but I wanted to hear these drums in a mix. No vocals yet.

Any advice would be great, specifically on the kick and snare.

Thank You!
 
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I'm listening on laptop speakers. The snare seems fine but the click on the kick is not good. It sounds like clipping. Cool tune.
 
Ya, I was mixing with headphones late last night, and listening back today, I've lowered the click a lot.

Updated the clip with a bit less click, thoughts?

Anything else?

Thanks!
 
I don't think the guitars are as bad as you think they are.... I'm sure if you put a little extra time into them (EQ & Compression) you can get a pretty good sound out of them...

Also, the whole clip lacks a lot of punch.... I love mixing. If you would like to send me the raw tracks, I would love to give this a go....



www.axionrecordingstudios.com
 
I'm assuming you plan on mixing this yourself, as you obviously have a good grip on how to make it sound good. The only thing that really stuck out to me was that the kick drum seemed a bit bass heavy.
 
Ya, I do think the kick is a little muddy cause I EQ'd too much low end in there.

The guitars aren't bad, I just threw the mic up in front of my amp. This is really my first full band mix ever. I've never actually mixed a real drum set before, I've used EZDrummer for the past year.

I'm 20 years old, and have been recording for about 4 years. I'm using a MacBook Pro, Presonus Firestudio, and some KRK Rokit 5 monitors, with Cubase 4.

The raw tracks are rather large, fivesixonesk8er, I don't know how I'd be able to get them to you!

I'll take all your suggestions, I think they are all right on and will benefit the mix!

Any other comments? Thanks
 
Guitardude324 said:
Ya, I do think the kick is a little muddy cause I EQ'd too much low end in there.
Click to expand...

95% of the time, cutting un-wanted frequencies, as opposed to boosting the ones you think you need, will give you a much better result.

Then again, 89% of all statistics are made up on the spot. :eek:
 
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I think the bass is causing you a lot of issues. I know it's not really a bass, so I won't make any suggestions for the current track, but I think once you get a real bass in there, things will gel a bit better. I listened before reading your post, and the fist thing I thought was that the bass was very odd sounding.
 
I think the drums sound fine here. The kick drum may be a bit to thuddy for this style though. Are you using a high pass anywhere on the kick drum track?
 
I was messing around with the EQ to try to accentuate the attack.

The bass is pretty shitty, but I'll be able to lay down some real bass in a few weeks!

Any advice, pre-bass recording, to let it sit well in the mix? I'm VERY new to mixing full band stuff.

Thanks!
 
The guitars do sound pretty good. I wont' make any suggestions there, because I don't think I could do any better :D

The snare sounded pretty good to me.

The kick left something to be desired. As jjtcorsair said, it kind of sounds like it's clipping. Pretty much all I could hear of it was a click sound. Granted, I may be losing a lot of the low frequencies due to my headphones.
 
Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys! I've made some more changes, but I'll wait to update the clip until some real bass is added, because I feel that will help out a lot!

Thanks again!
 
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