Critique my latest recording - heavy

  • Thread starter Thread starter NegadivOne
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NegadivOne

NegadivOne

Alchemy slut
Hey all, I just finished with my latest song. well, almost. We cant find a good singer to save our lives, but anyways...Go to http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=500073 and click on RingySession. This mix is drums, guitar and bass. The bass and guitars were done with a guitarport. The bass is one track panned center, and for the distorted guitars there are two tracks panned left and two right, plus two clean tracks layered in with the distortion. My drums were recorded into my fostex vf160. I used a beta52 on kick, sm57s on the snare and toms, and a couple of cheap overheads.

Please critique the song AND the recording. The only things Im not sure of are the drums overall, they seem weak to me, and the bass guitar. What can I do to get more fullness out of the bass? Retracking isnt really an option as we had our friend come in and do it for us with his warwick thumb bass *drool*. I do however want to try something different for the bass in the verse. This is the first full mix Ive done on my monitors so Im not quite used to them yet. Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: RingySession isnt the real name of the song or anything, when I recorded my drums the snare was VERY ringy and I had to find the offending frequencies and cut them...
 
Have you tried compressing the drums? Maybe with a slow to medium attack to make them pop more. You could also send a copy of the drum mix through a compressor and just smash the shit out of it so it sounds like crap. Then with a stereo submix of that bring it up slowly into the main mix underneath the regular drums. (I did it on the song titled 'I Hate You' have a listen from the link below)

The bass seemed non existant, try reamping through a guitar cab or something with a 12" speaker. Also a question, is guitarport a plug-in for distortion? I personally think the guitars need more meat, but that's personal preference.
 
Thanks for the reply Tizzo. I did try what you said about compressing a drum submix and bringing it in under the uncompressed drums. I probably just need to bring it up more or compress it more. I used about 6:1 ratio I think. Im not really happy with the bass either and im thinking about running it out through either my bose speakers or my guitar amp and micing it up with my beta52. And guitarport is a usb guitar interface made by line 6.
 
Try micing your bass with the 57 or one of your condensers, I find it hard to get good articulation out of a beta52 for that application.
 
Yeah I'll try it with a variety of mics. The reason I was thinking about the beta52 is to just catch lows only. because we let the bassist dial in "his" sound, and it turned out to be really clicky (like korn, mudvayne) which sounded good at the time but is a bear to mix. I had to put the bass tracks really low in the mix because of all the clicking was so loud. So I figured I should just try to trap the lows with reamping it and then mix that back in with the original track. Thanks again for taking the time, Tizzo.
 
I'm still at work so I can't really offer much in the way of mix help with these speakers. Really liking the song though man, playing is real tight. Hoping you guys find a vocalist that could really take this song on. Love the ride cymbal at about 2:45. I have the same problems with clicky basses btw, I wish I could help but im hoping someone does so i can learn something myself, i usually eq the hell out of it and hope for the best. I'll try and get back and listen on real monitors, but i loved the song man very cool for sure.

take care
gary
 
Hey gbav, thanks for the listen, I hope we find a vocalist too but we have almost given up on that. Im glad you picked out that ride cymbal part because that is something I really like to do. My main ride is a 20" Zildjian A Custom Medium Ride, and on the other side of my kit I have an inverted new beat high-hat bottom cymbal and in that part i alternate really fast between the two cymbals.
 
i think it sounds good, guitar sounds like their slightly in the background, bass seems a little low, but only after i listened to it 3 times, i think some people go direct in and mike their cabinet for bass
 
Work on the drums. They are not bad, but don't fit the tune. Try some compression...use a multiband if you have it. it will let you bring some low end out, and compress the mids. Drums are hard, for me at least. Sometimes I nail them, sometimes I don't.

Do you have individual tracks for drums? Maybe get the bkick to sound really good on its own, and then mix it in. Work on it first, and see if you can get a nice sound. Then try and mix the rest with it. The kick just seems to be lacking depth.



If you want some vox similar to Lemmy/Les Claypool/Chris Barnes....I might know someone.
 
Dogman said:
Work on the drums. They are not bad, but don't fit the tune.
Click to expand...

Do you mean the drum part itself, or the way its recorded?

Try some compression...use a multiband if you have it. it will let you bring some low end out, and compress the mids.
Click to expand...

All I have are the built in software compressors in Cool Edit Pro, and the compressor on my fostex vf160 that I just today learned i could use while tracking. All I can control on there is threshold, ratio, attack, and gain. What are some good settings for tracking? I really just want to control peaking and maybe give my drums some more punch.

Do you have individual tracks for drums?
Click to expand...

Yeah every drum has its own track and I have a track for left OH and a track for right OH.

Maybe get the bkick to sound really good on its own, and then mix it in. Work on it first, and see if you can get a nice sound. Then try and mix the rest with it. The kick just seems to be lacking depth.
Click to expand...

Yeah my kick seems a bit hollow or something. I recorded the drums before I learned a few things and got a new stand. When i recorded this song i had my beta52 at the hole on the resonant head. now i have it inside the kick about 3 inches from the beater head pointing at the beater. Since I cant retrack this song, Im going to try maybe mixing in another bass drum track with maybe some heavy compression or something.

If you want some vox similar to Lemmy/Les Claypool/Chris Barnes....I might know someone.
Click to expand...

If you are talking about online collaboration, I would love for anyone to have a go at vocals. weve never had a singer so even if its not the style we are going for it would just be awesome to hear vocals on our song at.

Thanks again everyone for all the help. Im still learning so all the help is much appreciated.
 
k I put up a new version of the song, its called updatedsession. The bass part I completely redid and the mix is different too.





oh yeah and....








....bump
 
NegadivOne said:
k I put up a new version of the song, its called updatedsession. The bass part I completely redid and the mix is different too.





oh yeah and....








....bump
Click to expand...

I think you have it sounding better. The drums sound more in the tune now. Drums have a pretty good sound. You might try and compress them just a bit, and see if that gives them punch, and evens them some. They are actually pretty good, and this may not work, but could be worth a try. In this tune, real punchy drums could work well. That's just a thought.

I think you've improved on it quite a bit....the individual instruments sound really good, and sit well for the most part.
 
...

cool tune. Really dig the beginning, and the part around 2:30. Guitars sound very smooth; I didn't know the guitarport could rock like that! Snare seems to need to be reeled in somehow, but I don't know how to do that - a gate maybe? Toms sound killer. Hard to really critique the song without the vocals, but there's a ton of room for a singer to spread his or her wings.

oh....how clean were the clean guitars? like crystal clean or slightly dirty? it worked really well apparently! I'd like to use that trick.
 
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I think you could stand to lower the level of the snare drum, and add some ambience to it, like a nice gated verb of somesort.
that slow of a tempo song leaves some dead air on the snare if you know what i mean. try to time it out so the snare explodes a little more.
 
Sounds awesome....some parts of the drum set sound a little muddy to me (snare for example), but that's just being picky. I'd really like to hear this song with lyrics. With a vocal track, this song could really rock!

Nice job.
 
Guitars sound good. Bass sounds good.

Drums sound fair. Can you pan out the toms and cymbals at all? How is your snare miced?
 
GreenDank said:
cool tune. Really dig the beginning, and the part around 2:30. Guitars sound very smooth; I didn't know the guitarport could rock like that! Snare seems to need to be reeled in somehow, but I don't know how to do that - a gate maybe? Toms sound killer. Hard to really critique the song without the vocals, but there's a ton of room for a singer to spread his or her wings.

oh....how clean were the clean guitars? like crystal clean or slightly dirty? it worked really well apparently! I'd like to use that trick.
Click to expand...

Thanks man. I love the guitarport. All the presets suck but if you take your time and dial in your own sound it can really rock. The clean guitars started very clean and then I added a rotary drum and horn effect that the guitarport has. brought the effect up untill you could just notice it. Almost like a shallow chorus.

To everyone who noticed the snare, I completely agree. I tried a lot of the things to make sound more lively. It sounds so weak because I had to do some major eq to kill a nasty ring it had. The drums on this track were recorded very poorly, bad mic placement. I recorded this before I learned my lesson on that.

And yeah, I would love to hear it with a singer too. I cant find anyone locally, (the music scene where i live is pretty sad) but if anyone on here wants to take a stab at vocals feel free to do whatever you want.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to listen and comment. :)
 
Oh and also, I should be posting up another song with drums that dont sound like ass within the next week or two. Gonna be writing and recording next week so as soon as we finish I will be posting for some critiques.
 
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