deathmetal song - would you dare to give this 'final' mix to the band?

  • Thread starter Thread starter earworm
  • Start date Start date
E

earworm

New member
ok, i'm not certain about this...i just started listening to this mixdown in different hifi's and cd players... lets consider this song as allmost finished..

so right now i'd like to get some real sharp critis, don't spare me,
anything you don't like, please tell me,



thanks in advance !

earworm
 
Well, I love the drums. Very brutal. May be a bit loud, but I'm not sure. Tons of bass. May have a bit too much bass in the drums.

My only suggestion, and it may be incorrect. I like the tune, and the sounds. Just lots of bass here.
Ed
 
ok, thats true,
i did push the drums hard in this mix....and guess i overdid it,
will boost the bass a bit less

its just, the band heard a previous test mixdown and weren't really pleased with it...sounded too unfinished to them...so thought...
"i'll show them" :rolleyes:

thanks for the comments !
 
yea the bass drum has way too much boom in it and the click in it almost sounds distorted. the guitars sound like the have too much reverb for my tastes. when the guitar started in the beginning i was hoping when the song started it would go away but unfortunately it didn't.
 
funny thing is i didn't put any reverb on the guitars,
only got some on snare and vocals

good, i got some drums to fix, if i bring them down the guitars will kinda sound louder in the mix

i didn't put any eq-ing on the main mix, only a limiter, if i fix the drums i hope it will sound a bit less 'sqeezed' together
 
So this was all live off the floor? There's definitely some verb leaking into the guitars from the snare or I guess it would be guitar leaking into the verb from the snare. The drums are excessively loud. The cymbals are piercing. Personally I would take the verb out of the snare just to avoid the leakage from the guitars or gate the snare before you add reverb. If you could widen the stereo image, that might help too. Just my opinion though.
 
The kick needs to be focused a little more. It sounds like its a little boomy but at the same time I can't tell if its actually the kick or the bass. The bass is a little buried and sounds like there is some masking going on between it and the kick.
What size room did you track this in? Around 2 mins (i think) where the guitars are doing the quick stops, you can hear the room ambience and it sounds like you have a "Large Hall or Auditorium" preset on it. Maybe its guitars bleeding through the drum tracks? I would mute or silence the "in between" beats in those parts to kill the extra verb.
Those were my two biggest complaints with the mix. I know it doesn't help you much but the band/music seemed to be the weakest link. Even if they had a pro mix, this would be a poor attempt at Death metal IMHO.
 
thanks for the comments, i guess i got quite some natural verb on the guitars, eventough i built a little "cage" around the amp to have a pretty "dead" sound...
the band pissed me off today, the guitarist sent me an mp3 of the band "lamb of god", and "they want to sound like that".... GOD I HATE THAT !
first of all the band doesn't sound like that at all, second i bet that other metalband was recorded in an awesome studio and not just on one sunday...
and if they gave me that mp3 before the recorded i would have known that they wanted a different snare and guitar sound...
:mad:
i wasted several hours today trying to mix the song differently,
but i was just fucking up the mix,

i think i'm gonna give them "my version" anyway, but it sucks to tell them,
hey, this is how it sounds like, be happy with it...but that gives me stress...

tomorrow i start recording another demo and i wished i had the previous song ready by now...
 
the guitarist sent me an mp3 of the band "lamb of god", and "they want to sound like that".
Click to expand...

This is exactly why I am no longer attempting to pursue recording as a career. I love Metal and the current state of it agitates the hell out of me, production values included. You might as well go ahead and fire up drumagog and trigger all the drummers hits. I hope the guitarist owns a mesa rectifier as well.
I love it when bands want to sound like something that they don't even remotely resemble. LMAO,
 
I don't care what the band think - that was a damn good mix for a Sunday afternoon. Well done.

They should appreciate your work.
 
i did mess with drumagog !
i took my akg414 and recorded a bunch of snare samples of my own drumkit,
started using them but in the end the result wasn't good, it was more agressive and harder but just sounded too mechanical and OF COURSE, in the fast parts the drummer hits his snare sooooooo soft that drumagog didn't get triggered , even with a treshold of -20 ....sad

stupid thing is that the band was kinda satisfied with the result on the day itsself, they just shouldn't want to compare themselves with real big bands...

but this song will appear on a compilation cd so wel all want some quality, eventough its just underground stuff

and whats a mesa boogie rectifier? is that an amp?
 
whats a mesa boogie rectifier? is that an amp?
Click to expand...

Yes its the type of amplifier that is being used on just about every metal record there is right now. I was just being a smart ass in regards to the "Lamb of God" comment. I had the unfortunate experience of seeing those guys live and both guitarist had their own wall of mesa's.
I like mesa amps, i even own one but I find it terribly retarded that the instant someone mentions metal, triggered drums and mesa rectifiers are the instant "go to" thought.

For what its worth I thought your mix and quality of sounds were pretty good all things considered. Its tough to compete with pro quality and even harder to compete with the "mechanical" style of professional metal these days when you have a less than stellar band.
 
ah, good, now i can tell them "hey guys, why dont you buy a mesa boogie instead of playing on this crap..." :D

actutally i should tell them (and i mean this):
i record you guys like you sound, i don't have the ability to make you sound like another band, maybe you can do that in a "480 EURO per day studio" where you spent a few weeks recording....but not in my bedroom,

its just sad when the band isn't 'happy' or exited by the mix, me and the band are both beginners and i'm affraid we both want better results than we can achieve right now

a few more days and i'll hand in that mix, i just hope they'll accept it
(after i fixed the drums and stuff :rolleyes: )

now i'm gonna start recording a real soft band, they want to record 23 songs in two weeks....all in demo quality.... its time to RUSH
 
Drums a bit too loud. Kick sounds "soft" and a bit boomy. Snare could be a bit fatter and more present. High hats a little loud.

Good guitar tone.

I'd like to hear more bass guitar.

Great job overall.
 
i love it when a band goes into a garadge studio somewhare to record a demo and gets pissed when they don't come out sounding like they spent 100,000$ at electric lady.

is that verb on amps?
if you didn't put it thare, maby they did.

don't really haveanything to say that hasn't been said.
 
Everyone else seems to have hit on some of the mix issues but.......... I don't think these guys are goingto be happy because.... well.. the PERFORMANCE sounded pretty off to me.. just not together they seem to be just missing each other on the timing which can actually sound worse than being way off. You will probably end up taking the blame for this ,I'm sorry. Maybe They'll learn when they spend tons of money and hours and hours and still sound "unfinished".
 
well, the verb on the guitars is a mystery to me, did i overlook it on the amp?
cause i didn't put any on the guts...
and ehm....you don't wanna know how many takes we did for the guitar,
lots and lots, i ended up with two usable tracks after i don't know...20 takes?
but i'm used to that, been there done that, glad they couldn't blame me for that :)
its a cool band though, i know them since they started years and years ago, i didn't even have long hair back then ! :D
just the guitarist really knows what he wants, i think the rest of the band can be satisfied with my work, but i'll have to do some "convincing-him" stuff

ps, my bedroom is no garage, what an insult :)

today the opposite happened, a 7-member band came over and wanted "to record their rehearsal", 23 songs in 3 hours !!
and i started cabling my room from scratch yesterday evening,
they played rock solid and i had a hard time giving the band a good headphone mix, the recording is just OK, 4 tracks of drums, one bass, one guitars (two guitars mixed to one channel) and two vocals,oh, and keyboards too...
this was the first time i recorded vocals together with the band !
i had the drummer in the room here, together with the bassist and keyboard player, in the hall i had the two guitar players, one amp was in an attic, the other was "hidden in a cage i built",
one guitarist was the main singer, and i also had two girls singing in a 414 in that same hall

that was a job !!!
on thursdays a few members are coming back to do overdubs and redo songs... i'm breaking my own record every few months...first one was 10 punksongs on a saturdayafternoon, now this, but of course the mix lacks some quality but they played real nice so the mixes aren't bad, thanks to the band.... it had to go that fast that i didn't even have time for a decent soundcheck...

i love this
 
I have recorded a few bands like that, however I am no expert by any means. The first thing I would say is that the band itself doesn't even approach that "Lamb of God" style sound they are looking for, even though I hate to use that name as an adjective..... First of all the performance is extremely off, timing between instruments is extremely off, guitar technique is extremely off...etc, etc. Everybody else already pointed out some issues with the mix that I would agree with. Some other things I might suggest: track the guitars with less distortion and then try re-amping with varying tones or settings to thicken up the guitar sound without it sounding so washed out. Perhaps don't even use the first take or the sound that the band wanted during tracking, use a DI instead and re-amp. Maybe try copying the kick track and eq'ing one track to bring out the attack and the other to bring out the thump. Perhaps do something similar with the snare and squash the hell out of it. Those may be no big deal, the unfortunate thing is that the band will probably blame the recording process or you for all the other problems just like BE LOVELESS said before. I suggest drilling them and asking them if they sound like that when they rehearse. If not, ask them how the hell you are supposed to capture it then. Good luck to you.
 
I think you can be really pleased with what you've done here. They're probably no better than you've captured them, so they can have no complaints!

Difficult being a perfectionist, but be careful not to put too much value on what they think of it. You sound like you're going through a, "if my mix isn't ok, and if they don't think I'm ok, then I'm not ok" kinda process. It's a job, and it sounds like you have done the job! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top