Echo Tail - Mirroring

  • Thread starter Thread starter EchoTail
  • Start date Start date
E

EchoTail

New member
During the summer, I decided to start a music project where I wanted to challenge myself to record my own rock album. After three weeks of recording, I have finally created a 10-song album. I do not have access to a really good recording studio, I purely used a USB interface with Ableton Live and Garageband to make this album on my mac. My compositions are mostly influenced by bands such as Alice in Chains, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Mastodon etc and are instrumental at the moment, looking to add vocals in the near future.

I have posted my music on bandcamp, so feel free to listen to my songs and let me know what you think!

http://echotail.bandcamp.com
 
Not too bad man. It all sounds a bit distant and completely MONO, but the performance is quite good.

Is there a reason your exports of mixes are MONO?
 
Thanks for listening man. I going to confess and say that I am no expert in mixing and stuff. These recordings are purely home recordings and I tried my best to clear the audio, but its the best I could do with what I have at the moment. Are there any pointers you could give me in making the audio clearer, or getting it to stereo?
 
Hey, Echo! I'm listening to it right now. Really digging the heavy guitars. Am I right to say that the drums are stereo? How'd you create them?

As far as the mono sound, all it takes is panning the guitars. I can't tell how many you have tracked, but if this were my project, I'd pan the rhythm guitars left and right, and either center the leads or pan them if there are multiple. The tone is great, though man. That delayed clean guitar is so sweet. Loving the progressions too. Beautiful and aggressive.

Yeah, I'd just love to know how you processed the guitars, if at all.
 
Thanks funknickels, pleased that you like the progression of the songs. I have taken your advice and panned the tracks out as you have said, and to me there is now a lot more clarity. I am now uploading the remastered tracks as I type so I will post again when they are done!

The drums are actually done through Garageband, the recent update generates a virtual drummer to go along with your recording, and I basically tweak the programmed drums to fit in with the songs. Then I import the aiff file into Ableton, where my guitar work is, and merge them together. Obviously it confused me at the start, hence why it sounded MONO, but I think I have now improved it, just needs to upload quicker!
 
I have updated my Bandcamp page with all the remastered tracks now, let me know how it sounds like now!
 
Hey, Echo, listening to the versions you've just put up. Yep, I definitely noticed the panning, and I think it's working nicely, but now in my opinion, the mix is sounding a little boomy. Here's where, if I were mixing this, I'd check the guitars and probably give them a high pass maybe around 120hz. And my feeling is that the whole mix could use some very small, wide cuts in the 350-800hz range. In particular, the kick drum sounds a little boxy to me and the the leads feel a little thick. I'd work on sharpening up the leads with more high pass filter, a small cut between 400-1000hz, and tiny boosts in certain upper frequencies that sound good. Then, I'd make corresponding narrow cuts in the other instruments.

But bro, this music is pretty lively. I just think places like those awesome chords heard at 1:10 in Distance of Empires would be more impressive were there more clarity. I think it's about slightly accentuating certain frequencies in each instrument that sound great and attenuating those same frequencies in the other instruments.
 
Thanks for the advice you are giving me funknickels, its a definite learning experience so far in improving the audio. I went back to Distance of Empires and remastered that again because it did sound too boomy when I listened back to it. Reuploaded that song again with the advice you gave me and tried my best to improve it.
 
Listening to Mirroring.

I thought the guitars sound good. I think all the levels are good relative to each other. Maybe nudge up the bass.

Some/most of the cymbals are really swishy/phasey. Don't know if that's an MP3 conversion issue or if it comes from the online player.
 
Thanks for listening TripleM. I always found Mirroring quite a tricky song to mix correctly for some reason, especially the bass. I will remix that soon when I get the chance. I think the cymbals could be due to the player itself cause on my original file, it sounds OK.
 
Spent last night mixing and mastering the tracks again from the album, and reuploaded all of them again on my bandcamp. In my opinion, they sound a lot better then my last attempt, so I would be grateful if you could listen to the new mixes and give your opinion on the new sound! Thanks!

Here is the link again to save you going to the other page: https://echotail.bandcamp.com/album/mirroring
 
Listened to few songs. Really enjoyed them. :)

One thing I will say: panning guitar tracks right and left creates a "false sense of space" that is definitely more interesting than mono.

In some of the songs you have the heavy guitar panned left and the clean panned right (which is perfectly fine, stylistic choice). One trick a lot of people use is multi-tracking heavy guitar parts--recording the exact same part multiple times (maybe with slightly different tones) and panning them differently. Since no two performances are exactly the same, they will create a stereo separation resulting in a thicker, more spacious sound. You did something similar in certain songs (like Empty Horizons) with simultaneous heavy guitar parts.

However, there is another method you can try: recording with two or more microphones allows you to create a "true space". Microphones at different positions or angles towards the speaker will capture slightly different frequency information (due to the nature of the room, nature of the speaker, and inherent differences in the microphones). When you pan the microphones right and left (after fixing any phase issues that arise due to the time it takes sound to arrive at each location), the recording will have a wider stereo image.

Sorry if I'm telling you things you already know, just wanted to give you some ideas to experiment with.
 
EchoTail said:
During the summer, I decided to start a music project where I wanted to challenge myself to record my own rock album. After three weeks of recording, I have finally created a 10-song album. I do not have access to a really good recording studio, I purely used a USB interface with Ableton Live and Garageband to make this album on my mac. My compositions are mostly influenced by bands such as Alice in Chains, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Mastodon etc and are instrumental at the moment, looking to add vocals in the near future.

I have posted my music on bandcamp, so feel free to listen to my songs and let me know what you think!

http://echotail.bandcamp.com
Click to expand...

Distance of Empires

0.56-1.27 The guitar with the sustained notes on the right is getting masked. Also from 2.00 - 2.31. It's competing with the distorted guitar on the left.

Mirroring

The bass is getting way lost. Turn it up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top