First pretty good mixes

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Whoopysnorp

Whoopysnorp

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What ho all, I've just finished mixing some partially done songs, and I thought I could use some advice. They don't have vocals yet (I haven't written any lyrics yet), but they will later, so take that into account. This is the first work I've done that I thought sounded pretty good.

Here they are:



 
I just updated the files. I re-did the mixes to take care of the pumping on "Beat Up A Cop" and make "The Ballad of Brady St. Eldridge-DeWitt" a little louder. Just to let anyone know who already listened to them (if anyone).
 
I forgot...

The setup:

Athlon 700 Mhz, 384 MB RAM, Delta 66, n-Track 3.0

Old early '60s Sonor drum set that my parents found in the basement of a former strip bar
Sennheiser e602 on the kick, MXL603s on overheads, SM57 on snare and between the 12" and 13" toms

Peavey T-40 bass into a Randall RB-60 combo
Recorded with a line in plus an MXL603 on the speaker to pick up some extra low end

Peavey Predator strat knock-off (on "The Ballad of Brady St. Eldridge-DeWitt), Peavey Odyssey (on "Beat Up A Cop") into some effects and a Kustom KLA-100 combo
Recorded with an SM57 about six inches from the speaker

All mics went into a Yamaha MX12/4 mixer.
 
The server timed out when I tried to listen. Try putting the tunes up at nowhereradio.
 
That's odd. It worked for me just now. However, I'll try putting 'em somewhere else.
 
Thats some interesting stuff. The performance is the thing I'd like to critique the most. It osudns a little off time in spots. Maybe try playing to a click?. The clean guitar sounds a lot better then the distorted guitar. The bass is weird sounding to me, I don't know something about it. Myabe a bit more compression. The kick needs mroe definition and less "oomph". The snare gets buried, and the cymbals are ok, but the high hats drown out everything else. with vocals these wouldn't so weird, they tend to pull attention away from other things, but the main thing is the distorted guitars and snare drum to me. The snare has to come up and the guitars need to be done with a different sound, the one you have now is a bit too distorted, and by that I don't mean high gain, i mean it sounds more noisy then gainy. If you told me exatly what you used on it I'll give more advice. I only listened to the Cop one, the other one didnt work for me.

Jake
 
I've noticed the timing problems. I do play with click tracks, but I guess my chops just aren't quite good enough--I usually do take after take before getting something decent enough to work with, and it usually has one or two timing problems.

I use a multi-effects unit (Boss ME-30) for my distortion. I know that's not the best idea in the world, but it's been getting me by. I've been wondering whether to tweak those distortion settings, but I don't know if I will or not. I'm fairly happy with the sound. I'll listen to it more and see if my opinion changes.

I agree about the snare; the next mix will have the snare a bit louder. I can't do a lot about the hi-hat without losing the toms; as it is just in the overheads.

Thanks for the comments. I'm learning.
 
Listened to "Beat Up a Cop".

The guitar dominates the mix a bit too much.

I didn't like the bass tone very much... no "punch" or dynamics to it.

The drums are somewhat muddy, possibly due to improper mic placement.

As for the song itself...

Decently played, pretty tight, but the ending has got to go out with a BANG, not with the sound of "elevator music."
Overall, the song is a good listen, it kept me listening all the way to the end... which is a good thing.
But, the title is reminiscent of Ice-T's "Cop Killer".
And despite all the hoopla about that song (it made the cover of Time magazine and got lots of TV coverage) the record didn't sell for shit... it was a total commercial failure. So, that would make your song kind of a "Cop Killer - lite".... yawn.
 
Ah, but the lyrics are going to be a satire on the idea that song lyrics influence people to commit anti-social acts (like cop killing). Get it?

Also, there's a segue at the end that's not in this version--it's going to turn into a little short instrumental set to an 808 beat.

I think you're right about the guitar dominating the mix too much. I'll probably bring it down for the next version.
 
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