First recording ever, Need Lots of input please!

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thamende

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Hey guys, i just recorded a song for my band.. we play pretty heavy metal.

this is a mix so far of the drums and both guitars. i still have yet to record the bass and vocals.

Can you please have a listen and give me some direction so i can make this sound improve? It sounds fairly distant still... not sure if thats the lack of bass in the mix or what but it definitly needs something.
Thanks a bunch! i appreciate all honest comments!
also, maybe not your favorite music style but ive been trying to achieve and snare sound similar to the one in Oh, Sleeper - Son Of The Morning. I absolutely love how in your face that whole song sounds. any tips on how to get there?
Thanks a bunch!
Tyler
 
Hello there... how did you record the drums? from here i think it was recorded with 2 mics... it's very hard to get good results with that kind of recording. The guitars, in the other hand, sound too distorted, obviously metal is played with distortion, but try a little less, that will clean your sound, right now it has a lot of noise. Maybe you recorded the guitars DI and used a low quality distortion, or maybe you are using a transistor amp with a bad mic to do the recording. There are too many things that will help you improve your sound...
Definitely the song needs the bass, it will full the empty space.

I'll wait for vocals.

Cheers... Keep rocking
 
I listened to it.

Try playing the song with no distortion. See how it sounds.
 
well then haha. i am off to a terrible start it would seem!

Drums were recording with one kick mic, sn57 on snare, 2 close tom mics, 2 nt5 overheads.
guitars were close mic'd cabs, Peter's Amplification all tube heads
we only had the distortion about half or maybe less of normal, had the bass setting turned right down.
let me post the original recording and ill start mixing over again with help along the way.

thanks for replies so far!

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8427790 this is the bare recorded tracks... all levels at avg -6 db. have kick, snare, overheads/toms, guitar A, guitar B for tracks


Thanks
 
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I didn't know there was any heavy metal in this (Alberta) province. good stuff. The performance was spot on. It enjoyed the song itself. It's very southern sounding and Cancer Bats-ish. I am a fan.


But

your mix over all is lacking balls. Alot of big, nail bat weilding balls. . it has very little punch. Alot of high end, alot of mid from what i can here. Im going to guess that you probably had a subwoofer in your monitoring loop... Which probably may have been cranked casue on my speakers im getting little to no low end,

bass, kick, needs more presence in this mix. Most definitely.

Overall the guitar sound if i imaigine it with a little bit more low end is stellar. It seriously reminds me of a live Cancer Bats show.

Also im not sure ifmy ears are playing tricks on my it sounds like your drummer gets a little snare lusty and crumbs up or something between 1:24 and 1:26

Give it another going over. But all in all im down with this...

Vocals???
 
I think what you have captured isn't bad here. We can definitely work with whats here. First things first..levels. Drums way up, guitars way down. The only thing is that it does have a very distant sound to it.

I think the guitars need a little EQ. Im listening on in ear monitors right now, but they sound very mid rangey. Try to cut some of the mids out to clean it up.

Next I would pan the guitars left and right. Maybe not completely, but play with it a little bit. You need to create some space up the middle. This will be even more important when you add vocals. Right now if you added a vocal, it would be competing with those guitars too much. I literally draw a graph of the sonic space for every song I do. Pan goes on the X axis, and frequency on the Y. Everything needs its own space or it sounds muddy. Once you pan the guitars left and right, the vocal will sit nicely in the space between them.
 
Typical amateur metal recording - all guitar, forget everything else.

First and foremost - the kick drives metal. All that chugging guitar noise means exactly jack shit if the kick isn't beating us in the face. These halfassed drums aint gonna cut it. Get the kick and snare loud and out front, and build the mix around it. Mute everything else, and set a good non-clipping level for the kick and snare. Then build around that. Don't bring anything in so loud that you lose the kick. Those in your face guitars are great and all, but you can't have a wimpy sounding kick in the background. You also really need bass. If you don't have a bassist, or someone to lay a bass track, don't bother. Why even bother trying to mix with no bass?

Next, those guitar tones are ass. Sorry, but any tube amp is usable, and you managed to get the worst possible sound ever out of one. Go back to the drawing board on the guitars. With heavy guitars, the general school of thought is less gain - like half of what you'd normally use live - and double them. Whoever the guitarist is sounds like he knows how to play this genre pretty well. It's just a shame that it sound like screechy crap.

So, to sum up - do whatever it takes to get the drums not sounding like they were recorded with one mic in a different room, and redo the guitars.
 
okay thanks guys i appreciate the input!

in repsonse to Greg, i havent forgotten about everything else. i just havent done any mixing to the recording when i posted this. i do realize that the kick drum is the foundation for any heavy song. But yes, it is an very amatuer recording haha
We do have a bassist who is coming over hopefully tonight to lay his track down.

Any tips for getting this sound right? i have never recorded bass before. we may try direct in first and maybe do a mic'd 2nd track to layer in? i dunno if its a good practice to double a bass track or not?

There are 2 different guitar tracks the whole way through, (mine being one of them, so thanks for the complements! ) i may go back and re-record mine to try and get a better sounding tone out of it if i get the time here.

The recording is lacking in the balls department for sure and i will try to even out the low/high on the guitar because the highs are pretty sharp as it sits now.
Vocals will be recorded next week probably as i am out of town this weekend.
Thanks Live42 for some advice on spacing the mix, i will work on it!
 
Jesus...first ever recording? Not bad at all based on that info alone :).

But yeah, not really in your face at all mix-wise...too mid-rangey overall and you really need bass on this. Very cool riffage, but the guitars are kind of lacking in fullness.

As for the bass question, I know a lot of people here will record direct, many others will record a mic and direct signal both and then blend to taste later. If you have the capability to do this, then maybe it will afford you some flexibility later on? I record bass direct with ok results, but I don't (can't?) do this kind of music.

The drums seem awfully back there behind the other stuff and they just don't drive this thing like they should.

I still think for a first ever effort this is good, but I guess you do have a ways to go yet...have at it!
 
Well...... i did some mixing over the past couple days on this track to see where i could end up! I added a couple effects i had heard before that i really liked also.

I tried to bring the drums more to the front, let me know if they need to come up more. or if theres too much low/not enough. im only mixing on a set of BX5A's which lack the low range.

Added Bass tracks. Have one thats a close mic sm57 on a 8x10 cab, and one ambient apex410 placed in the front about 5 feet back. using both with the sm57 a little lower in volume since the definition came out with the LDC.
hows the level? i cant tell if ive got the bass too loud in the mix?
i tried some compression on the sanre and kick drum only
EQ'd the drums, and bass, but havent touched the guitars at all.
i tried to use the notching technique as best as i could figure out for the kick and bass guitar.
So yeah, let me know where you think i could go from here. i know it can sound better. without re tracking the guitar parts is there a way to reduce some of the high freq sharpness of them without killing clarity?

Thanks

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8435379
 
I have to agree with Greg - I found the drums were taking the back seat here when they should be equal with the guitars. The bass was MIA.

I'll try and keep this thread in check to see how it goes.

I found the guitar playing was top stuff and what I could hear of the rest was also very well done. I think you have a lot of plus' going on here playing-wise, just need to work on a mix that highlight all the parts a bit more.

Good job....:D
 
Haha, woopsies! I think i had some tracks muted/ down while i rendered! Eff. I was in a hurry to try and get it posted before i left town for the weekend. Definitly not as good! Sorry for wasting your time with that one! Please check back monday/tuesday!
 
My criticisms:

I feel like the first major problem in your guitar tone was probably mic placement. It's very thin. You might try pulling the mic out closer to the side of the speaker cone for a warmer sound. You didn't say what mic your using, but use your 57 if you're not already, and learn what mic placement does to tone. Lay down 20 seconds of guitar with the mic dead center on the cone, and then play the same part again with it on the very edge of the cone.

Everything in between those two tones is all in your mic position, and that's not even cracking the surface of on-axis or angled, or further back/closer etc.

Turn the gain down. Even more. A little more. Okay, you're probably just a little high on the gain now, but it should sound tighter in the mix. ESPECIALLY for low tuned guitars, you need to make sure that the gain is high enough not to be a clean tone, but nowhere near how you'd play it live. Usually a moderate distortion that sounds good when you play the blues is darn near close.

Record your rhythm track, and then do it again. Swing one hard left, and one hard right. Play them as close to EXACTLY the same as you can. If you play the left take perfect, and then fudge the right a little, it's no good. Kill that take and start over. Precision doubling is what makes guitars sound heavy, not massive gain.

Got a left/right doubled sound that is tight and powerful? Try sticking another track in the middle, or changing your mic position or microphone and do another couple. There's a lot of variations. Some people like 3 different amps and 8 rhythm tracks in the mix, some just like a very tight sound with just one track on each side. Experiment.

If you record everything and feel like you want more distortion, or that "scooped" no mids Slayer sound, do a track with a little more gain and the mids scooped and pull it up in the mix just enough that you can feel it. A little goes a long way.

I'm not sure if you played this to a click track, but do it. Metal, above all things, only sounds cool when it's played TIGHT. I mean TIGHT. Every chugged chord needs to be exactly on time, as do leads. (There are exceptions for the more "punky" or "grindcore" types of metal, but other than that you better be playing tight.)

Tight playing is why the Master of Puppets riff sounded so cool the first time you heard it.

Other than that, you said you accidentally missed some tracks on rendering, and I'm willing to wager a guess that they were close mics for the drums. Get'em back on the recording, and I might be able to offer some advice on mixing them.

Good riffs, nice playing. Good luck!
 
Yeah, some EQ might help in getting a more crisp, clean sound.
 
okay im back from my trip! new version posted.
let me know where to go from here!
i think guitar 2 (panned 40% right) got lost a bit in this mix. might have to bring up the level just a touch for next mixdown?

as for mic placement, i had the sm57 close micing the cab, about 3/4 of the way to the outside of the speaker if starting from the center of the cone.
i know theres too much gain in these guitars and hopefully i can redo them sometime soon but for now i gotta make the best of it.

anyways, heres the newest version:
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8462692

thanks guys
 
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Wow. Sounds like a drastic improvement to me, then again you don't have the original version up for me to compare to.

At first when the song starts and all the high end was cut out I was like "What? This sounds so dull!" and then it fades in and I was like "Oh, ok."

Sounds FANTASTIC for a first metal recording. Nice and heavy. Still think it needs a LOT tighter playing though, everything is still a little loose.
 
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