First Recording Project, Feedback Appreciated! (Rock)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill S. Preston
  • Start date Start date
Drums: What was your mic placement with the six mics? What Drumagog samples are you using?
Vocal: You used only the C1 and the pre on the Tascam? Wow that’s amazing! How did you manage to keep the screams under control?
Guitar: I can’t even figure how you got the Line 6 Guitar Port to sound that good.
Keys: I guess that was pretty easy. Did you go DI with them?
Song: Great arrangement

You sure made me feel like shit if you’re not lying. :(
 
Chadsxe, don't feel bad! Thanks for the compliment about the recording, and I'll go through how it was done below. Do you have any samples of your music up here? I'm new, but I can give you some feedback based on what I hear if you like. Anyways, to address your points:

Drums: Mic placement was one for the kickdrum, one for the snare, one on each tom (my drummer only has two toms), and two overheads. 60% of the tone is my drummer's original tone, which he tuned up prior to the recording, which makes the BIGGEST difference. I can't stress how important this seems to be. We recorded a demo before at a local studio with an engineer about a year ago, and a guy there showed him how to tune it all up properly. 40% of the tone is triggered from Drumagog, but they aren't stock samples you can purchase. The secret here is that my buddy records bands and has some really killer drum samples that he put together himself, and when I heard them, I said, "hey, can you give me those samples? I'd love to use them on my recording." Which, of course, he did. Honestly, without Drumagog, it wouldn't sound nearly as good. So I guess I cheated there with fattening up the sound, but I hear that a lot of bands are using drum triggers these days. I suppose I'm not really a purist in that sense, I just want to get the best sound possible to my ears.

Vocals: Yes, it's is only a C1 right into the Tascam pre, nothing else. I did a scratch vocal track with a Shure SM58, believe it or not, which sounded like complete crap. So I actually bought the C1 based on reviews from this message board, without ever trying it before. Once I used it a little bit ago, I'll never turn back. I LOVE it. The vocals on the verses and choruses have literally zero effects at all on them. No EQ, no reverb, nothing. The parts on the chorus that sound "effected" were acheived by just tracking backing vocals and panning until it sounded good to me. Obviously, there is one line in the verse, and the middle part that I EQ'd to sound thin, but other than that, I've had good results with this mic and I recommend it to anyone. Now can I get sponsored, please? Anyone from PMI out there? :p As for the screams, I've been screaming in bands for a few years now, and I have my screams under control. I know my throat fairly well (not a good singer yet though, dammit!), but I know how to get the right tone with the right amount of...loudness, for lack of a better word. I just watched the meter in Sonar when I screamed my loudest, and made sure it didn't clip on the recording. Then, I just compressed the hell out of it and mixed it really low and panned it off a bit. The screams were a lot louder before, but they only seem to work when they're mixed low (on the pre-chorus and chorus, at least).

Guitar: Yes, it's just a Line 6 Guitarport which I bought for $85 with a friend's discount at Guitar Center. I know a lot of people on this board discount the Line 6 stuff, but again, I guess I'm not a purist in this regard. I live in the smallest studio apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I can't blast my amps in here. Again, I just tweaked with the settings until I found the right tone. If you have one, I can give you the settings I used if you like. Check it:
--Amp Model: 1993 Solo 100 Head
--Cab Model: 1x12 1964 Blackface 'Lux
--Gate Effect: Threshold -65db, Decay 75%
--Comp Effect: -20db Threshold, 5 db Gain
--Mic Selection: 57 on Axis, 50% from the cabinet
With those settings, two guitar tracks were recorded, panned hard right and left. It sounds like complete crap when you only have one track, but with two layered it sounds full and amazing to me. And yes, I learned from reading articles here that a good guitar sound alone doesn't necessarily sound good in a mix. I never thought about that. So there you go! Try it out yourself.

Keys: This was the easy part, just tedious. Yes, they went straight into the Tascam pres as well, one track at a time since there are only two ins on the 122.

I hope this helps anyone trying to get a good sound as well, and damn, I want to thank all of you for providing feedback about the tune. We're a pretty serious band and I'm serious about making our album sound as good as possible. You all rule!

Paul

Edit: Jesus this is a long post. Sorry for being so long-winded. I should be working on the music! :D
 
Well my hats off to you. Great job and I am looking forward to hearing more. How much did you get the C1 for? What mics did you use on the kit?

I have been getting frustrated with my recordings and this is just inspiration not to give up.

EDIT:
I keep listening to this and I can't get over how far technology has brought us. People would have paid thousand of dollars to get a sound like this on analog 20 years ago.

This might be off topic but what method of tuning does your drummer use.
 
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Even though this tune is like a demo reel of everything that I hate about modern rock, the sound recording and mixing is excellent! I wondered about the piano part too..

Fortunately you're not starting out with a cassette 4-track, cheesy drum machine and a radio shack mic like I did 25 years ago... Isn't technology awesome? :D
 
well im bringing this post back alive for a minute. lol.

first off let me say, this is like some of the older offspring stuff, but way better. more of a "hook" as you might say to the song in general.

there are a couple things i want to mention.

1) the drums sound killer, all except for the toms. and you know what I am about to say. lol. yes im going to attack (no pun intended) your gating on the toms. unfortunately cymbal bleed through sucks and gating does help significantly, but the way you have the toms eq'd, and unfortunately because of the way they were recorded, you hear cymbal overtones and it takes away from the attack of the initial stick hit. im sorry no one else said anything and i didnt hear it sooner. the only reason i noticed is because for a long time i battled with this problem to an extreme it only made my chain smoking get worse. lol. now, to address this on your current recordings, try to bring your attack time on the gate down to around the 5ms mark. this wil let your stick hit come through more. it sounds like you have boosted in around the 4-5khz range in the high end on the toms. try bringing that boot frequency back to about 3khz, and do a little cut at about 5k. the lows sound good. do this until the bleed is less aparent, and, if needed, bring the level back a little on the toms and throw some medium sized room reverb on them.

for future recordings, this will make all the difference. you are using SM57s on the toms I am assuming. bring the mics into the head more. bring the capsule closer to the top of the head, as close in as comfortably possible for the drummer, and with the capsule pointing the the stick attack point on the drum (usually right in the center). now for the kicker....take a very dense type of cloth (wash clothes work pretty well for this), wrap it tightly around the head of the mic. make sure you dont cover the capsule with the cloth so you dont block any sound. duct tpae the clothe around the mic tightly and generally leave about 1cm of overhang of cloth at the capsule end of the mic. this is going to kill alot of the cymbal blled and focus in more on the drum. you will be surprised how well this works. sorry for being an airbag on this but i think my advice will help you alot. i hate to see good takes go bad by bleed through. VERY good job on everything else.

2) (this is short i promise :p ) the keys are great. i like the parts alot, however i would try bringing the piano back just a touch, and putting the strings in some very light reverb. just touch them with verb dont go ape shit with it. lol.

thats about it. if you would like, PM me and i can help you out with some drum micing techniques and some general stuff that will help you out. keep it up man youve got EXCELLENT material on your hands.
 
Wow! nice
Verry modern sounding, a bit 2 modern to MY taste
2 much compression (mastering?) wich make it a bit restles
maybe the guit's a tad 2 loud
I dig the 'out of key' piano parts.

Overal, pretty good for a first time.

Remco
 
Holy shit....

That's huge.

Nice job, as everyone's said.

I like the piano stuff.

A while back I wrote a 17 stanza haiku on the economy during class.
 
The US122 is a great USB interface.

I just love it because its portable and it actually sounds decent.

Everything sounds pretty good. I think its a little over compressed even for the type of music. Its really making things muddy in the upper bass and lower mid frequencies. But it is really good for a first attempt. Thank goodness to drumagog.

The vocals could be brought up just a couple of DBs. Im talking like 2 or 3. You could probably pull them up even more if you take out that harsh 5k area thats probably stinging your ears when you bring it up. Maybe a 2 DB cut at 5k and bring it up 3 DBs and it should bring out the vocals a little more.

Danny
 
Hey mate, do you mind if I take this song to the radio station of the school I go to? (it's a big building with it's own internet music station). I'm sure they'd like to give you some international air time (I live in the Netherlands).
 
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