First serious attempt at recording our own songs

[stijn_fi]

Yo!

I'm new to this forum and I would really appreciate some feedback on my first attempt at recording, mixing and mastering. I'll describe my process as short as possible, so you guys can get an idea where the sounds and stuff come from and maybe tell me a few do's and don'ts related to my process. If you don't care about my process, just skip to the ending .


A very short introduction: I've been playing classical guitar since I was young and about six years ago I was asked to join a band as a guitarist. The bassist quit after a few months and so I chose to follow in my fathers footsteps and started playing bassguitar. Six years later (I'm 22 years old now) I'm still playing with the same drummer, we're onto our fourth guitarist (finally someone that really fits with the band) and around 2,5 years ago we found a singer, who's also still with us.

I started writing stuff since we started with the band, around six years ago. It was kinda crap in the beginning, but a few years later it got better (at least I hope it did ^^). Since Alex joined our band as the new guitarist last summer, we've got seven songs up and running now.

The drummer and I have always wanted to do a proper recording of these songs, so two months ago we hired a set of drummicrophones and started recording stuff. We recorded our drums with 8 mics: a kickmic, a shure sm57 for the top of the snare and a fake sm57 for the bottom (for the snare-crunch), three tom-mics and two condenser mics as overheads.

We had to record all 7 drumtracks in 1 weekend, because hiring microphones costs money and we don't have loads of it ^^. For 6 tracks the drummer played along with a midi-track of the song but for one track, "Rush", he didn't, because Alex and I played along to give it some groove instead of a perfect timing.

We're finishing the songs one at a time now. I'm the one who's somewhat in charge of recording, mixing and mastering and as you might guess: I'm new to recording/mixing/mastering a song with a band the 'proper' way. I'm using reaper to put the project together and a miditech guitarface II to get the sound from the guitars to my pc. For the electric guitar, we're using a Marshall tube-amp, its recording compensated output as input for the miditech usb-interface and add effects using Guitar Rig 5 in Reaper. For the bassguitar, I'm using my Hartke LH500 and its direct-out. For the vocals, we're using a Samson C01 (and a popkiller) and a small LTO S-8 mixing console to boost the signal before puttin it through to the guitarface thing.

Today I kinda finished the first song: "Rush". The mixing was doable, but the mastering was hard: I could only find a handful of proper, clear tutorials on which effects and settings to use to achieve certain goals. My father uses a ZOOM R24 digital mixer for mixing, altered a few default mastereffects to his own liking and after he mastered my unmastered track using one of his mastereffects, I decided that that was much easier than to set up an fx-chain by myself (I tried that, but the result wasn't as good as the result from my father's ZOOM R24).

So here's the unmastered track:
https://soundcloud.com/stijn_fi/rush-master1-unmastered/s-r5UD2

And the mastered track:
https://soundcloud.com/stijn_fi/rush-master1/s-YhvNs

I'm eager to hear what you think of it! (recording/mixing/mastering related as well as song-related )

 

[lukenp]

I think this sounds good. Maybe some of the drums could be tightened up but from my side of things it is easily listenable and I don't think it would have any trouble with radio play if you wanted it

 

[DM60]

I listened to both versions. The unmastered sounded better. On the mastered version, seems like you took out some of the life. Too much highs were cut out, maybe compression issues, but you need to add some high end back, bring up your bass and let it play with the song. The guitar was very clear. If you want it to center around the guitar, bring everything inline with it, but I would guess it is not a guitar centric piece, so work to bring the instruments into focus (vocals are an instrument) when it is time. You may want to treat the bass almost like a rhythm guitar.

You have a good recording, but I think your mastering was a bit heavy handed. Open the song back up, work the faders for volume control (not always compression) and lets give it another listen.

More knowledgeable people will help with the details (they know exactly what areas will help improve the mix).

 

[stijn_fi]

Thanks, I'll do that and post the new track when it's done!

 

[TripleM]

I listened to the mastered version. I thought things sounded OK, particularly for an early recording.

I thought the vocals were really good.

I thought things were well played. The bass was really cool. Not exactly my style. But it fit the song well and it was well played. Having said that, I thought it was too loud relative the other tracks - especially the guitar. It also needs to be tamed a little better - there are spots where it gets real loud. There is some low frequency (I'm guessing in the 100hz area) that is a little strong and might need some EQ attention.

I thought the rhythm guitar sound needed to be fuller. Just a bit too thin for my taste.

Snare sound, to me, is over compressed. The bass is dominating the kick drum.

Little pop at 1:45.

The intro is kind of long.

 

[ianopie]

It's OK, maybe a Little snowball on the 100 - 250 Hz that you should control a Little bit (as indicated above), an the kick and bass should be a Little more separeted in EQ, so both are more distinguishable from each other.

 

[Tobe]

I was originally put off making a comment because I couldn't be bothered wading through your explanation, but I eventually made the effort and actually quite enjoyed it

The master is better BTW, cleaner and clearer with a nicer stereo feel, but not dramatically so, and not much louder (which is odd). edit - actually it is noticeably louder

The hard part... the drums and vocal... sound great. But I notice a clicking sound that I think is coming from the bass that I find a bit distracting and needs to be controlled. The bass is good but very front and centre... perhaps a bit too much.

in the mix I would sweeten the vocal a tad with just enough reverb so as not to be obvious.

In the Master you can try some multi-band limiting. It's amazing how running limiters at separate frequency bands can add clarity (and loudness) to a mix.

Anyway, this is sounding very good, and both my suggestions can just as easily ruin a mix as help it, so take that advice with both ears wide open.

 

[rpm61]

I thought this song was just great and you should be proud of the job for a first recording. I too noticed some dynamics issues with the bass, there are 2 notes on the run-up to the lead guitar part that jump out, but I like the bass sound. I thought the mastered version's compression enhanced the transients of the drums and brought them out nicely as they were sounding buried on the original. The vocal was way to tame for me through most of it, then you have these 2 lines after the lead guitar part "All I want to do is give them a hand . . ." that sound great with sweet amounts of grit and edge and reverb. You probably could do a better job on the mix and improve what the ZOOM unit did for this, but it would take some time and fiddling, might need to automate some levels in places. I like the layered guitar sounds, especially like the cleaner rhythm sound and your lead player does fit nicely. Cool sound!

 

[stijn_fi]

Thanks for the extensive responses! I'll post my new mix here when it's ready, maybe I'll even do a total revision of the mix because now I know a bit more about what I'm doing than when I started mixing this song.