First time home recording

[The Mollusk]

Hey everyone,

I'm fairly noob at the whole recording thing and the posting on forums thing.


I've been attempting to try and get better at recording my music. Here is an example of where I'm at with it at the moment:

http://soundcloud.com/biteythegiant

Ignore the medicore-ness of the track itself.


From what I can tell the drums are too sunken in the track and the guitar tone is lacking any form of bollocks.

I use a copy of Guitar Rig 4 I purchased with the hope of avoiding buying a decent amp mic. I fear that I'm perhaps not using the software properly in collaboration with Studio One.

Is there way in which I can get the vocals more part of the song instead of ontop of the song?



Any direction I can take from here/advise would be awesome. In general I just want to give the song more body I guess.

Cheers.

 

[dewhitt]

Hello, and welcome!

Not a bad tune/performance. However, the recording needs some work. How did you record this? It almost sounds like you recorded the rhythm tracks by throwing a mic up in front of the band and capturing the whole rhythm section in one go.

Your guitar sound doesn't jump out to me as the problem at all, in fact, I think it's pretty decent. In my opinion, the first thing you should focus on is the drums, they are too far back, too muddled, and too small and narrow sounding. How are you recording your drums? As I mentioned above, it sounds like you may have just stuck a mic up in front of the kit, which is ok in some situations, but for the style you are in, I think you are going to need the separation and control that you can only get from a multi-microphone setup, recording the drums into multiple tracks so that you can tweak the kick, snare, toms, overheads, etc, individually. Do you have the option to record them that way? That would be the most obvious place to spend time, money, and effort to improve if you really want to get better recordings.

Bass is pretty weak in this recording also, but that might be improved just by mixing it a little higher, it's hard to tell if it's a decent tone because I can't really hear it. How did you record it? Please tell me the bass and drums aren't all together in one track

You mentioned your vocals being too much on top, but I tend to disagree with that. I think they sound ok, but for my taste they are too low in the mix. I couldn't really hear them enough to pick up any of the lyrics. I'd bring the volume up a little, and maybe use a little light reverb if you want them to sit back deeper in the space of the mix.

There's a lot more to say, but I think I'll stop there and wait to hear a little more about how you recorded this before I offer anything more. The good news is, you've got the chops and it sounds like a decent song...the other stuff can be fixed, so you're on the right track!

Good luck!

Dave DeWhitt
http://www.soundclick.com/davedewhitt

 

[The Mollusk]

Hey,

Thanks for the great advise so far!

You're spot on with the drums, however, originally they were recorded with 4 different mics. As I recall, it was one over the symbols, a bass drum, a snare and an overhead... however, these were all mixed into one track by a band member and sent to me. I've used drum equalisation to try and make certain pieces of the kit more prominent.

Guitar Rig was used for all guitars including bass. My issue with the guitars is that I want the impossible with them... I want them to be more in your face... while not having a negative effect on any other parts.

The issue with the vocals I feel is that when they're increased anymore, they stand out way too much... I'm thinking perhaps some reverb might solve that.... but thats been my answer to everything lately...

'How can we solve world hunger?'
'more reverb'


Cheers.

 

[PDP]

Like the guitar playing, rythem and lead. Sounds to me like you need to apply hi-pass filter EQing, I hear un-necessary lows and low-mids. Bring up the drums and bass (alot) Theres plenty of room in this type of song, and mix to hear everything and still have loud in your face guitar sound. Just gotta learn the craft. Thanks enjoyed hearing it.

 

[dewhitt]

My issue with the guitars is that I want the impossible with them... I want them to be more in your face... while not having a negative effect on any other parts.

I hear you...I am a guitar player and I always tend to chase that same impossible dream with my mixes What I am starting to realize (and this is definitely a do as I say, not a do as I do moment!) is that it's better to give the guitar its own space in the sound field, and make it sound as great as it possibly can in the context of the mix within that space. Hopefully that makes sense. As with everything else, it's not a hard and fast thing, and some songs might call for something different, but as I've been really listening to mixes and trying to analyze them lately, I'm finding that the best mixes don't try to make everything sound huge, they try to make everything sound great, and then the mix sounds huge almost as a result of that. For example, if you've got a drum kit that sounds really good and it's occupying its correct space in the frequency spectrum (not stepping on other instruments, and generally not trying to be something it's not), sitting a little back in the 3 dimensional space and panned a little to provide a little wideness with the toms, etc; and then you've got a bass guitar that's also recorded well and has a nice fundamental tone and is sitting in it's correct frequency space and not too overly emphasized with low bass, etc; and then you add in some tasty guitar tracks that have a good fundamental tone, but are still sitting in their own frequency range, and panned away from the bass and vox, etc; then you should have a pretty nice sounding rhythm track to work with without having had to do too much work at the mixing stage to get there. Most of the work in that scenario comes in the recording phase where you are making absolutely sure that you are recording really nice sounding audio from each instrument to begin with.

So, back to the mix at hand...if you can get your friend who recorded those drum tracks to send you the individual tracks you are going to be a lot better off when it comes to mixing them. But, if nothing else, try to get the drums, bass and vocals a little louder in the mix. Keep the guitars panned out wide, right now it sounds like your main rhythm is panned wide to the left, which is good. If you want to simulate "hugeness" you could record a second track of the same rhythm guitar part (play it again and try to play it as close to the original timing, dynamics, phrasing, etc, as possible) and pan that one wide to the right. Take a tip from the AC/DC playbook and have that second, doubled rhythm guitar part come in on the right when the bass and drums come in...I'm hearing that in my head and it sounds sweet Just keep in mind that you may need to pull the level down a little on both of those guitar tracks since you've now got more guitar in there and you don't want to overpower everything else.

I listened to the song again this morning...I'm really liking the guitar riff. Can't wait to hear this if you mix it again.

Best of luck!

Dave DeWhitt
http://www.soundclick.com/davedewhitt

 

[Tobe]

Love the energy... perhaps this just needs a good master?

The vocals are mixed too low, and that will not come out in the master.