Folksy, Bluesy

[Spiralstairs]

Hey Everyone,

My friends and I have been writing songs for a few years, but we're still very unfamiliar with the recording world. We just finished a song "Don't Hide Your Love," and I think the tracking went alright, but I'm a little daunted at the mixing. If you could offer any feedback it'd be great. I've only spent about 3 hours in Audition cleaning it up and tweaking levels, so I'm sure lots of improvements can still be made.

Thanks!

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1025115

 

[guitar zero]

Fun little song, and nice playing. Two things struck me. It seems a little lacking in the low end. Maybe its just the crappy sound you get from myspace. It's not the best way to post songs for critical listening. The guitars intro is nice, but sounds thin. Any way you could add a little low end beef to that, or turn up the bass? Also, something like waves tune, or melodyne would help get the vocals on pitch a little better, especially the female back up. Thanks for posting, nice job.

 

[Llarion]

Hey Everyone,

My friends and I have been writing songs for a few years, but we're still very unfamiliar with the recording world. We just finished a song "Don't Hide Your Love," and I think the tracking went alright, but I'm a little daunted at the mixing. If you could offer any feedback it'd be great. I haven't done very much other than clean it up in Audition and tweak levels with my untrained ear.

Thanks!

http://www.myspace.com/thehugsandkissesband

It's hard to tell you anything when it's coming through the turdhole that is the MySpace 96kb/sec encoder/blender/destroyer of sound... Please upload it somewhere (Reverbnation, soundclick, etc) that can give you the needed bandwidth to have enough fidelity to hear properly.

And if you have Audition questions, let me know, I seem to be the only one who uses it around here...

 

[Spiralstairs]

Fun little song, and nice playing. Two things struck me. It seems a little lacking in the low end. Maybe its just the crappy sound you get from myspace. It's not the best way to post songs for critical listening. The guitars intro is nice, but sounds thin. Any way you could add a little low end beef to that, or turn up the bass? Also, something like waves tune, or melodyne would help get the vocals on pitch a little better, especially the female back up. Thanks for posting, nice job.

Thanks for your input! the lack of a low end may be in part due to myspace (i've since moved it to soundclick) but overall I think that critique still stands. I guess the obvious fix is to try bring out the low in the kick and bass guitar, but I'm worried that bringing out the bass in particular might muddy the sound some. That could just be reflective of a poor bass part, I guess.

I'll also look into getting waves tune or melodyne. Ordinarily we resign ourselves to our vocal limitations and label it "aesthetic," but this song is more traditional and so could benefit from a boost.

 

[Spiralstairs]

It's hard to tell you anything when it's coming through the turdhole that is the MySpace 96kb/sec encoder/blender/destroyer of sound... Please upload it somewhere (Reverbnation, soundclick, etc) that can give you the needed bandwidth to have enough fidelity to hear properly.

And if you have Audition questions, let me know, I seem to be the only one who uses it around here...

Thanks for pointing this out, I just changed the file from myspace to soundclick asap.

And I just may take you up on that offer! I've gone from Cool Edit straight to Audition, and I STILL have no idea how it works!

 

[Llarion]

Thanks for your input! the lack of a low end may be in part due to myspace (i've since moved it to soundclick) but overall I think that critique still stands. I guess the obvious fix is to try bring out the low in the kick and bass guitar, but I'm worried that bringing out the bass in particular might muddy the sound some. That could just be reflective of a poor bass part, I guess.

I'll also look into getting waves tune or melodyne. Ordinarily we resign ourselves to our vocal limitations and label it "aesthetic," but this song is more traditional and so could benefit from a boost.

OK, lots going on to address... And forgive me if this seems overly critical, but almost every track in the recording has addressable issues; but many of them are more minor tweaks that in concert would make a huge difference in the sound.

First and foremost, the drum acquisition is spotty at best. It sounds like it was recorded with one mic sitting near a ride cymbal; the rest of the kit sounds many feet away... Given the folky, organic nature of the piece (and I was digging the tasty delicacy of it until the drums came in) it may not need drums at all. Or bass, for that matter. Or piano, strictly speaking. It went from passably sweet in the beginning to something a bit less than that once the drums and bass kicked in.

Anyway, the soundfield placement choices, EQ and reverb curves you made are, well, seemingly either random or nonexistent. I think if you explained the choices you made, why you put things where you did, it'd be easier to help you find a more streamlined mix. Audition (assuming you're on 3.0) has some truly wonderful reverb and compression tools built right into it. While I have a big Waves package, I still use Audition's reverb and limiter. I think that to appropriately learn the tool, you should start out with a less ambitious piece, one with fewer parts. Learn where and how to place guitars in the soundfield, then learn how and where to place vocals. Bass is easy you mostly run it down the middle. It sounds like you pretty much have EVERYTHING centered, like you missed that it has pan controls on each channel...

I'm not sure what you're looking for from a critique, but you've kind of got a bit of a mess going on productionwise. It's a delightful, happy piece compositionally, but it's hard to hear it in its best light the way it is now. I promise, Audition can turn cartwheels for you, you just have to learn the tools... Like I said, I'm happy to help, just ask questions...

 

[Spiralstairs]

OK, lots going on to address... And forgive me if this seems overly critical, but almost every track in the recording has addressable issues; but many of them are more minor tweaks that in concert would make a huge difference in the sound.

First and foremost, the drum acquisition is spotty at best. It sounds like it was recorded with one mic sitting near a ride cymbal; the rest of the kit sounds many feet away... Given the folky, organic nature of the piece (and I was digging the tasty delicacy of it until the drums came in) it may not need drums at all. Or bass, for that matter. Or piano, strictly speaking. It went from passably sweet in the beginning to something a bit less than that once the drums and bass kicked in.

Anyway, the soundfield placement choices, EQ and reverb curves you made are, well, seemingly either random or nonexistent. I think if you explained the choices you made, why you put things where you did, it'd be easier to help you find a more streamlined mix. Audition (assuming you're on 3.0) has some truly wonderful reverb and compression tools built right into it. While I have a big Waves package, I still use Audition's reverb and limiter. I think that to appropriately learn the tool, you should start out with a less ambitious piece, one with fewer parts. Learn where and how to place guitars in the soundfield, then learn how and where to place vocals. Bass is easy you mostly run it down the middle. It sounds like you pretty much have EVERYTHING centered, like you missed that it has pan controls on each channel...

I'm not sure what you're looking for from a critique, but you've kind of got a bit of a mess going on productionwise. It's a delightful, happy piece compositionally, but it's hard to hear it in its best light the way it is now. I promise, Audition can turn cartwheels for you, you just have to learn the tools... Like I said, I'm happy to help, just ask questions...

First, thank you for taking the time to respond. With my current skill level I'm craving criticism, so don't worry about being harsh. I know my song, abilities, and knowledge have a long way to go.

With the drums, unfortunately we had very limited recording methods. We only have one condensor mic (which we used to record the entire song), and so we placed it facing a little to the right (more at the snare and highhat and less at the ride, crash, and floor tom) about 3 feet out and 5 feet from the ground. This is obviously not ideal, but I was hoping to be able to fiddle with the EQ enough to make it passable.

Compositionally, I think we're pretty decided that the drums are needed. Short of rerecording with better equipment, is there much to be done? My only thoughts at the moment are to bring down the ride with the EQ and just mix it lower in the song altogether.

As far as panning, I did use it, but clearly not enough. I had the drums, bass, and lead vocals dead center the whole time, and the main guitar was center 75% of the time. All male backing vocals were panned 30% either way, the female vocal was panned 90%, the lead guitar was 20%, whistling 75%. In short, I guess I treated all fundamental elements of the song as the song's as the songs "center," and then all textural elements as free to pan. Should I be panning everything though (excepting bass?)

Similar question regarding the compression and reverb: I was under the impression that only select parts of the song should use these. As it stands, there's a compression knob (just 1, pretty weak I know) on the usb interface I used (yamaha audiogram) which I utilitzed at varying levels for the vocals, drums, and acoustic guitar. Should I even be making use of this, or should I just do all compression in Audition during mixing?

I guess these are pretty vague questions with complicated answers, so don't feel compulsed to give yourself carpal tunnels in response. I'm going to really sit down to mixing later this week, and hopefully I'll come out of the session with some more focused questions.

Thank you again!

 

[guitar zero]

I'll take a stab at the reverb question. I'll preface this by saying that if you have everything panned dead center, the recording will sound almost mono. It will have do breadth. Panning spreads things out into two dimensions. If you want your recordings to be 3 dimensional, that's where reverb and delays come in. If i want the singer to sound upfront (as they would be on stage) you can use reverb, but you want the predelay set very low or at zero. Since sound travels at about 1 foot per milisecond, use that knowledge to create depth by different predelay on your reverbs. So if your piano player is off to the left and behind by 10 feet, use a 10 second predelay on the piano verb. You can also add three dimensionality by using delays. Let's say your electric guitar player is 10 feet to the right and 10 feet back from the center. Pan the signal right, put a reverb on with 10ms predelay. Use an aux send from that channel to another channel with a 10-40 ms delay. Turn it down until you can barely hear it, and pan that left, to the opposite side of the stage This will give you the delayed reflection from the far wall, like you hear it in a concert hall. It will add depth to the recording and put a smile on your face.

 

[Llarion]

I'll take a stab at the reverb question. I'll preface this by saying that if you have everything panned dead center, the recording will sound almost mono. It will have do breadth. Panning spreads things out into two dimensions. If you want your recordings to be 3 dimensional, that's where reverb and delays come in. If i want the singer to sound upfront (as they would be on stage) you can use reverb, but you want the predelay set very low or at zero. Since sound travels at about 1 foot per milisecond, use that knowledge to create depth by different predelay on your reverbs. So if your piano player is off to the left and behind by 10 feet, use a 10 second predelay on the piano verb. You can also add three dimensionality by using delays. Let's say your electric guitar player is 10 feet to the right and 10 feet back from the center. Pan the signal right, put a reverb on with 10ms predelay. Use an aux send from that channel to another channel with a 10-40 ms delay. Turn it down until you can barely hear it, and pan that left, to the opposite side of the stage This will give you the delayed reflection from the far wall, like you hear it in a concert hall. It will add depth to the recording and put a smile on your face.

This is very well explained, nice work!

The methodology I use for applying effects is to record EVERYTHING completely dry, and apply any effects in post production. Why? Well, lets say you get a perfect take on guitar, but the reverb on your guitar pedal was all wrong. Well, now you've "printed" the effect, and there's nothing you can do to remove it. The effects rack in Audition is treated like an auxiliary bus, it's a send-return. You hear it in the monitors, but it's not actually affecting the waveforms themselves until you do your mix-down, THEN it prints the effects.

As for a one mic drum recording technique, I wouldn't have it overhead at all, I'd have it somewhere close enough to get the 2 most important elements, kick and snare. Back in the day when I only had one mic to get drums, I used to place it down low, equidistant from the kick, snare, and hi-hats, pointed mostly at the kick, and it got everything pretty well. Not NEARLY as good as a two-mic Recorderman technique, or individual mics on each drum, sub-mixed down would be, of course, but it would be a lot punchier than what you have now.

As for panning, it's typical to run the bass mostly down the middle (though I cheat a little and go 5% one way or the other for a little dimension.) Since you only have one mic on the drums, I'd run them just a teeny bit off center, the opposite side of which way you cheat the bass. Feel free to pan guitars out liberally. Never put two vocal part in the same spot. Think of it like a stage. put things on the stage where they'd be, just don't have two things occupying the same space.

As far as level go, on a very busy session with a ton of tracks, I sometimes have to trust my eyes first for the initial dial-in. The VU meters are your friend, you can use them to get you backup vocals all balanced, and then close your eyes and tweak as needed.

I also strongly urge you to listen to everything you can in here. Listen, see what you think, read the other commentary./ Skill levels in this forum range form abject beginner to seasoned pro, and everywhere in between. Listen the good, the bad and the ugly, read what people say, try to hear what they are hearing, and apply it to your own mixes. If you don't' feel comfortable critiquing someone's mix, then ask a question about it, that's what this forum is about, learning; and asking a question of someone who really nailed a good mix is just as valuable as someone commenting on your mix... And remember, you can learn something from ANYONE. I learn things from folks here all the time, especially from folks who may not have same the level of experience I do, because they aren't afraid to try anything, where my habits are well-ingrained. Plus, newer folks' mixes tend to be exceptionally honest.

Anyway, no matter what, keep plugging, because the love you put in is what makes it art.

 

[mattdee1]

First, thank you for taking the time to respond. With my current skill level I'm craving criticism, so don't worry about being harsh. I know my song, abilities, and knowledge have a long way to go.

With the drums, unfortunately we had very limited recording methods. We only have one condensor mic (which we used to record the entire song), and so we placed it facing a little to the right (more at the snare and highhat and less at the ride, crash, and floor tom) about 3 feet out and 5 feet from the ground. This is obviously not ideal, but I was hoping to be able to fiddle with the EQ enough to make it passable.

Compositionally, I think we're pretty decided that the drums are needed. Short of rerecording with better equipment, is there much to be done? My only thoughts at the moment are to bring down the ride with the EQ and just mix it lower in the song altogether.

As far as panning, I did use it, but clearly not enough. I had the drums, bass, and lead vocals dead center the whole time, and the main guitar was center 75% of the time. All male backing vocals were panned 30% either way, the female vocal was panned 90%, the lead guitar was 20%, whistling 75%. In short, I guess I treated all fundamental elements of the song as the song's as the songs "center," and then all textural elements as free to pan. Should I be panning everything though (excepting bass?)

Similar question regarding the compression and reverb: I was under the impression that only select parts of the song should use these. As it stands, there's a compression knob (just 1, pretty weak I know) on the usb interface I used (yamaha audiogram) which I utilitzed at varying levels for the vocals, drums, and acoustic guitar. Should I even be making use of this, or should I just do all compression in Audition during mixing?

I guess these are pretty vague questions with complicated answers, so don't feel compulsed to give yourself carpal tunnels in response. I'm going to really sit down to mixing later this week, and hopefully I'll come out of the session with some more focused questions.

Thank you again!

I'd definitely like to second the notion of leaving compression for the mixing stage. No need to commit to compression settings during tracking.

Another thing I wanted to respond to was your comment about your plan to EQ the drums to make them passable. There is nothing wrong with tweaking EQ in any situation (in principle). But if you're using only one mic, IMO, you should shoot for capturing the drum sound as nicely as possible and then pretty much leave it alone. Ignore a cookbook approach and try all kinds of different things until you get a kit sound that has balance and most resembles what you want it to be. This is just something I've learned the hard way, others may disagree. I don't know exactly what you had in mind, but be wary of making big gaping EQ changes or whatever and convincing yourself that it sounds "better" when in fact it only really sounds "different".

Again IMO, I think autotune or some similar trickery would stick out like a sore thumb on a spare production like this. I'd stick with your "aesthetic".

Good luck
Matt

 

[rayc]

Vocally this reminds me of Ween.
The kit thing is a hassle - you could try a stereo VST plug to give it some spread.
The lead solos are too out front.
You'd have been better using the single mic as an overhead - but hey, get a second mic.
You can experiment with a high pass filter on the bass guitar (set at 150 perhaps) & add a little EQ peak at 3khz for some definition.
Personally I'd get a second mic & spend time rehearsing & getting the sung notes right before investing in pitch fixing software.
Oh, cute song, better on Sclick than Mspace - but keep mspace for networking the song & use sclick et al for commentary & critiques.

 

[guitar zero]

I'd definitely like to second the notion of leaving compression for the mixing stage. No need to commit to compression settings during tracking.

Another thing I wanted to respond to was your comment about your plan to EQ the drums to make them passable. There is nothing wrong with tweaking EQ in any situation (in principle). But if you're using only one mic, IMO, you should shoot for capturing the drum sound as nicely as possible and then pretty much leave it alone. Ignore a cookbook approach and try all kinds of different things until you get a kit sound that has balance and most resembles what you want it to be. This is just something I've learned the hard way, others may disagree. I don't know exactly what you had in mind, but be wary of making big gaping EQ changes or whatever and convincing yourself that it sounds "better" when in fact it only really sounds "different".

Again IMO, I think autotune or some similar trickery would stick out like a sore thumb on a spare production like this. I'd stick with your "aesthetic".

Good luck
Matt

Good points above. Also, I would not use autotune, but I would use a program like waves tune that lets you go through and find the notes that are a half step off and move them one at a time. It's very transparent, and you won't sound like Cher. You won't even hear it.

 

[Llarion]

Good points above. Also, I would not use autotune, but I would use a program like waves tune that lets you go through and find the notes that are a half step off and move them one at a time. It's very transparent, and you won't sound like Cher. You won't even hear it.

Autotune can do that too... you just have to do it manually instead of running it as an aux... Voice Tweaker Pro as well...

 

[guitar zero]

Autotune can do that too... you just have to do it manually instead of running it as an aux... Voice Tweaker Pro as well...

I did not know you could do it manually in Autotune. That's good to know.

 

[Llarion]

I did not know you could do it manually in Autotune. That's good to know.

Yeah, I figured it out one time when I was frustrated at it for begin too aggressive on some parts of a passage, and not enough on others when running it as a send; so I went into the waveform, selected a phrase at a time, and manually tuned it. It prints, of course, but it's a lot more granular than just letting it run.

 

[onestu3]

Is there anyway you could post a version of this song without the drums or the guitar solo, but everything else exactly how it is? I just think it would be fun to mess around with it. I understand if you want to keep it your own.

 

[Spiralstairs]

I'll take a stab at the reverb question. I'll preface this by saying that if you have everything panned dead center, the recording will sound almost mono. It will have do breadth. Panning spreads things out into two dimensions. If you want your recordings to be 3 dimensional, that's where reverb and delays come in. If i want the singer to sound upfront (as they would be on stage) you can use reverb, but you want the predelay set very low or at zero. Since sound travels at about 1 foot per milisecond, use that knowledge to create depth by different predelay on your reverbs. So if your piano player is off to the left and behind by 10 feet, use a 10 second predelay on the piano verb. You can also add three dimensionality by using delays. Let's say your electric guitar player is 10 feet to the right and 10 feet back from the center. Pan the signal right, put a reverb on with 10ms predelay. Use an aux send from that channel to another channel with a 10-40 ms delay. Turn it down until you can barely hear it, and pan that left, to the opposite side of the stage This will give you the delayed reflection from the far wall, like you hear it in a concert hall. It will add depth to the recording and put a smile on your face.

Thanks! It's rare to hear something put so simply; it's very helpful!

 

[Spiralstairs]

This is very well explained, nice work!

The methodology I use for applying effects is to record EVERYTHING completely dry, and apply any effects in post production. Why? Well, lets say you get a perfect take on guitar, but the reverb on your guitar pedal was all wrong. Well, now you've "printed" the effect, and there's nothing you can do to remove it. The effects rack in Audition is treated like an auxiliary bus, it's a send-return. You hear it in the monitors, but it's not actually affecting the waveforms themselves until you do your mix-down, THEN it prints the effects.

As for a one mic drum recording technique, I wouldn't have it overhead at all, I'd have it somewhere close enough to get the 2 most important elements, kick and snare. Back in the day when I only had one mic to get drums, I used to place it down low, equidistant from the kick, snare, and hi-hats, pointed mostly at the kick, and it got everything pretty well. Not NEARLY as good as a two-mic Recorderman technique, or individual mics on each drum, sub-mixed down would be, of course, but it would be a lot punchier than what you have now.

As for panning, it's typical to run the bass mostly down the middle (though I cheat a little and go 5% one way or the other for a little dimension.) Since you only have one mic on the drums, I'd run them just a teeny bit off center, the opposite side of which way you cheat the bass. Feel free to pan guitars out liberally. Never put two vocal part in the same spot. Think of it like a stage. put things on the stage where they'd be, just don't have two things occupying the same space.

As far as level go, on a very busy session with a ton of tracks, I sometimes have to trust my eyes first for the initial dial-in. The VU meters are your friend, you can use them to get you backup vocals all balanced, and then close your eyes and tweak as needed.

I also strongly urge you to listen to everything you can in here. Listen, see what you think, read the other commentary./ Skill levels in this forum range form abject beginner to seasoned pro, and everywhere in between. Listen the good, the bad and the ugly, read what people say, try to hear what they are hearing, and apply it to your own mixes. If you don't' feel comfortable critiquing someone's mix, then ask a question about it, that's what this forum is about, learning; and asking a question of someone who really nailed a good mix is just as valuable as someone commenting on your mix... And remember, you can learn something from ANYONE. I learn things from folks here all the time, especially from folks who may not have same the level of experience I do, because they aren't afraid to try anything, where my habits are well-ingrained. Plus, newer folks' mixes tend to be exceptionally honest.

Anyway, no matter what, keep plugging, because the love you put in is what makes it art.

Thanks for your reply. I've been sifting through the forum for roughly a month now, and there's a tremendous compendium of knowledge here. A talented editor could turn this into a great book on home recording.

I really like the stage analogy for panning. That really drives home the point of the importance of instruments occupying their own space.

I'm about to sit down to make a new mixdown now, and i'll be referring to everyone's comments constantly.

Much appreciated!

 

[Spiralstairs]

Is there anyway you could post a version of this song without the drums or the guitar solo, but everything else exactly how it is? I just think it would be fun to mess around with it. I understand if you want to keep it your own.

Sure, I'll try to remember to mix down a version like that later tonight. Just don't make it TOO much better than my own version!

 

[Spiralstairs]

Vocally this reminds me of Ween.
The kit thing is a hassle - you could try a stereo VST plug to give it some spread.
The lead solos are too out front.
You'd have been better using the single mic as an overhead - but hey, get a second mic.
You can experiment with a high pass filter on the bass guitar (set at 150 perhaps) & add a little EQ peak at 3khz for some definition.
Personally I'd get a second mic & spend time rehearsing & getting the sung notes right before investing in pitch fixing software.
Oh, cute song, better on Sclick than Mspace - but keep mspace for networking the song & use sclick et al for commentary & critiques.

Thanks! I'm about to sit down to it, and I'll try those suggestions right now!

Also, I definitely agree about the lead solos. I had mixed the entire thing in headphones before, which I think made it more difficult on myself. I'll be listening through speakers this time.