Frequencies?

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HearClear

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I was listen to the new Weezer record through my studio monitors and I noticed somthing I've had problems with since I started recording. When I have clean guitars the kick drum and snare drum come in very punchy but as soon as stereo distotion guitars come in my kick drum looses it's punch. I compensate for this loss of kick drum by lowering the dirty guitar tracks in db. However on the song "Island In The Sun" off Weezers green album when the dirty stereo guitars kick in (and a lot louder than thier clean guitar tracks) their kick drum retains it's punch. Do they take frequencies out of the guitar or bass guitar that are a major contributor to the kick drum? If not that , HOW?
Thanks
Adam
 
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Yep, they generally sculpt the sound to make space. Try using a low shelf at about 80hz on the guitars, and pulling about 2db somewhere in the 200hz area on the kick. Make some room for the bass guitar and kick to work together too. Try -2 @around 50hz, and then add a little at 400hz on the bass.
Since the thumping part of the bass is around 100-200hz, try pulling maybe 1db from the guitars and adding 1db to the kick.
Just experiment, and be sure to post back on how things worked out.
Try pulling about 2db at 315hz from the total mix, too.
Sometimes this will make the individual instrument ssound funny when soloed, but they will mix nicely and sound good.
 
I don't have parametric eq on my board just sweeps on mids. however could I hook an eq unit through my sidechain on the compressor or hook the eq unit into a channel insert? Which would work better? Cause I'll be gateing my kick drum at mix down anyway. I'm already using a high pass filter on everything except the bass guitar and kick drum. But the pass is set on my board for 75hz. 80, 75, is it that critacal in this application?
Thanks
Adam
 
HardClear - I see from your recording chain that you might have a problem applying EQ to your recordings.
The answer - track it right in the first place.
What you describe is a typical "fighting for the same space" scenario, whereby the low midrange / midrange of distorted guitars overpowers the same frequencies occupied by the kick.

The solution is dependent on your taste, but you might try and remove some midrange from your kick, boost the low-end, and a pply a small amount of top-end for attack.

Very important topic here - which a large number of homers ignore. If you are serious about recording, you have to know and recognise your frequencies. There are reference disks available, buy one, learn. Alternative, there are now pretty cheap (seen even freeware) spectrum analyser plug-ins available. Get one! This will show you where your problem is, so you can fix it and learn to avoid it in the future
 
sjoko2
Thanks for a very important comment.Rather than have to "scoop" out room from the frequency spectrum,an understanding of where everything sits in the mix (especially that lower mid arena everyone is fighting over) will avoid all that major surgery at mixdown.
Good point.

Tom
 
sjoko2 has the answer. Learn what freq. is what and where you are running into trouble.
 
Although your problem is probably more EQ than anything else...are you panning the guitars enough? I would pan them 20 or more points off center depending on the kind of music youre doing.
 
I know the rule of never pan hard left or right. But a lot of my favorite groups pan that way on their records so I pan those guitars all the way left & right.
I record a lot of pop rock. I usualy play a fender strat (usa) through a marshall dsl 401 then leads and clean guitar through a fender hot rod delux ( same strat). What I'm thinking is what sjoke said I need to track those dirty guitars with less bottom.
On the amp of coarse , I never ever eq to tape.
Any other suggestions , I'd appreciate it.
Thanks
Adam
 
there are no rules about panning! And if there were, rules suck, rules are to be broken.

If you have your guyitar sound where you want it - play with the kick sound first.
 
There are no rules about panning but when frequencies are distorting or not coming through clearly, inadequate panning may be the problem.
I think inadequate panning is one of the hallmarks of amateur vs pro recording. Maybe its my fetish but one of the first things to leap out at me when I hear a great mix is the panning.
 
In my opinion panning isn't used enough, and not experimented with enough.
The main difference in good vs bad panning is easiest heard in a collapse to mone. Good panning will collapse to mono without significant loss of sound / instruments, bad panning will completely change the sound in a collapse to mono
 
I like to pan drums in mono through one speaker as odd as that may sound. When you tweek and out of no where BAM the toms or whatever pops into place. It's the phasing of the drums and 95% of the time when I go back to stereo with the 2 speakers It's a great image. Just a trick I'd like to share and no I didn't think of this on my own, I stole it from some one!
 
I thought there was a rule on panning. I just ignore it with dirty stereo guitars. That info was given to me by one the people who helped teach me how to mix, he is an engineer at a professional studio and taught recording classes at the state collage here. He told me to never pan more than 9 & 3 o'clock. But I guess he was wrong. Oh well, that leaves me with more experimentation to do with piano and drums! But one more question, why would an experinced engineer who was hired by a nice studio, (when i say nice I mean fully automated otari board, 16 track 2" tape recorder, 24 track adat, protools, countless mics and so on) tell me I should never pan hard left or right?
Thanks
Adam
 
Now all be good boys, behave yourselves, go and do something usefull for yourselves, read a brilliant article, I posted the link to it in the recording techniques forum. Its called "digital myths"
 
HearClear said:
I thought there was a rule on panning. I just ignore it with dirty stereo guitars. That info was given to me by one the people who helped teach me how to mix, he is an engineer at a professional studio and taught recording classes at the state collage here. He told me to never pan more than 9 & 3 o'clock. But I guess he was wrong. Oh well, that leaves me with more experimentation to do with piano and drums! But one more question, why would an experinced engineer who was hired by a nice studio, (when i say nice I mean fully automated otari board, 16 track 2" tape recorder, 24 track adat, protools, countless mics and so on) tell me I should never pan hard left or right?
Thanks
Adam
Click to expand...

Bec hes old school? Bec hes uninformed? For instance, if youre mixing a choir of 20 tracks or so...where each vocal is on a dif track...you will get a much fuller sound with more depth if you pan all the way on each side and stagger the placement of the tracks incrementally toward the center than if you dont go past the 9 or 3 o'clock. The same goes for textures like layered strings and some percussion and whole bunch of other things. Certainly in electronica on just about everything from loops to analog synths you better be panning wide especially if youre moving things from left to right.
 
sjoko2 said:
In my opinion panning isn't used enough, and not experimented with enough.
The main difference in good vs bad panning is easiest heard in a collapse to mone. Good panning will collapse to mono without significant loss of sound / instruments, bad panning will completely change the sound in a collapse to mono
Click to expand...

Sjoko2,

Can you elaborate on this a little bit? When trying to figure out how far to pan, what is the best technique?

I have a vocal track that is doubled, and panning one right and one left really opens up the sound. Should I start panning them right and left until I start hearing an increase in sound and then leave them there?

Thanks,
Taylor
 
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