Hard Rock/Punk Recording

T

thecugga

New member
Give it a listen and let me know what you think...

To give you an idea of what I was thinking during the mix process:

This song has a long intro with alot of toms, so I went for a clicky in-your-face tom sound, almost like a kick drum. I went for thick, upfront and dry guitars with alot of mids. I then EQ'd alot of the low-mid definition out of the bass and used it essentially just to fill out the low end of the guitars. I also tried to break up the monotony by using a couple different delays on the vocals in the verse and chorus.

Enjoy...
 
Sounds great. The toms are def in your face, but I can understand why. The only thing i may change is bringing up the crash cymbals more to give it a little more edge.
 
Love it. Sounds like some old-school punk with a modern twist. Guitars and drum sound great.

The vocals are a little too loud. Drop em back in the mix a bit. The backing gang vocals sound awesome.
 
agree with both the vocal and cymbal comments above. Why drown out the bass? i've always liked the bass playing in punk songs.
 
Nice work!

I can maybe see dropping the vocals a little bit, but not a lot. Although it might be cool to lower the lead vocals a lot during the gang chorus parts.

I agree that the cymbals could come up a bit; however, I'd be careful to make sure that the crash doesn't muddy up the mix too much. If you have a way to just increase their initial attack without increasing the ring much, that would be excellent.
 
thats a good idea vomithatsteve. although it could be tough b/c the peaks in the oh's have already been squashed to get less kick/snare and more cymbal sound from them. but i think i'll try a combination of two differently compressed stereo oh's and find a better balance between attack and sustain.

really i think the problem stems from two things:

1) the drummer goes light on the cymbals and heavy on the hats, which I should have done something about from the beginning

2) with every drum close mic'd i think the overheads would have been better served more as close mics for the cymbals, instead of getting the whole sound of the kit which includes alot of hi hat.

its tough to bring up the cymbals without washing out the whole mix with too much hat. too much open hi hat will kill the attack of your kick and snare. I opted for the right amount of hi hat in sacrifice of overall cymbal level. (*some things can't be fixed at mix stage and have to be done right during tracking. good advice for new/young recording engineers*)

as for the vocal level. this was actually the slowest and softest song of an 8 song album. i felt that raising the vocal level a little in this one, and giving it a little more rev/delay than the others fit with the feel of this song in relation to the other seven, which are alot faster and harder. this was my ballad mix! but maybe i'll pull it down a touch.

and i agree that having a bass sound with more attack is great in some punk music, like antiflag or rancid. sounds great for them. but for this, personally, i don't think it calls for that. the bass is not overly impressive by any stretch of the imagination. it mirrors the guitar chords all the way through. so i opted for a sound that is heard in many newer hardcore recordings like agnostic front or throwdown, where the bass essentially just fills out the guitars and gives the whole mix a heavier sound.

thanks for all the input!
 
Sounds very good! I like it a lot. I agree about the vocals. Its not much, but maybe 1.5 to 2 db down would do the trick. Nicely tracked and mixed. Kudos!
 
I'm only listening on laptop speakers, so that probably has something to do with it, but I think the toms at the beginning are too kickish. You've certainly got the clicky sound down pat, but I'd try to bring up some of the actual tom sounds if you can. Does that make sense? Otherwise, it's sounding pretty good! I don't think the cymbals are a problem. If you can't bring them up, then I wouldn't worry about it too much. A lot of bands these days go with really quiet cymbals for some reason, which makes no sense to me because they are the loudest things on my kit...
 
love it. the vocallist is spot-on for the style, but i agree with lowering it down a bit. i for one think the cymbals : hihat ratio is alright, but not as good as it could be. the gang vocals need to come up a bit too in my opinion. As the big cheese said, the toms could come up too.
 
This sounds really cool. The guitars sound pretty fresh. Just the word that popped in my mind. Crunchy.

The drums sound really good. :) The song is overall fun to listen to. I'd call this a good mix. I can see the vox coming down a bit. But that might be only 'coz I already read the others. :) Or they could really go better a little low. You can try it and see how you like.
 
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