Introduction and a demo mix

[the_sys0p]

Hey everyone. I just put together a demo of one of my band's songs as I've been testing all of the parts of my recording chain at home, and I'm curious to hear some feedback from everyone here. It's now the only song up on our myspace page as it blows the quality of everything else we've ever done out of the water (a mic in the middle of the room is hardly a "real" attempt though...). I feel like I have to apologize for the crappy myspace converter/player/compressor/whatever process seems to have made it really grainy (at least, that's how it comes out on my end when played there, but I am in Linux so maybe the Flash player just isn't working as well as it could).

I only found the site a few days ago, I've only been getting serious with recording equipment over the last 4-6 months or so...whenever I happened to realize with the band equipment I already had (along with some clever repurposing of equipment here and there), that I could put together a relatively decent setup with very few additions required...so I went ahead and pulled the trigger. It basically opened up this 15 year musician to a world of actually starting to understand the behind the scenes of everything technical behind it that I just shoved aside in favor of just getting better at playing music. Since that awakening, I've been just absorbing material from basically everywhere I could and it eventually led me here. So, while I'm only mildly familiar with you guys, I do feel like there are some much more experienced ears that could really provide some very helpful feedback...and I would be most appreciative.

I've already started a list of notes for things I might want to experiment with for further improvement, but feel like I'm at a stage where I have a bit of knowledge of the process, but not enough experience as to know when to apply certain things. This is improving the more and more I just throw mixes together as I go along, but I'm continually finding new tricks and tips that almost totally reshape the way I think about the entire process. Sometimes it results in what feel like setbacks, but as I listen to each one that I've saved I can sense improvement in every single one, so I'm pretty happy about that. This mix, also, happens to be the first one I've done without a professional CD to reference against and I think it sounds pretty good, so I'm pretty pleased with it on that aspect alone.

Feel free to blast it down in hellfire, don't worry about my feelings. I've heard just about everything bad and I just don't care. If you do hate it though, just make sure you tell me why it sucks and offer ideas for improvement or I'll just make you guys listen to the same shitty problems over and over.

Thanks in advance!



Edit:

Decided to post info on our page about the process, so I'm copying it here too, making it readily available for you guys here too.

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We've got our process refined quite a bit from when we first started recording our shit. The "studio" we've been in is actually just a home studio that we just started to get clever with. The technical hurdles have been mostly worked around and we've got the capability to produce some decent stuff now right out of our practice space. Now it's time for these other fuckers to start collecting unemployment or something so we can get things really rolling.

For anyone interested in the setup/process, here's the short of it:

The drums were recorded with 4 dynamic mics in a "recorderman" setup (google it, I'm not explaining it)...3 of the very same ElectroVoice Cobalt 9's that we use for vocals, plus another (much crappier) cardioid dynamic. Decided to use the crap mic on the snare since it was deemed the "least necessary" and it was getting picked up in the overheads rather nicely anyway.

The bass is direct-in and guitars are all direct-in. Everything is recorded completely clean and effects are processed during mixing. The guitars get reamped through my Boss GT-10 (later on in the process, they might involve a step through our guitar heads instead of the preamp sims on the GT-10, but for now, it sounded fine) with a nearly identical effects chain as used when on stage. The bass ends up with a slight bit of distortion (provided by a simple tube preamp plugin) blended with the raw direct-in signal.

The vocals were recorded with a Cobalt 9 (as mentioned above), roughly 2 inches behind a pop screen with the mic placed just above the singer's mouth, angled down pointing at his mouth...this was all possibly overkill to make sure there was very little negative to the vocals as they came in.

Everything was recorded through an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra at sample rate of 88200 at 24-bit in Ardour. The GT-10 can only support 44100/24, and the M-Audio can only go as low as 48000/24 (in Linux at least), so the guitar tracks had special processing to make use of the GT-10 appropriately. They were recorded at 88200, like everything else, then that raw track is exported as 44100/24, processed through the GT-10, and the result is exported at 88200/24 and reimported back into the main project. I'm not sure of the exact impact these exports are having on my guitars, but it doesn't seem to be much...definitely much less than other methods attempted with many more Analog/Digital-Digtal/Analog conversions.

Also, since we're shitty musicians, we decided to pull out a metronome while tracking...something that has probably helped at least as much as anything else we've done. Though, because of some extra line inputs on the M-Audio, while grabbing drums we can basically pull in a "live" studio performance and retrack guitars and add vocals and just pretty it up later...both of these solutions came up as a solution for shit that just wouldn't line up right, timing-wise.

It's been a hell of a process...cool shit though. Enjoy.

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[jeffmaher]

lol.

Just keep playing and recording. The music's a little ragged...it'll tighten up in time.

The recorded sound lacks something. That'll come.

The vocal isn't buried, but I can't make it out, a lot. Mebbe that's cuz I'm old?

Keep on.

The bass is direct-in and guitars are all direct-in. Everything is recorded completely clean and effects are processed during mixing.

Aha!

That's a lot of over-cooking, I think. Get down to recording like real. I think you'll find gold you're dropping out of your pocket on purpose??

 

[the_sys0p]

Just keep playing and recording. The music's a little ragged...it'll tighten up in time.

Yep, agreed. This is a demo song, thrown together with very few takes mostly for working out the recording chain. It's also me doing everything except the lead vocals...I was able to wrangle the singer for a few takes...and while I can "do it all", I'm not practiced in that. The final product will have a lot more detail in this area, for sure. Though, I'll be the first to admit...even on our best days, we're still pretty shitty.

The recorded sound lacks something. That'll come.

The vocal isn't buried, but I can't make it out, a lot. Mebbe that's cuz I'm old?

Keep on.

I don't have trouble picking anything out of it, but maybe I'm too close to the music. Vocals are sort of the last instrument I've started to work with and I definitely need more practice with them. I feel like there's a lot of work to be done in this area, in both the performance and mixing of it. Any ideas for what might make it pop out a bit more? I could probably safely raise the level on it a little bit more, and possibly compress it a little harder (I think it was at around 3:1 for that) at least, I suppose...or maybe it just needs a little EQ help to separate it from the guitar a little better?

The bass is direct-in and guitars are all direct-in. Everything is recorded completely clean and effects are processed during mixing.

Aha!

That's a lot of over-cooking, I think. Get down to recording like real. I think you'll find gold you're dropping out of your pocket on purpose??

From what I understand, reamping (which is really what the majority of the "effects" are) is a fairly widespread practice? In my experience thus far, it's been incredibly valuable in the time department to have a "performance" recorded rather than a "final track" recorded, so that I can make changes to the amplification without rounding up the musician who played the part to retrack it. In my particular setup too, it actually helps me jump my other technical hurdle of my different pieces of hardware not being able to operate at the same sample rate. The drums are acoustic and must be recorded "like real" every time for sure. My guitars are being recorded through the exact same rig that my live performances come out of, just like any other time, and I'm just automating the performance part of it because I was thinking ahead enough to grab the signal straight from the source.

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it!