Just because mixmkr asked!

  • Thread starter Thread starter sonusman
  • Start date Start date
A1A2, neither of these songs, nor the Silky mix I posted a while back were done with much more cool stuff than many around here have. The Silky stuff enjoyed a nice class A signal path on the voice, and the Secret Heart song enjoyed a class A pre on vocals and acoustic guitars. But overall, it was SM 57's, AT 4033's, ART pre's, and Mackie pre's that this stuff was done on. NONE of it was tracking in nice acoustical environments at all!!! Silky and Secret Heart were done in basements!!! Not Russ Berger designed basements. Just basements with foam and shit on the walls. :D BMW was tracked in a live club. It DID have high ceilings though which is nice. No walls within like 12' of any instrument.

I think a lot can be done with cheap gear if you are careful. I indeed love having great signal path's to work with, but the cheap stuff can work fine if you have some basis to work off of. Luckily, I have done enough work on some nice gear to have a reference, so whan I have to use cheaper gear, I can at least hear when I am close, and assess when I have possibly taken it as far as it will go.

Ed
 
yeah, I remember hearing you mentioning your "not-so-ideal"
setup with nice results before, and I have heard mp3s to prove that, too. I guess knowing what results you want is the key. I, personally, try to get the "fullest" sound when tracking each instrument simply because I don'k know what the whole mix needs, and I have not gotten any good results yet....

Maybe a good reference is what we all need. Kinda wish there is a CD with individual dry tracks and the final mix, so we can actually realize what to aim for when tracking. Is there such thing avaliable??

Thanks for the encouragement, Ed. I better start working on tracking techniques now.

ps. Which one is the Silky song?? I only have your Skyblue, Mirror cut, and Diablot ones.

AL
 
ED,

Once again a fabulous & educating post !!

Thanks !

I have a request though...

If the occasion arises, I (and I bet others) would love to hear a Mix before, then after you have mastered it.

Is this a possibility ??



Sean
 
Ed, you're a champ for posting. Had to quickly go out of town for the week, but I came back, saw your post, played your song, and loved it. On a real quick reply for now, I thought everything was great, the vocal sound was a little "metallic" sounding for a lack of better words, but very good though. And yes...once you're satisfied, you're doomed.. the best attitude...you've got. All in all, I really liked this tune, the way the gtrs sat, the lead solo instrument for contrast, the vocal style, the mixing, and just the song in general. It was a real winner.. I liked it all. And I even liked the fact that my [cyber]name was in your post title!!..

thanks again for a great song to post. I really enjoyed it. When I have more time, I will go back over and read the other comments, and scan thru some of the other threads too. But for now, this was a pleasant "first" song to listen to upon returning home. :)
 
Secret Heart sounds great. Definitely a pro job there.

BMW sounds great especially for a live recording. It also made me smile :D
 
Damn, I wanted to hear this and Nowhere is not coming in at the moment. Anybody whos getting great results with Tube MPs and Mackie boards is my hero! I will try again.
 
I'm on it... Seems the 'new' company that took over the one I had a deal with has fucked up 'again'. The impression I got from calling their support line is that they are extremely green, nobody will be available until TOMORROW AFTERNOON to look at the problem. So we can only hope it'll fix itself.

As soon as I can find the money, I'm moving off of these twits.

W.
 
Waldo--thanks for the reply. I'm sure you'll get it all straight. Sometimes, we do the best we can and somebody else comes in and screws wth us.
 
Glad you enjoyed it mixmkr! I realized in your other thread that indeed, I tend to put up push mixes or stuff that I have worked on lately that I didn't really care for. It is too bad that lately, many of the projects I have worked on are not as good as some of the stuff I have done in the past. But that is the way it goes in this town. Either too low budget's, or "POS" bands that would be better off paying for music lessons and purchasing better gear! Combined with the "studio on each street corner" trend, the ratio of good vs not so good projects have tended to lean towards not so good lately. But this year is actually looking up a bit!

I agree with the vocal on Secret Heart. This singer is just plain weird to try to record. When we mixed that CD, two songs needed to have the vocal retracked because of some overlooked performance problems. I was hired to retrack them, so I got a first hand listen to his voice while tracking. The tracking engineer told me what he had tried to get a "nicer" sound on this dudes voice, and I proceeded to try the same things. 7 different mics, and a few different pre's. This AKG 414/Focusrite combo was the only combo that minimized that "metallic" effect on his voice to levels that were workable. I did tracked the other two vocals with an ART ProMP, and while there was certain qualities that improved, there were qualities that were worse. In the end, neither pre with that mic delivered fully what I wanted to hear. I was amazed myself! I have never tracked singer that had so much midrange aggression in his voice. He is in another band now and I got to hear some tracks he did in another studio with a Nuemann TL 103 and Avalon combo. Not a lick of improvement! The engineeer was complaining about how hard his voice is to record. Just one of those things.

I think the mp3 conversion didn't help much (it never seems to add any body to the overall sound eh? :)) Also, this is not the mastering job I decided upon as a final. This just happened to be the version I had on a CDR that I came across the other day. I do have a final version somewhere with a little less hyped hi's. All in all though, this is a decent sounding mp3.

Take a listen to BMW though!

Ed
 
Sonus, a year or two ago I listend to a mix you put up here in the clinic, and I said something like: "I think I'll just give up now," and you said something like: "Just keep at it, and your mixes will get better, guaranteed." Well, you were right, and my mixes are getting better. But they're nowhere near this good - it's not just that everything's clear and balanced, but for me the best thing is more a matter of how you can get certain things like the vocal or the acoustic guitar to stand out with all that other NOISE going on and still sounding well-defined. (Aside from all that, I like this song.)

Having said that, I'm listening through my Sennheisers, and they favor low end a bit. And the vocal's ever so slightly strident through these cans, so I reckon it's got a hefty load of upper end, and that you compressed the fuck out of it. Any points for a clever guess? No? LOL

I'll keep listening and approximating my stuff to yours.
 
Oh yeah! Here we have a great song and a great recording to boot. I just listened to secret heart by the way. Great vocal and vocal take, despite the difficulties. You made this singer sound really good. Drums are killer. Man, I love the sound of the snare. Whole track sounds great. Love the song too!

Now, lets see? Where did I put those Tube Mp's and Mackie board of mine? Gotta dust those bastards off and cut some tracks soon!

Sonusman--you are my hero. I'm convinced more than ever in the performance being the most important aspect of a record. I've been listening to the "listening sessions" and all the mics and pres. My feeling is that a mic change is about 50% noticeable and a pre change is about 5% noticable. The whole world will hear the difference between a good and bad performance. ABout 10%, I guess, would hear the different qualities of various microphones. About 1% would ever notice the difference between a 100 dollar preamp and a 4000 dollar one, I suspect. Great work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top