just looking for honest feedback

shortedaman said:
re worked runaway. please have a listen at this new mix. am i headed in the right direction? can yall see improvements? and what still needs to be improved?

http://www.soundclick.com/dhsh
Click to expand...

Didn't catch the first mix...

Could do with a better drummer, very sloppy. That's the first thing that takes the whole thing down a notch for me.

The drum sound is pretty bad too. Barely hear any kick drum. The snare drum sounds like a cardboard box. Toms could use more punch. Only thing I'm digging is the cymbals and hi-hats. I understand you're bouncing everything down before it gets to your interface but does the mixer you're using have any insert effects on it? Metal drums = compressed to hell and back and then compressed some more. But they all need their own levels/settings of compression, simply compressing the drum bus won't get the right effect.

The vocals don't really sit in the mix, they sound "on top" of the entire song.

The whole mix just needs more tightness, more "in your face". The guitars sound tinny and lifeless. It sounds like it was recorded in a garage through one mic and then vocals added over it.
 
First off I dig the tunes, some cool stuff going on there. As for drums, but not sure if it's an option or not. You might have better luck with the drums programmed and then trigger samples. Then you wouldn't have to worry about a stereo bounce. This genre is all kick and snare they need to be heard.
 
Wow. Well, you absolutely have to get more than two simultaneous inputs going. You will never get a reasonable recording trying to run it like live sound, and capturing your mix live, into summed stereo, not with performances this haphazard and sloppy. You have to be able to manipulate individual instruments in post-production. Here's a list of the things I'm currently hearing (This is runaway mix 2):

1) No kick drum whatsoever; no "ass" in the drums at all, it's all overheads, WAY too hot on the cymbals, not nearly enough on the kick and the bottom end in general.
2) It took the drummer less than three bars to completely abandon the tempo he counted in. But that's performance, not recording.
3) The "vocals" (is that what those are?) are so close-in compared to the rest of the field, it's like you're in the 15th row in a big empty hall listening to the band but the singer is sitting in your lap, screaming directly into you ear. You have an artificially augmented sense of distance and separation fore to aft, and it's not in a good way. The reverb curves from one track to another are seemingly random.
4) The guitars, especially the lead, seem to be reasonably well-recorded. The place they sit in the field vertically is where you should have everything else.
5) I can tell there's a bass there; but it lacks any punch or definition at all.

If the players were super tight (they aren't), well-rehearsed (they aren't), and disciplined players (they aren't), you could probably capture them better, but until you get 8-16 tracks inbound at the same time, (Even five, if you were doing "Recorderman" method on the drums, plus two tracks for guitar/bass, then you could overdub 2nd guitar and vox...) but like you stand, you won't be able to balance off randomness like this no matter how hard you try. I wish I had a better story. It's clear that you want to do your best, but are at this time equipment-limited.
 
shortedaman said:
am i making headway? im talking all tracks. intro, runaway, and conquerors.

http://www.soundclick.com/dhsh
Click to expand...

I guess you're technically making a little headway. It's still really bad though. You're not gonna be successful at recording this kind of music until you get the drums right. These drums are terrible. This whole band is terrible. You still gotta capture them properly though. You need more inputs. Working with a stereo mix aint gonna cut it.
 
You have your work cut out for you if you are really going to try get a good mix with your method. I would recommend first off getting an interface with at least 8 or 16 channels, if that's not possible and you are still going to try to get a good mix through a stereo (2 track) mix then the technique will be the same, just not as easy and in a different order. If you could mix your individual tracks after the tracking then you would just have to get a nice clean tone and then mix away afterwards until everything sounded right. Since you are summing to 2 channels during tracking then you are require to mix each instruments sound perfectly before tracking, which is much more difficult, especially if you don't have a good system to listen on. That way what you record is what you get. Here are some ideas for making this sound mixed.

First off - the biggest problem is the bass area. The bass and kick drum are lost in the same place, if you could eq a space in the bass for the kick to sit, then it would be a lot better. Some of the lows in the bass need to for sure be a little cut anyways.

Do you have any analog compressors or eq? If so, I would send your drum channels to a stereo compressor or eq, then adjust them as a set of tracks before you start recording, focusing on the kick and snare.

Your toms have great tone, but the snare has no tone at all.

Raise your overhead mics up just a little, or run your overhead tracks to an eq and compress before recording if possible on drums.

If you don't plan on re-recording and still want to try to improve the mix, get a Mutli-Band Compressor Plugin. That will give you a little more control over what frequencies you can adjust and how you adjust them.

Here is a clip of what I did with a Multiband compressor in about 5 minutes. This may put you on the path to making it sound better, or help you for next time. The bass still needs to be eq'd better, the guitars are a bit bright and overheads would really benefit from compression, but this can help you get the idea of how to improve.

Sample Multi-band Compressing

Just my 2 cents :)

Joe.
 
conquerors is the track i think is the best sounding so far. unfortunately i am not going to re record the drums parts. i spent 6 weeks with these guys trying to do just the drums. they had me redo them so many times. drummer wouldn't play to a click, yet wanted everything perfect, and as you can tell still isn't. i will be however re recording the bass parts. i will be performing them myself, their bassist isn't that good. IMO i think the lead guitarist carries the whole band. the rhythm guit. is pretty good too.

what i thought about doing was to take the drum track and creating an identical pair. then high passing one at around 300-400 and low passing the other at about the same freq. then messing with the eq's and such for the two separate high/low tracks. does this sound like a good idea?
 
shortedaman said:
c

what i thought about doing was to take the drum track and creating an identical pair. then high passing one at around 300-400 and low passing the other at about the same freq. then messing with the eq's and such for the two separate high/low tracks. does this sound like a good idea?
Click to expand...

You can try it, but no. Nothing is gonna work. Without having individual tracks to work with, you are stuck with what you got.
 
Greg_L said:
You can try it, but no. Nothing is gonna work. Without having individual tracks to work with, you are stuck with what you got.
Click to expand...

it might give it a tad more dimension, but it's still not going to give you the desired results. Echoing my own and many other comments, until you multitrack the drums so you have individual control, you're stuck with a poor mix. Go you YouTube and look up "Recorderman Technique", it's the best two-mic drum acquisition technique available, IMHO. People here use it with great success...
 
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