Live Recording Mix of Scar Tissue

[jimijazz]

Hey everyone,

I play in a cover band, and recorded one of our shows on which I've been practising my mixing skills. I have attached an excerpt.

So you know what to expect from the sound: It's not our best performance by any means. The vocalist was also moving away from the mic quite a lot. The vocal mic's catch a ton of bleed from the drums as well, so controlling the splash and sizzle was and is a challenge, as well as isolating any mixing to just vocals or just drums. ie: the snare sound is comprised of (to my frustration) the vocal mic and the overhead mics.

I have my bass going DI, the guitar amps are miked (Shure SM27's), 3 mics on the drum kit - 2 overheads and 1 kick (earthworks SR25's), and the vocals are recorded separately before the live mixer (and unfortunately had some output distortion from their vocal effects processors). I completely forget what the vocalists use as their mics, but the lead vocalist has a dynamic, and the backup has an electret condenser.

I also record with a Roland Octa-capture. It's a decent interface, but the quality of the sound I already know could be better with better preamps, analog-digital conversion, power supply isolation, and jitter control as with an RME, Antelope, or Prism Sound interface

Any feedback on the sound quality, considering my gear and miking situation, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bulls Hit]

On headphones it sounds thin. But its all clear, I can hear everything. Guitars sound good. I would try to get it all in the same space, the DI bass seems out on its own

 

[jimijazz]

On headphones it sounds thin. But its all clear, I can hear everything. Guitars sound good. I would try to get it all in the same space, the DI bass seems out on its own

Hmm yeah, I have spatial placement plugins, so that should be able to place the bass in the room. I'll work on the thinness too. thanks for the feedback!

 

[rob aylestone]

"Warning -Will Robinson"

You have spacial placement plugins??????

What's wrong with pan and a tiny bit of reverb?

It's a good recording, but just incredibly clean and bright sounding so perhaps that is why it doesn't sound real?

You mention a list of gizmos - better preamps, analog-digital conversion, power supply isolation, and jitter control as with an RME, Antelope, or Prism Sound interface.

NONE of those will improve your mix. My thinking is that it's a bit like when somebody buys a car, and spends huge time on buying after market bits and pieces to improve it. However - you've only recently passed your test, and only have a thousand miles under your belt, so have no idea of the actual improvement the new bits make. Your mix shows the classic signs of a beginners mix, which is totally fine. Plugins and jitter control, plus the other goodies are totally pointless - at the moment.

If you take a commercial CD and bring the audio into your editor digitally - at 44.1KHz, 16 bit - the same format that it's recorded in. Then you save the file as a 320Kb mp3, then do the same again at whatever lower rates your system supports - play them back and listen hard. Can you blind put them back into the correct quality order. Use a CD you know very well. Have somebody else press play, and train your ears. The things you mention will make smaller differences than this experiment.

Take your tracks, select a reverb for each of them that suits them, and makes some decisions on the type off reverb, the settings and the amount. Then use the pan function to find holes to shoot them into. Spend time with the individual eqs to sculpt each one so it sits, and then perhaps add some compression - the voice with the varying level might need a bit, as might the bass - you could even try it's effect on the drums. Loads of stuff to get comfy with it.

 

[jimijazz]

It's very useful to know that the preamps/conversion is not a priority right now, haha. I'll keep experimenting with pan, eq, compression, and reverb and see what I come up with. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[jimmys69]

Not bad for a live recording. Very separated with the guitars (L/R). I would try blending them a bit. Maybe a short plate verb in a group channel to open up the space a bit so they have a more live (shared space) feel.

The vocals need to come up and could use some manual level adjustment. But if that causes bleed from drums to interfere, then you can only do so much there.

I must say I am surprised you would have much issue with drum bleed through vocal mic. Is he sitting on drummers lap? lol! Dynamic mic I would assume? You may be able to get more control of vocals with a bit of manual editing of levels before going to compression for level control. Maybe solo the vocal first and see if you can do some surgical eq before effecting the track.

Overall it sounds pretty good man. Don't stress too much. Way better than a fan taking a cell phone video...