"Living A Lie" (Punk-Rock)

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Recording Engineer

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Alright, since we were talking about being "satisfied" with our setups in the Rack Forum, I though I'd post this for fun... This is what I when I say I've actually been feeling good lately with my setup, but if I only could get people in here to actually take a reasonable amount of time that it actually takes!

So this weekend I did some recording for a high school punk-rock band. The goal? A 2-song demo. I REALLY recommended a total of 16-20 hours for this, but what you gonna do when they say their budget is 10 hours? So, a 4 hour session and a 6 hour session is what it was!

Drums:

My small 5-piece Premier jazz set (20" kick). Drummer brought some Sabian hats.

Due to the minimal time, we went with a 4-mic setup, even though I was really itching for the time to thow-up tom mics, I left it since there would be no time to play at mixdown!

Overheads were a matched-pair of Neumann TLM-103s about 2 feet over the cymbals, pointing straight to the floor. Right OV was covering the edge of the thin crash cymbal and over the high rack-tom. Left OV was the on the edge of the med. crash and ride, and over beteen the mid rack-tom and floor tom. These were fed to a DaviSound TB-3 preamp/compressor (no compression used, Tube was OUT) and into an Alesis HD24.

Snare had a Beyerdynamic M201N(C) to a Mackie XDR preamp on my 32-ch. Mackie VLZ PRO, out the Insert, and to the recorder. The mic was positioned about 1.5 inches in and 3 inches above the snare, and pointing across the batter head.

Kick had a Beyerdynamic M88N(C) to a Mackie XDR preamp on my 32-ch. Mackie VLZ PRO, out the Insert, and to the recorder. The mic was positioned so that the grill was just inside the kick and pointing directly at the beater. The rosonant head was off the kick.

I don't remember any of the guitars they used (actually one was a cheap Squier), but they used 2 different Marshall combos and 1 Fender Princeton 65 DSP.

All guitar tracks were recorded either with a Shure SM-57 or a Electro-Voice 635a, into a DaviSound TB-3 (no compression was used, Tube was OUT), into the recorder.

Bass was a Mexican Fender Jazz Bass ( Squier Series), to a Mackie XDR preamp on my 32-ch. Mackie VLZ PRO, out the Insert, to a Urei LA-3A, to the recorder.

Vocals were cut on a Neumann 103 through a DaviSound TB-3 with compression (Tube was OUT), to a Urei LA-3A, to the recorder.

The mix was nextvto nothing... Slapped the bass guitar with some dbx 160X compression, grouped the drums to a stereo buss and strapped it with DaviSound TB-3 compression (Tube was OUT), added a room effect to the vocals, a reverb to the snare, EXTREMELY minimal EQ, and there you have it! essentially, we have a glorified monitor mix here! Both songs tracked, mixed, in the computer, edited, and ready to burn all in 10 hours flat!

So, if you care to here it, listen to "Living A Lie" on this page:
http://home.attbi.com/~jwbros/Samples_Mp3s.html
 
personally I don't like when the backgr vocals are louder than the singer... anyway, the drummer seems to have serious timing problems
- u should bring the vocals, drums and bass up (just my opinion)

cheers
 
Thanks for the listen.

Wouldn't that mean bring down the guitars?

Actually, I like the instrument volume mix, considering the circumstances.

I agree, the backing vocals are too loud, but I think that's because they were setup for the other song and I didn't pay any attention to them in this song. Not enough time to pay attention to them!

I actually like the lead vocal volume for the style. My only complaint is that they needed to come up in the bridge, even though it almost sounds intentional. But, on very narrow-band, cheapo $10 computer speakers, that issue is hardly noticeable.

Truth is, the band factored-in literally next to nothing for mixing, even after they were highly recommended to do so before the project even began!
 
i record a lot of local punk bands...and i'dsay the following about your mix:

a - make the rhythm guitars louder then you'd think (they are pretty quiet)
b- backround vox should be a lot quieter
c - whenever that "lead" guitar chords/harmony comes in, it is ICREDIBLY louder then EVERYTHING else in the song! haha. That should come way down too.
d - yeah the drummer sucks...ha


but e - god damn does everhthing sound really precise and awesome and pro compared to mine! ha. My 1 billion hour projects i cant get to sound as clean and warm etc. etc. as that.

overall, i guess its just you not putting much time into it, haha, as you said though.

anyway - i like hearing stuff like this, because i record these kinds of bands every month, haha!
 
"make the rhythm guitars louder then you'd think (they are pretty quiet)"

Ha! That was the first thing I noticed!

Really though, it's the band not putting much time into it... An hour to mix, pump it into the computer, and edit these 2 songs (this one 18 tracks, the other 16 tracks I think) simply isn't enough time... Not when I've been in pro studios where the engineer takes anywhere from 4-hours up to 3 12-hour days to mix one 24-track song!!! Hell, give me 2 hours a song and I would have been completely happy!

But anyway, that was the point with this. I'm feeling good about my raw tracks. Now if only I could get some bands in here to take the time it takes to laydown good solid timing drum tracks (instead of going with the first or second take, which quite frankly is not much more than pure slop) and THEN take the time it takes to develop a mix, then BOTH they and I might actually have an end product we're proud of! Instead, we have a glorified monitor mix!!!

This one right here is a TOTAL waste of good sounding raw tracks! If they at least would have taken the time to get the drum timing right, they could at least come-back at a later date to mix when they had the money. And if that sounded like it wasn't going to happen, I would have offered to do it at no charge, but that's out of the question with those drum tracks... I tell ya, I warn them every time we start the project, but no one ever listens!

Sorry for the rant here, little frustrated!

So any good band or solo artist want to hire me? I'm super cheap...
 
shackrock said:
My 1 billion hour projects i cant get to sound as clean and warm etc. etc. as that.
Click to expand...

Well let me let you and anyone else who reads this in on a little secret... My recordings improved 10-fold simply by biting the bullet and going ahead and purchasing some "real" monitors! Amazing what happens when you can actually hear what you're doing!!! Just think when I actually get use to them in a few years!
 
Okay, my post just got eaten by my interent connection. Let's see if I can remember what I said...

It went something like this: what everybody said about the playing and the levels, yeah. But what strikes me most about this mix is how busy and intense it is, yet how every element of the mix sounds good and clear and *doesn't hurt* to listen to. It's a real achievement. I know RE's a pro and has skill both to the left and to the right, but I l think that, even if I take his skill into account, he's still a walking endorsement for his gear.

Yeah, yeah, I know that experience is more important than gear. But RE said that this mix is pretty much straight out of the box. So how do you account for the good, good sound other than:

1 good mics

2 good mic placement

???

Yeah, they're a good band despite the drummer, but that isn't why they sound good on this mp3.
 
My Soundblaster and I are humbled before you. This was tracked and mixed very very damn good. THe tones are rich. Yup, this is good pie... lets eat.
They should have took turns kickin each other in the butt for not mowing a few more lawns to buy that extra 4 hrs to work on their timing and meter.
 
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