Mixing my first multitrack recording... please listen and tear apart

[wjgypsy]

I'm downloading it now, but because my computer is slow, i'll have to wait a little, but i'll get back to ya.

(Don't listen to Aphex. He's just a lawyer )

 

[wjgypsy]

Dude, this song is cool. I love the story and everything about it. On the neg. side:

The acoustic guitar: add maybe 2-3 db of high-end @ 4.00khz

The Lead vocal: Get closer to the mic. The vocal is too "Roomy sounding" The back ground vocals sound fine where they are.

When the chours comes in, add an electric guitar and turn the acoustic down some, until the next verse comes around.

The drums: TURN THEM UP! and work on the snare. What are you useing on the snare?

Turn the Sax up.

Turn the tamberine up a little

The sax seems a little out of time when it first comes in.

But i really like this song. It's alot like a late 60's song or a song that came out of a disney movie (Just kidding! )

Zeke

 

[FattMusiek]

I like the sound of the guitar in the intro. The vocals are pretty good as well. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but the hard right panned snare is buggin' me.

 

[TexRoadkill]

the current mix is trash. doomed. start over.

track each instrument seperately... meaning: mic up the drums with every mic you've got. make sure and put at least 2 mics 5' or more over the kit and one or two mics in adjacent corners of the room. if it is a small room cut a hole in the bottom of a bucket and put a mic approx. 6' to the front left area of the kit and about 4' in the air.

have the guitarist and bassist play along with the drummer but don't record them... just the drummer. make sure the drummer plays to a click track. make sure the drums are tuned. new heads, etc. tape the heads to eliminate ping. don't muffle them, just enough tape to keep the conch shell howl to a minimum. check the cymbals, too. a good crash fade is easy to hear, if it clips, then clean the cymbals and change the bushings.

if you track the guitar and bass clean (use 2 mics for each - a condenser mic for the bass, btw) then you can easily fix the levels in the mix. get at least 3 takes from both so you can double the guitars and pan the bass where necessary.

track the vocals last. condenser of course. have the singer get as close to the pop screen as possible. easy on compression. you can add that later. get at least 4 takes. when the singer needs to increase the volume or decrease the volume of their voice move closer and farther from the mic, respectively. the more takes you can get the better. cut-paste-copy-paste, etc.

the bottom line is to get as clean and dry of a recording from each instrument as possible. make sure you use at least 2 mics for each. one mic placed at the 4 o' clock position on the amp speaker (and about 1" from the outer ring of the cone and 1" perpendicular to it), and one mic place about 4 or so feet back from the amp and off to the right or left by about 20 degrees. add a 3rd mic in the corner of the room and about 4' in the air. once the mix is done you can add these peripheral mics into the mix to 'enlarge the room'. fill instruments (sax, p'ching guitare, etc.) can be added later. get the meat mix down first.

is that detailed enough?

I've never seen anyone post such detailed bullshit before. If someone didn't know any better they might think you almost know what you are talking about

 

[sprynmr]

I like the sound of the guitar in the intro. The vocals are pretty good as well. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but the hard right panned snare is buggin' me.

It was intentional, but maybe too much of it. I was told about panning the pieces of the set from left to right to coincide with where the physically are.

Hmm.. I actually didn't think the sax was off. I mean... the fills do a lot with syncopation... that could throw you off some I guess. Not sure. I'll listen again tomorrow with fresh ears.

I noticed the lead vocals has some strong 'P's that pop some. And I think some F's. We do eventually need a better vocal recording mic... but I think maybe we need a screen for his mic in the meantime. Yes, no? Its a shure sm58.

I guess i never said what the mics were. The drums are mic'd with 5 sm57's and unforunately 2 vocal mics that aren't so hot. I put them on the snare and the bass drum. Someone recommended putting one of the vocals on the snare since that is what we have to work with for now... but I put the other vocal on the bass drum under my own opinion that the other stuff would sound a lot worse than this.

We mic'd the acoustic guitar and fed in the line, so we have both on the recording. I really do like how they mesh together better than how they sound separate. We redid the rhthym guitar today for this song because one of the problems I was hearing is that he was a little out of tune. We'll see how that sounds in the next couple days. Didn't feel like lugging all the equipment back to my house from where we practice since we'll be recording again tomorrow and the next day.

We mic'd the bass guitar amp from about 6 " away and fed the line from that.

The sax I mic'd with my clip on mic (made by K&K sound, its pretty nice,) and the shure sm58. I ended up only using the clip on tracking because the sm58 track didn't seem to add much of anything.

We don't have compressors to run the drum mics through, so I'm working with my drummer to get him to play in a more limited range for now... because before I was setting the levels so his louds wouldn't clip... but then the rest of the song that wasn't so loud was too soft on the recording. I mean, I ran compressors on them in the software (waves L1) but the sound is lacking.

As for panning the rest of the instruments what do you recommend?

I have heard to put the bass and lead vocal dead center. I put the sax off to the left. I put the guitar off to the left but not as far.


Today we recorded the drums for the next song, but we did so with a click. It seemed to go a LOT better and I think this song will have far less rhthym problems. (I always forget how you spell rhthym... but never care to run a spell checker because I'll just forget again.)

Do you guys recommend at all getting a headphone amp and then micing a couple instruments individually, but play together? This seems to partially lose the benefit of multitracking to me, but I see uses for having the headphone amp/splitter anyway.

Well the mix may not be fully up to speed... but I garauntee its better than most all the cd's from the press kits the local bars get. And this is the idea for now. To get an 'ok' cd made by ourselves, as long as I can do it, so we can save money from the gigs we play and then in awhile do an actual studio thing.

Anyway... thanks for all the help. Seriously has helped tremendously.

(Minus super_C, who's last post made me think he's either dramatically lower in age than I thought, or just a very very unhappy man who really hates life. Maybe try and figure out why you aren't happy instead of spending your time bashing me. Honestly... do you really understand that this is HOME-recording.com and that there are a bunch of people like me who want to get better? Why bother telling them they aren't a pro and should quit? What does it accomplish? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of this forum? I don't get it... I just honestly don't comprehend your motives or what you think you are accomplishing. Why not help people instead if you know so much?)

Thanks a ton,
Robert

 

[Track Rat]

Personally, I'd highly recommend a headphone setup for all and try to isolate instruments as much as is practical while still playing the tune together as a band. Sometimes leakage is a good thing but if your space isn't acousticly great (like 95% of most home studios) it can kill you.

 

[FattMusiek]

It was intentional, but maybe too much of it. I was told about panning the pieces of the set from left to right to coincide with where the physically are.

Robert

Yeah, that's the idea but the snare is way too far on the right. It separates itself too much from the rest of the kit.

 

[erichenryus]

i really like this song! lot's of potential in it but the mix needs some work imo. i can't be real specific since i'm listening on crappy headphones but the drums really stuck out as needing the most help. they just lacked punch and the timing was a little loose for my taste. this one should be locked into a tight groove. lead vocal sounded a little to out front too. and i rarely ask for the vocals to be turned down.

i listened to mix #2 btw.

 

[participant]

Bear with me sprynmr... there's no good monitoring room here yet (just the computer speakers ) so I've jacked in some Sennheiser HD280's (better, anyway)

Haven't read other responses BTW; (trying to hit a lot more threads tonite), so...

Here goes...

Dryish... nice acoustic thing going on... good vocal performance. What was your vocal mic? I'm guessing you used a SD condenser. To my HD280'ed ears, your vocal could benefit from a larger diaphragm mic... one that sounds a bit "darker", like an AT4047. Some plosives in your delivery. Are you using a pop-screen?

Overall, the thing that strikes my ear is the very dry feel.... needs some warmth... natural reverb... as this will tend to "glue" your separate-sounding tracks together.

Drums are crisp... snare sounds "out of position" if that makes sense... up too high in the mix and a bit too far right...

Good performances... some timing issues... no real major EQ issues here, IMO, except the possible lack of lows in your mix... it's top heavy. A good solid low-end on bass could bring everything together.

If you can set up a medium-dark room reverb, and feed some of your tracks into it in such a way that the closest stuff is "dryest" (vocals) and the furthest back has the most (drums) it may give the song a more "natural" and not so disjointed sound. Play around with reverb... start with about 10% verb/ 90% dry on the vocals and go from there.


Good luck with the song


Chad

 

[sprynmr]

Bunch of fixes here...

Fixed the drums a decent amount. I think they are at least ok sounding now.

Added a little dark reverb.. (too much?)

Got a new rhthym guitar track.

Changed levels up...

http://www.5thstreetband.com/internaldl.html

(grab mix 3)

I know I'll hear problems in the morning... but my ears are dead.

Let me know if its an improvement or if it just plain sucks.

~Robert

 

[erichenryus]

ok, you asked in the thread title to tear it apart. so here you go. but mind you i'm only saying these things cause i think you have a really good song here. i am not a_super_erichenryus. i'm just being honest.

1. the drums are ruining this recording. the meter and timing are just really bad imo. i would start over from the ground up. go get some loops and piece together a tight foundation first.

2. Get Lt. Bob to take the sax solo.

3. rerecord the guitars. they were the best part of the recording imo. and with an solid rythm section beneath you, you'll be able to lock it in.

4. sing it again, and back off the mic when you start blowing, cause i hear some clipping.

take it or leave it. i know this is a band effort but if you wrote this song, i'd just give it a try without them and see what happens.

 

[sprynmr]

ok, you asked in the thread title to tear it apart. so here you go. but mind you i'm only saying these things cause i think you have a really good song here. i am not a_super_erichenryus. i'm just being honest.

Don't worry about it... I can handle constructive crit.

1. the drums are ruining this recording. the meter and timing are just really bad imo. i would start over from the ground up. go get some loops and piece together a tight foundation first.

I know we really do have to redo the whole thing and use a click or something. I think drummer's main problem with this is that we recorded a reference guitar and vocal track for him to follow, but they weren't to a click or anything. And without a real rhthym of some sort, they take huge license with changing the tempo up all the time. So our drummer was trying hard to stay with the recording. I don't know... the rest of the guys are still having trouble staying with the click in their headphones though. Not sure what to do about that. I spent 5 years in a marching band where a 'Dr. Beat' through a speaker phone drilled tempos into my bone marrow. But they have a different history with music.

2. Get Lt. Bob to take the sax solo.

Yea my solo sucks. Its way held back. I was concentrating too much on the recording and just didn't rip into it.

3. rerecord the guitars. they were the best part of the recording imo. and with an solid rythm section beneath you, you'll be able to lock it in.

Our guitarists are awesome. Actually the singer is one of the guitar players. He wrote this song, but our lead guitarist writes a lot of our songs too. So I can't take credit for it.

4. sing it again, and back off the mic when you start blowing, cause i hear some clipping.

I think I compressed him a bit too much and that's where the clipping is coming from. Because we had no clipping on the record.

take it or leave it. i know this is a band effort but if you wrote this song, i'd just give it a try without them and see what happens.

We really do nail it when we play it as a band. Everything is 10 fold better. Thanks for your help though.
~Robert

 

[TripleM]

I listened to mix #3. Decent song. Nice melody. I liked the singer. Pretty good playing all around I thought. But it got a little sloppy around 2:03-2:10. Cool thing with the vocals at around :53.

Something about the acoustic guit I didn't like. It lacked a little midrange presence. A little muffled sounding.

Little plosive at :23. Couple of other spots too.

Weird reverb trail with the vocal at the very end. A long predelay.

The sax didn't sit quite right. It "sticks out"a little bit. Maybe pull them back and add a little (more) reverb.

I think doubled vocals would sound cool on this song. I'd bring up the backing vocals just a bit. And double them too. Just my opinion...

Hope some of this helps.

 

[TripleM]

i am not a_super_erichenryus.

Oh yes he is. Don't let him try to fool you.

 

[erichenryus]

Yea my solo sucks. Its way held back. I was concentrating too much on the recording and just didn't rip into it.

oooops. sorry about the lt. bob comment. . i guess i just assumed that you sang and played guitar like every other person around here (not including myself). hey, i'm a drummer by trade and i usually employ a bunch of loops for my own drum tracks!

basically, i'm saying that this is a very good (and perhaps marketable) song. i think you should just spend more time on the next recording of it. some songs deserve the effort and this is one of them.

best of luck.

 

[sprynmr]

ahhh nothing wrong... its true.

I sorta figured you were referring to me being named Bob (which is what they call me,) and saying put some balls into it. Which is what it needs.

Thanks for your help though,
Bob

 

[drstawl]

Whatup....

Multitrack recording with a Digi 001.

Recording went well. Mixing is tough.

Give a listen and critique it (a lot) if you can.

And I'd like to 'fatten' the sax s... act. THAT'S WHAT THE MOUSE IS FOR!!! LOL!!