my 1st attempt

J

jrich

New member
Hi everyone.

This is my first try at recording and mixing and entire song so I'm looking for some feedback so I can improve.

It is a cover of Engine #9 by the deftones, so please no comments on song structure or anything, also the drumming is done by our guitarist and the singing by someone who can't sing (me). So there are a few messups, and some out of key singing (but its mostly growling/yelling)

I just want tips on how to improve the mix/recording. It is a pretty straightforward song without a lot of dynamics. Go ahead and be brutal if you must, but please tell me why and what I should do to fix the problem. When I get a chance I will post some of our originals for comment.

high quality mp3 - 5.5mb


normal quality mp3 - 2.7mb


Thanks in advance. I'll post later how it was recorded if anyone is interested.

josh
 
Not too shabby. It could use some over all sparkle (a bit more snap on the snare, Guitars a little more in your face). The vocal is a little low in the mix too but that may be by choice. Not bad at all.:cool:
 
Thanks for the comment.

I forgot to mention that I don't have any monitors yet, so I just checked it in as many places as possible.

I agree it seems to be missing some sparkle, I don't know where to add eq for that, or if I just can't get any because of the tracking. The snare sound I don't like too much, I think the mic got moved after it was setup because I had a better sound before (could i eq it somewhere to give it a bit more snap? I don't remember the settings right now)

The vocal is low by choice, I felt that it fit better with the song...plus I didn't want my out of key singing to stand out. I can't wait to record some originals because our singer has an amazing voice.

thanks,
josh
 
Not bad at all for a practice recording. It's got a cool feel to it. Work on your drum sound and tighten up the bass and you'll probably have some cool shit.
 
This is a nicely constructed song, but there are some technical issues. The levels are very low in much of the song. You're not using all of the "space" available to you in each track (or in the total mix) which is contributing to the "lack of sparkle". Watch the levels when you playback your mix, you're not getting anywhere near the redline. You don't want to clip it, but you're giving away way too much range. There are only a few places where the drums get the levels up. The other tracks are very quiet. Check your levels when your recording to make sure you're near the redline (but not over). You'll get a better sound.
 
not bad at all.
cant wait to hear your original stuff.

when the rhtym guitar blasts in in the begining...how did you do that?

what did you record with? direct input? amp micing?
did you do any layering? did you pan the tracks? add reverb? delay?

i need to know. :)
 
thanks

Thanks xalien for the critique.

I realize the levels are low for much of the song. I have some peaks, and the place at the end with the continuous floor tom has some higher levels than the rest.

I don't want to bring the tom down too much because it seems that it won't be loud enough then.

I recorded everything as hot as possible and then mixed from there. Should I record everything as close to the final volume as possible?

I think the way that I am supposed to fix that is to compress the whole mix a bit so I can raise the levels because if i raise the volume now then I will clip in different places. I didn't do this because I haven't been able to find a good compression setting that sounds natural. I will admit that the final volume level on a lot of the instruments is below zero. I think I brought the guitars all the way down to -14 so they didn't overpower the drums. Will compressing the drums as a whole separate from the rest of the instruments help here? I'm just having a hard time figuring out the right course of action.

thanks,
josh
 
what i did

Cyan,

It's really a very simple recording. I recorded into my computer using an Aardvark q10 and all of its pres. The bass is direct.

The guitars are just an sm57 right at the center of one of the cones on a marshall half stack that the guitar player had setup like he likes it. The guitars are panned at about 70 to each side I think. All I did was record the right guitar then have him replay for the left guitar.

I had a few mic's set up on the cab, so during the parts where there is no palm mute I brought up the volume of one of the other mics just a bit. No reverb. no delay. just some eq and compression. Like i said, this is my first full song and I wanted to keep it fairly simple because I am still understanding how to properly use different fx.

Oh, the very beginning guitar intro thingy I just dropped the volume really low and added a lot of reverb (i forgot what kind) then when the song starts the levels are just set normal...I wish it would pop a bit more when it first comes in though. It still isn't "in your face" enough.

thanks everyone who's listened,
josh
 
Compression will help the different tracks sit together better. You should try it on individual tracks that need it before applying it the whole song. Bass, kick, snare and vocals commonly need some compression.

One trick in fast rock music is to submix the drums and bass to another track and compress the shit out of it so it is breathing and pumping with the beat. Then mix that in with the uncompressed drum and bass to give it a little more oomph.
 
Thanks Cyan!

I think thats a bit more credit than I deserve, but its appreciated nonetheless.

Tex,

Thank for the advice, I might try to go back and re-adjust the compression for each track, or wait til I do the next song. I do have compression on kick/snare/bass, but I think its fairly light, maybe I'll try to smash it a bit more. I was afraid to use too much, so I went pretty light with everything. The biggest problem I have is the floor tom near the end of the song, its taking up more room than the rest of the mix, but if I bring its volume down, it seems too low, maybe its just me?

I like that tip about the submix, I'll try that and see what happens.

thanks,
josh
 
TexRoadkill said:

One trick in fast rock music is to submix the drums and bass to another track and compress the shit out of it so it is breathing and pumping with the beat. Then mix that in with the uncompressed drum and bass to give it a little more oomph.
Click to expand...

interesting... i hadn't really thought of that. of course, normally that is somthing you try to avoid, but done just the right amount it probably would really help establish the groove. nice tip. ill save it.
 
Man, I wish that this thing had loaded to Winamp instead of RealOne Player.

First off, basically it's a really well mixed song for what you had to work with. Your geetar player is using the basic "Scooped Mids" sound so the only way you are going to get the Axe in your face is to add some mids. I have the free version of RealOne so I only have bass, mid, and treble controls on the EQ. I added about 3 Db of treble, 6 to 7 Db to mids, and about 3 Db to the bass. Real improvement in the overall sound and brought the Guitars out and the vocals too. The snare now sounds like it is sitting right between your legs and the floor tom and bass is separated like they should be near the end of the tune. The bass drum is now distinguishable, also.

Sometimes, the fix is really simple when you have good tracks to work with and you did.

Man, the Scooped Mids thing on guitar works well as long as you realize that when you scoop em, you are sucking the life out of a guitar's frequency range. So many guitarists do not understand this simple matter and wonder WHY??? they are not cutting through the mix or the band.

BHS;

CR
Bethel
 
hey axe.

Thanks for the eq tip. I'll see what happens when I add some eq to the whole mix, after it was mixed I just left everything alone...

What interests me is the scooped mids sound...I understand what you mean about that as I have read multiple times that that doesn't work as well on recording as it does live, only...our guitar player doesn't scoop his mids.

He has a basic marshall head with two distortions..I think this was using the second distortion that i BELIEVE has a low/mid/treble adjustmetn (correct me if i'm wrong) He has the low and treble at i'd say both approx. 3/4 of the way and the mid is all the way up as high as it can go (this is from memory so i don't know about the low/treble, but I noticed his mid was cranked all the way up after reading about a scooped mid sound to see what his was)

I'll check to see if I scooped any myself...its possible, which could account for that. Or maybe it just still needed more.

Thanks again,
all of these suggestions are helping give me ideas on what I need to look for next.

josh
 
software

sorry about the delay in my response.

I used Vegas to track with. I recorded in 16/44.1 because I my comp is kinda slow for big 24 bit tracks.

I used Sonic Foundry Track EQ, Track Comp, and gate.

A tc native verb on the snare.

I'd like to try out some "better" software plugins but these were so easy to use I just kinda stuck with em for this first song.

--I applied some eq like you suggested axe to the final mix and it really helped out a lot. It kinda helped separate the instruments into their own space.

--I recently remembered that I might have taken the compressor off of my snare track which could be the reason for the peaks not letting me get a hot sound. I think i'm gonna repost after I make those changes before I try tracking a new song... hopefully people will be willing to listen to the changes, should be done around the end of the week.

josh
 
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top