my kindergarten attempt

C

Captain Ego

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This is the first time I have recorded songs, mixed them, worried about trying to level them out... treated a room.. anything really I'm very new. These are all rough cuts but I was excited I finally figured out how to do something from idea-to-mp3 and (after a few hours of arguing with my GFs computer and learning what USB does) getting something up on line.

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I will need to redo all of them for sloppiness reasons, I guess this could be a 'demo' of what it could sound like but doesn't yet. I am not a very good drummer and my live drummer friend I jam with has no interest in recording, so its just me in the basement. I was seeing what kind of end result sound I could try for with my limited stuff.

The Desk:
Korg cR4 cassette used for the built in monitors and origional guitar recording later put onto the digital, some little roland headphones with surprisingly big bass, a Behringer 1204 mixer for multiple source recording like 3 drum mics, or a split signal for the bass sound (half mic half DI), SM57, a couple of crap mics, 8 track tascam DP01 digital all-in-one with reverb and effecty stuff I am scared to mess with much. My recorder is a DP008, but my friend has this thing I'm using. Its almost the same thing, but it can burn cds and as effects that I dont use except for compressing the vocal. I Borrowed my GFs laptop speakers, my neighbor's boom box, and burned a CD for the car as 'reference' and drove everybody annoyed by playing stuff over and over. waaaah i'm an artist... nobody understands why i have to hear myself screaming the same thing ten times in a row.


The room:
10x20 basement, drywall one side, concrete foundation on the other, and lots of blankets. Wood beam ceiling. Furnace that occasionally turns on and off in the corner (I think it comes through on the third song in the drum mics rumbling)

The guitars:
Its a Strat-copy through a Peavey Vyper-15/8" and a Boss OD-1 on tracks 1 and 2, played twice. hardest pan in the mix about 9 and 3 oclock. mic was a SM57 on the Vyper

bassline is an Ibanez SG200 active Bass through an Accoustic 100 amp also miced with the 57 and a Zoom B1 DI/sim pedal on the 'ampeg' sim (haha I wish) setting on the 3-4 tracks. lighter pan about 11 and 1 oclock. I spread it out further and boosted the amp-sim sound a bit in the 'conquer' song because its almost entirely lead bass and the sim pedal had more 'presence' than the actual amp.

The drums:
a track of a single drum overhead on 5, and a track of kick and snare/hat close mic on track 6, I panned the kick and snare/hat mics all the way left and the OH all the way right out of my mixer so I could get some separation for EQing and levelling the drum kit with my 2 chan simul recording, I don't know if it helped much.

finally: the schizophrenic guy babbling and yelling in the back: (me!)
track 7 is the vocals through the SM57 into a basic compressor built in to the recorder. I found it was boxy and boomy so when I mixed it I dropped the low EQ a lot (9:00ish), and sizzled up the highs a bit (about 1:30ish) for clarity. I have no delusions about having a good voice, I just sing out anyway.

track 8 was a metronome that was usually too quiet to hear, but I have to record in very small windows of time so I just turned it down and played over it anyway. Listening back, I can definitely tell. heh (blush embarrassed)

Other than that, a little bit of reverb on all of it, a little more on the vocal and kick/snare, then I compressed the whole thing a tiny bit, and bounced it down onto itself so I could get the volume approximately the same for all the songs.

Then I packed it all via newly discovered USB onto a computer, used Itunes to turn it into mp3s, and there it is... possibly the sloppiest "make-do" recording effort ever but if I don't put it up, I would hate myself. I love my songs, but I hate my lack of ability to make them sound how I want them to. It's been a learning experience I am proud of and I have a lot of the guys on here to thank for the tips that have got me this far along. Hopefully by the time I get to the end of the CD I'll have it down, but this is the story so far :)
 
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I can't believe your drummer won't record! That is the most retarded thing I have ever heard. To me you are probably a better drummer than he is anyways. It pisses me off with all of these people with their egotistical "I am better than to do it like this" and "I don't record because I am a live musician" bullshit. Sorry for the rant.

I hope you read up because this is all straight up mono sounding music to me and I think you can do better than this. It almost sounds like a straight recording althogether with everything mixed right down the center. The drums sound like they are panned somewhat, but everything else is right in the center. It sounds like everything is almost clipping too. Like there is not any head room to make a decent master out of it.

Your sound of music isn't bad. Almost a Seattle sound like Nirvana, but I think you need to get the stereo spread of the instruments out there a little better.
 
Holy crap! That's real bad. Like mega bad. There's hope though. You know that whatever it is you're doing doesn't work and there's much room for improvement. You can only go up from here.

First thing you gotta get right are your ears and your monitoring situation. Surely this doesn't sound good to you. If it does, then I'm afraid you might not be cut out for this or your monitoring situation is grossly lying to you. This whole mix is harsh and fizzy and distorted and brutal to listen to. All the vocal EQing you did is wrong. Things don't really seem so bad until the vocals kick in. They're midrangey and sibilant. That's one ass-backwards way to pan drums. You'd probably be better off with keeping them centered. I did notice that when it's just guitar, it's not too bad, so focus on fixing the drums, fixing the vocals, and fixing your mixing situation.
 
I could wince through the recording and imagine what you'd sound like in a couple years. It's real good music....kind of vintage Brit early 70's Mott rock. Just keep going!
 
thanks you guys. Just the kind of constructive feedback I was hoping for. Its not that the drummer wont record, its just really inconvenient. He's used to just coming over and jamming, not sitting through hours of listening back and moving mics around. I definitely need some real monitors but not in the budget right now. I'll try a retake session over the next week or so, using different sounds and just experimenting again until I find something that works better. Performancewise I can knock most stuff out on 1 take so the tracking isn't a lengthy process, just getting the sounds right. What I do to it afterwards is what frustrates me and is kind of trail-and-error until I get it mixed, finished, up online, and see what the mp3s sound like. Thanks again for the advices and the encouragement (and the honesty)
 
Yeah, it's too bad cause it sounds like you've got some pretty cool tunes there, but the mix is way harsh (listened to Girl 1 & Conquer 1). Fizzy and two dimensional for the most part. As mentioned, the guitar is the best sounding part of the current deal, so I'd focus on everything else. It must be that your monitoring set up masks hi mids and exaggerates bass, because it sounds like you overcompensated with this. Again, cool tunes...just not where you want to be mix-wise. Keep at it.
 
Yep - agreed with all the previous comments- good and bad. Great tune (Girl 1) but the mix needs some work. I wonder if the recorded tracks are the problem though as that cannot be fixed.
 
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