My new band....first mix..help!

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funkdrmr

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Hey everyone. My new band has been in what I guess you would call "pre-production" for about 3 months now. Here in Hawaii, cover bands are the norm and we got sick of it. Now, it's all originals and we're taking our time to hopefully do it right.

This is one of our "demo" cuts we are using to verify song structure & all the little things in the song that could be a little bit better. We're planning on using these for web / myspace, stuff like that. After we give the thumbs up on these cuts, we are going to re-record using some better gear & make sure we implement any changes we've come up with.

SO....I'm using the demo cuts for mixing practice, and could use some fresh ears to help me out. I don't have any sound treatment up in my mixing room(a.k.a. living room) yet, so I'm really concerned with how the low end is being perceived on other systems.

Here are links to the MP3 and WAV files.

Chaos Driven MP3

Chaos Driven Wav
 
I like the intro guitar but the NWOBHM buzzsaw distortion guitar is a disappointment.
The vocal seem good but aren't loud enough or clear enough.
The drums sound good.
the bass seems a little lost - not in his playing location but in the mix and EQ.
I can hear bits of definition but not a lot.
Good effort for a demo but have a think in terms of what I've written.
 
Thanks for the help!

I'm at a loss as to what NWOBHM stands for, but I understand what you're talking about. That guitar was tracked at his house straight into a BR-8 from a 57 mic. That's been one of my complaints from the start, but I don't think I can do much with it at this point without retracking.

Thanks for the compliment on the drums......is the kick drum really okay? We've been fighting about that here for days! The head on the drum was terrible, so I didn't get a lot of tone from it.

Thanks again for the comments!
 
Boxy kick!

Overall the drums sound okay, but you could definately do something with the kick. Where was the mic placed? It really sounds like poor mike placement. If you play with the mic placement you will be very suprised to hear the differences in sound that you will get by just moving it around inside the kick drum. I like to take the front head off and place the mic just inside the front of the drum off-center. Then I have 15" woofer that I invert the phase on to record the really low frequencies (50-80 Hz). You just mix a little of that sub in and keep the kick mic punchy. Just a few suggestions.

-JV
 
Thanks for the suggestion silentman.

The mic was an AKG D112, placed half-in half-out of the small hole in front of the drum. The kik was a Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute. Unfortunately, the beater head was worn pretty good due to rehearsals at the studio (I work there), and I didn't notice until I hadn't brought my own kick.

I think that head is a large amount of the problem.

I'm working on a new mic placement setup here at my house now. I have a Yamaha Recording Custom kit here, so I'm a little more optimistic this time around.

I live with 2 bass players, so hopefully I can find a spare woofer around here somewhere to try it out.........now if I only had a few more channels open on my firepod.
 
Oh and another thing...

The woofer track makes a great track to use as a reference for drum replacement if you decided to do that. I don't usually suggest doing that with other drums, but kick tracks are pretty isolated in nature anyways so drum replacement there is usually easier to blend in with the rest of the drums. Good luck!

-JV
 
I like the song. A lot of passion in the vocal performance and some interesting rhythms in the guitars. The opening guitars sound a little too "roomy" to me. If it were me I'd reduce the verb just enough so it doesn't draw attention to itself in the several spots it stands out. At 2:56 is the hum/static amp noise intentional? The guitars sound great overall but I think they're fighting for EQ space with the vocal in the 300-400 Hz range.

Tim
 
Thanks Timothy!

I'll have another listen today to see what's going on at 2:56. I remember there was some hum/amp noise around there, but I thought I had taken it out.

Thanks for the EQ tip as well!
 
It's a good mix but I'm going to give as much comment and picking on small things as I can ;)

Guitar:
If you CAN I would record the heavy guitars on a very very low distortion.
Then layer it with the distorted guitars and your guitars will be much more up front. Next time use much littler distortion.
I'm a guitarist and I hate low distortion too but just turn that shit down : less is more !
The cleaner guitars are good but turn them up a little bit !


Drums:
You could pan the tom's a bit more ; I think they seem to be locked in the center ;)
Snare is good but add a tiny tiny bit of 10k on it to make it a bit brighter.
(If your having problems with bleed do a gate on it)
Kick: EQ that 200-500hz down like 10 dB and boost some 4k or 8k
In professional recordings this kind of music is almost always blended with samples. (see drumagog for more info ;) )

Bass:
Sounds a bit buried in the mix, try and bring it up without making it louder ;)

Vocals:
Sound great , great singer !
Only thing I would suggest is to double track the vocals on the chorus/certain parts and do some vocal harmonys, but that might be a matter of taste.


Anyways nice recording, keep up the good work
 
Blor007 said:
It's a good mix but I'm going to give as much comment and picking on small things as I can ;)

Guitar:
If you CAN I would record the heavy guitars on a very very low distortion.
Then layer it with the distorted guitars and your guitars will be much more up front. Next time use much littler distortion.
I'm a guitarist and I hate low distortion too but just turn that shit down : less is more !
The cleaner guitars are good but turn them up a little bit !


Drums:
You could pan the tom's a bit more ; I think they seem to be locked in the center ;)
Snare is good but add a tiny tiny bit of 10k on it to make it a bit brighter.
(If your having problems with bleed do a gate on it)
Kick: EQ that 200-500hz down like 10 dB and boost some 4k or 8k
In professional recordings this kind of music is almost always blended with samples. (see drumagog for more info ;) )

Bass:
Sounds a bit buried in the mix, try and bring it up without making it louder ;)

Vocals:
Sound great , great singer !
Only thing I would suggest is to double track the vocals on the chorus/certain parts and do some vocal harmonys, but that might be a matter of taste.


Anyways nice recording, keep up the good work
Click to expand...

Wow...thanks for the input!

Exactly what I was looking for!

We're tracking vox & harmonys on this & a couple more songs soon. I won't be able to fix the distortion on these cuts, but next time around I'll definitely keep that all in mind.
 
wow, awesome singer! reminds me of claudio sanchez at times, which is definatly a good thing. i think the bass just needs a little more presence. the only other thing close to a critisism i can think of is what someone said about the drums sounding "roomy", but then again, maybe you were going for that...
 
ruined said:
wow, awesome singer! reminds me of claudio sanchez at times, which is definatly a good thing. i think the bass just needs a little more presence. the only other thing close to a critisism i can think of is what someone said about the drums sounding "roomy", but then again, maybe you were going for that...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the singer complements! We're all big fans of Coheed, so the reference to Claudio is a good thing to hear! I'll let her know tomorrow when we do the 2nd mix on this song.

We just tracked backups on it tonight, and vox on another "demo" cut, so I should have a couple more mixes for you guys.

Thanks again!
 
Thanks again for everyone's comments thus far.

I tried to use everyone's comments to fix the mix, but my kik drum may be a lost cause due to mic placement at tracking time. I DID boost the hll outta 8K to bring it out, and I think that succeeded a little bit.

Also, I have another mix if you all wanna check it out.

Both songs are now on our website http://www.satellitegrey.com and myspace http://www.myspace.com/satellitegrey

I really do appreciate the criticism & compliments thus far. I'm really new to this, so it's good to know forums like this one have given me a few tricks and basic knowledge to get started.
 
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