My very first Punk Ska Band ! ! !

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drummerdude666

drummerdude666

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This is a track I recorded.

ALL comments welcome, anything and everything.

The drum sound will be better now as when i recorded this track i was using my old crappy drum mics.

What can i improve on in the future? I don't listen to ska much so i did my best :)



If i remember correctly the guy who runs lightningmp3 is a member on this board. So thanks for the great tool :D
 
Pretty good tune drummerdude. I think it sounds pretty good. The clean guitar could be a bit more prominent, and maybe bring the bass up a bit. All sounds good, just those 2 things seem a little bit in the background. I think you did a good job though.
Ed
 
The 3 track demo was recorded in a day (10 hours), that included mixing. Thought i should add that.

Thanks Dogman. When i listen back now, i can hear that definatly the bass can do to come up, and guitar just a bit too. Thanks for your thoughts.
 
Try drumming to a click? The fills you're playing in the slow parts are a bit offputting.

The vocalist seems to be holding back.. I bet he dosent' sing like that live.


Yup, timing problems... Like at 2:04


Guitars sound lifeless... How are you recording them?

The song has plenty of potential. I like the horns.

-Casey
 
Noooooooo, i'm not drumming! lol. It's a band I recorded totally unconncted to me. Definatly NOT me drumming.

The band didn't want to (or couldn't) play to a click, which caused some recording issues.

The guitar was micing (sm57 close up pointing to outercone and then an MXL 992 a few feet back) up his Roland Cube that had all his effects on which he wanted to use. Wasn't a brilliant tone, but not bad. I added some compression and a small peak at 2K with some freq cut here and there. Small reverb to them also. That was about all i could do in the time i had.

I saw them live and he really went for it on stage! Why I couldn't do it in the studio i don't know..but oh well.

What could i have done to make the guitar seem less lifeless?
 
drummerdude666 said:
What could i have done to make the guitar seem less lifeless?
Click to expand...

Record on a real guitar amp, for starters.

beyond that, I'd record in stereo and copy multiple stereo tracks with different eq to broaden the sound a bit. Maybe use a condenser with some hyped top end to let it breathe a bit - a pair of SP B1s might do the trick. edit - I see you used an MXL condenser as well.... HMM.

If that dosen't work, grab a POD.
 
I have a POD xt Pro and i have a marshall stack, sessions and fender amp that i could have used. Problem was he wanted to use his amp as it has all the tones on.

The one stereo pair I have is a pair of Oktava MK012-01. I 'll use them next time. Also the diffrent layers i'll stick in next time. Normally I don't have issues recording guitar as i'm used to recording nice sounding guitars etc.

Anything else i could improve mix wise?
 
well since its not your band i can honestly say it sounds bad. i don't know if its really the recording as much as it is that the people playing the instruments aren't doing a good job. the drums sound spastic and out of time. the clean guitar is not ska-ish at all, it just sounds like a bad DId guitar. the distortion channel is quieter than the clean one which is pretty ridiculous. seems like the trumpet player is swaying back and forth cause it gets louder and quieter a lot.

what i honestly think is that its too nice of a recording for this band. if this was done on a tape deck with some $10 mics it would be good. but you can hear everything in this mix and that exposes every single screwup
 
Yeah, I think the recording sounds better than the actual band.
Drums are off-beat due to no clicktrack
Guitar is too clangy (typical ska)
Bass needs more oomph/prominence
Singer holding back
 
Ok...thanks. So band could be better, but what can i do to improve the mix? As most of the bands i record are of this quality i'm kinda used to it now, but what can i do to make the track sound better?
 
drummerdude666 said:
Ok...thanks. So band could be better, but what can i do to improve the mix? As most of the bands i record are of this quality i'm kinda used to it now, but what can i do to make the track sound better?
Click to expand...

I think you are quite there allready.. Only things I would maby touch are the bass and snare.

- Bass: It sounds quite small. To be honest, I really don't know how a ska bass does "suppose to sound". But IMO this one isn't really cutting it. It lacks the depth and energy. At the moment it seems like most of the energy is above, lets say 600hz. I would try to move the energy more down there.

- Snare: I would like it to be a bit more more agressive and "in your face". Compress more. I would like to hear a more constant snare.

- Panning: I might try to pan those instruments a bit more away from the center. I sounds like the whole band, expect overheads, are stacked on a small little hill between my speakers :p

I haven't read the posts above, so I really don't know if these issues have been adressed allready.

But except those ideas I wrote.. Overall I think you start to be there. You really can't make this band sound good.. no way.. First of all, rhytmically it doesn't stay togehter longer than 2 seconds every now and then. You really can't build anything when your pieces simply don't fit together, it will fall apart always. If you pan the instruments more, it actually creates more chaos and points out the mistakes with even greater clarity..

Kinda ironic "Its hard to say, what's is wrong with me..." :o

hmh.. something like that anyway :rolleyes:
 
drummerdude666 said:
Ok...thanks. So band could be better, but what can i do to improve the mix? As most of the bands i record are of this quality i'm kinda used to it now, but what can i do to make the track sound better?
Click to expand...


I'm afraid that even with master skills a song will never rise above the level of the performances that went into it. YMMV.

It's not a BAD song. Redo the guitars with your Marshall and/or Pod. Retrack the trombone. Break out beat detective or whatever it is one uses to fix fucked up drum tracks. You have accurately portrayed the sound of the band. If they don't like how they sound, the experience should be instructive to them.

-Casey
 
They love the sound, they thought i did 'fucking smaking bra' as they said. lol

I just wanted to see if there was anything else i could have done. But i guess the main issues we're the bands, oh and snare and bass up and compressed.

Thanks for the help guys. :D
 
The recording is awesome.

The band are a little out of time... But oh well. Not your problem :p
 
the singer sounds like he's not into it at all. i knwo that can't be fixed in the mix of course, but maybe next time light a fire under his ass to get him to sing with some more feeling. i agree with what's already been said. the bass sounds really thin and needs some kind of boosting in the low end. i would pan the clean guitar to one side more, like maybe pan the guitar more to one side and the horn to the other. i cant get over the singing though, i mean even with the timing issues and stuff, it would sound sooo much better if the singer really pushed the vocals much harder to bring out some emotion and feeling. also, maybe pan out the backing vocals in the chorus part a little more. and definitely do some layering with the distorted guitar to make it sound "wider" and more full. i dont really have much experience, but those are just things that i'd try to do to help out the sound of this not-so-great band.
 
it's all very thin.

the clean git is a little distorted.

none of that matters, ska bands need to be tight or go home.
 
I think i need something to help my bass recordings. At the moment all the amps i have are cheap and make hissssssssssssssssssss. So i usually DI, ok so ALWAYS DI.

The problem is that i don't have amazing basses either and neither do the bands i'm recording. I was considering getting a bongo bass and blaming i on my sister (as she plays bass) but then i figured that most bassists would want to use their own (normally crap) bass.

So what can I do to help this? I'm not using a DI box, I'm using the special input on my yamaha 01x. Any ideas???
 
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