New song "Knives"

  • Thread starter Thread starter mystasynasta
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mystasynasta

Mixing Engineer
i just now have been working with some of the local bands around town here now that my equipment and room have increased. the first band i have worked is called Rule Of Thumb. They are a band who have never recorded before and are very young. The drums were recorded with the samson 8kit, 2oh's, one on each tom snare, one on kick, one on hi-hat but i ended up just muting that channel completely while mixing down. i only use the OH condensers, the kick and the hi hat condenser from the kit now. i have a 10 set of the gls es-57's stand mounted now to record drums and a home made subkick mounted inside an old kick drum shell. anyways, tell me what you think, (recording wise). a lot of people don't like the vocals. i think i'm biased because i recorded it :p . i have a band who is coming in from 3 hours away and i want to make sure that what i am doing is ok before they drive all the way here and get disappointed in the quality (only charging them 100/day).

Here's the link, critique away!

Thanks in advanced!
 
wow.. sounds real good. Is your room treated?? i reckon the guitars could come up a hair.
 
the intro really threw me--i wasn't expecting what came in to come in. not sure the intro really fits.

and speaking of coming in......holy mixbus compression batman! back off that thing a little bit. this song clips my meters! it's distorting, which isn't a good thing.

vocals.....just not my bag. hard for me to judge em b/c they're just not my bag. they seem to sit pretty well, if not just a little up front.

guitars sound artificial and somewhat icepicky--were they DI/plugin? they seem to warble throughout the song--like a slight wow on a tapedeck--in fact they sound like they were recorded at 44.1 and accidentally got sped up to 48. ;-) the end solo is rather thin and tinny, but it seems to fit with the other guitars. maybe the guitars are ok for this genre and i'm out of touch? stylistically, i'd prefer less high end buzzing and a lot more low end crunch for this song.

the snare sounds dull--kinda lifeless--but that's not a recording/mixing issue, it was a tuning one. it's just pitched too low for the song. overall the drumming is pretty solid. i dig the toms in a BOC sorta way, and especially LOVE the big L/R panning. but i play drums, so i'm biased. :-D cymbals sound brittle and are a bit too present--in fact the drums as a whole could probably stand to be pulled back a little. or maybe it's just the mixbus compression that's bringing them so forward.

bass sound is nice and it cohabitates with the kick pretty well. both need a little more mids (around 2k or so) so they stand out a little more without overloading the low end.

the song abruptly ends and fades quickly (and unevenly left to right). i'd fade it a little more gradually, assuming that's possible.

i think you've got a good start here.....be interesting to hear a version that's not so squashed.


cheers,
wade
 
Thanks guitarboi. This room wasn't treated. Low ceilings (bout 7ft?) and thick carpet keep the early reflections down quite a bit.

Thanks mrface. Yes the guitars are DI (guitar rig 2). The group didnt have a good amp at the time because theirs was stolen from the car. The drummers a good drummer but because he was in the studio for the first time, he was more worried about timing then anything, so he was a bit uneven. I compressed to to even it out a little. There's a compressor on the kick to add a little more punch, same with the snare, then a multiband compressor on the drums buss. The intro was kind of on an effect I was just playin with and they told me to keep it (can't argue with the clients). We actually tracked this one a little different then i usually do, guitars and bass first then drums. I tried to add a little more high end to the kick, but it made it sound like cardboard, so i backed down a bit. I am goin to try lowering the OH's a bit and maybe try eqing the brittleness out of them. The snare created a particular problem. At the time i didnt have enough inputs to put a mic under the drum. Trying to get the snare sound without bringing the OH's too loud was difficult. The snare's kinda eqed to shit, just so it sounds like a snare lol. How can I make the guitars sound more realistic? More low end crunch with less highs? Oh and btw, the solo at the end starts off with an effect to kind of sound like an old record, then when the band comes back in, the level boosts up and the effect is taken off. I am going to try and fix the end too so that doesn't fade off so quick. All very good suggestions, thank you.

I am going to try posting an updated version soon, but I have sessions all do so hopefully I can get around to it.

Thanks guys and any more opinions are welcomed. :D

-Lee
 
Nope, I was wrong. There is no compression on the drums buss, just on the kick and snare. I'm working on it right now, should have a new one in a few hours.
 
Last edited:
Knives, Mix 2

Alright, well I got it done a little sooner then expected. I brought down some of the higher end on the OH's to reduce some of the brittleness. On the guitars I had boosted around the 8k area, which was the high end buzz that you talked about. I took that off and added a 3db boost in the mid area. That really seemed to help make the song feel more full. I did boost the high end on the bass guitar a slight bit, but it was difficult because the tone of it was set too low while tracking. I replaced the snare using drumagog to see if that would remove the dead snare sound (not sure if I like it or not, but I thought it might have been because I am so used to it the other way). I brought down the overall volume of the song and lightened the compression on everything. I could not fix the ending, it was just how he played it. Unfortunately this song has already been released (just as a demo though). I wish I would of had more time to post it on here.

For future bands, do you think it would help to mic the top and bottoms of all the toms now that I have the equipment to do so? Or should I just do that on the snare?

Thanks again everyone
-Lee
 
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