T
Talus
New member
Well the topic really says it all. I've only been doing this for a couple weeks now, but hopefully I'll manage to avoid asking anything too painfully stupid.
To get the ball rolling the gear I'm using is as follows:
Cubase 5 essential w/ Ezdrummer, Addictive Drummer & Trillian
Tascam US-122mkII interface (is this even any good? Not much info about it anywhere)
Sennheiser MD 421 & Shure SM58
Generally I've been micing my amps with the mic about an inch from the amp, with it pointed slightly above and to the side of the speaker cone, and have the input volume set a little ways below clipping point (I've read conflicting opinions on this however?). The amps are usually played at a loudish bedroom volume.
Now the songs. They can both be found at http://www.soundclick.com/Talus both are instrumental rock. Think the bluesy side of Satriani, without the insane shred. Anyway, both are still very rough. My playing is fairly sloppy in some places, and it may be the cause of some of the problems. If that's the case, say so. Any comments or criticism beyond what I'm asking is also greatly appreciated.
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Trouble is the most recent song, and also the one that's got the most problems, so we'll start with that one.
The biggest problem with this one (ignoring some really sloppy playing) is that I've no idea how to mix it. I've double tracked just about all the guitars, but I'm having a lot of trouble mixing them without resorting to extreme panning, and constantly moving things around.
0.00-1:04 I started off with just the clean guitar, I double tracked it, one hard to the left and one hard to the right. At 0:32 the solo kicks in. At first I tried Having the solo dead center with the clean guitars off to the sides, but I didn't find that worked very well. I ended up moving one of the clean guitars 75% L and the solo 75% R, and it's an improvement, but still not that great. Can anyone suggest a better way of doing this?
1:12-1:52 Again, the first couple bars have the clean guitar panned hard left then hard right, but a few bars later when the distortion guitar kicks in, I ended up panning the distorted to one side and the clean to the other. This just feels sloppy and sounds kind of weird having the clean guitar jump from both sides to one.
This kind of trend continues throughout the entire song.
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The song Chill turned out much better. I'm really happy with the how the acoustic guitar turned out in that one (although for some reason I just can't get that sound again).
My only real problem with this one was the lead tones. I'm fairly happy with the sound of the first solo, but the later solos are kind of odd. The solo at 2:14 is a slightly dirty amp, pushed by a Tubescreamer with the gain at 3/4, and the solo that directly follows it is an OCD at 3/4 and the tubescreamer at 1/2 yet both are recording much much cleaner than they actually sound. Anyone have any clues as to why this is happening? I've tried playing with a few mic positions, and I've also tried micing it in stereo, but it hasn't really helped.
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Additional Questions:
1) Is there a way to get a printed version of the Cubase documentation? I'm not sure why, but I've always had a hell of a time trying to read anything on the computer that's more than a few pages long.
2) can anyone reccommend good books on Cubase, mixing, or recording in general?
3) Is there a trick to recording clean guitar? I'm getting a lot of spikes and dips in my sound, and a lot of the time it feels like I really have to dig in to the guitar to get any kind of sustained sound. Adding compression in Cubase seems to help a tiny bit, but the recorded sound still decays much faster than the amp that I'm recording does.
4) Does Cubase have the ability to change pan, EQ, Inserts part way through a track, or do I have to create another track?
To get the ball rolling the gear I'm using is as follows:
Cubase 5 essential w/ Ezdrummer, Addictive Drummer & Trillian
Tascam US-122mkII interface (is this even any good? Not much info about it anywhere)
Sennheiser MD 421 & Shure SM58
Generally I've been micing my amps with the mic about an inch from the amp, with it pointed slightly above and to the side of the speaker cone, and have the input volume set a little ways below clipping point (I've read conflicting opinions on this however?). The amps are usually played at a loudish bedroom volume.
Now the songs. They can both be found at http://www.soundclick.com/Talus both are instrumental rock. Think the bluesy side of Satriani, without the insane shred. Anyway, both are still very rough. My playing is fairly sloppy in some places, and it may be the cause of some of the problems. If that's the case, say so. Any comments or criticism beyond what I'm asking is also greatly appreciated.
-----------------------
Trouble is the most recent song, and also the one that's got the most problems, so we'll start with that one.
The biggest problem with this one (ignoring some really sloppy playing) is that I've no idea how to mix it. I've double tracked just about all the guitars, but I'm having a lot of trouble mixing them without resorting to extreme panning, and constantly moving things around.
0.00-1:04 I started off with just the clean guitar, I double tracked it, one hard to the left and one hard to the right. At 0:32 the solo kicks in. At first I tried Having the solo dead center with the clean guitars off to the sides, but I didn't find that worked very well. I ended up moving one of the clean guitars 75% L and the solo 75% R, and it's an improvement, but still not that great. Can anyone suggest a better way of doing this?
1:12-1:52 Again, the first couple bars have the clean guitar panned hard left then hard right, but a few bars later when the distortion guitar kicks in, I ended up panning the distorted to one side and the clean to the other. This just feels sloppy and sounds kind of weird having the clean guitar jump from both sides to one.
This kind of trend continues throughout the entire song.
----------------------
The song Chill turned out much better. I'm really happy with the how the acoustic guitar turned out in that one (although for some reason I just can't get that sound again).
My only real problem with this one was the lead tones. I'm fairly happy with the sound of the first solo, but the later solos are kind of odd. The solo at 2:14 is a slightly dirty amp, pushed by a Tubescreamer with the gain at 3/4, and the solo that directly follows it is an OCD at 3/4 and the tubescreamer at 1/2 yet both are recording much much cleaner than they actually sound. Anyone have any clues as to why this is happening? I've tried playing with a few mic positions, and I've also tried micing it in stereo, but it hasn't really helped.
---------------------
Additional Questions:
1) Is there a way to get a printed version of the Cubase documentation? I'm not sure why, but I've always had a hell of a time trying to read anything on the computer that's more than a few pages long.
2) can anyone reccommend good books on Cubase, mixing, or recording in general?
3) Is there a trick to recording clean guitar? I'm getting a lot of spikes and dips in my sound, and a lot of the time it feels like I really have to dig in to the guitar to get any kind of sustained sound. Adding compression in Cubase seems to help a tiny bit, but the recorded sound still decays much faster than the amp that I'm recording does.
4) Does Cubase have the ability to change pan, EQ, Inserts part way through a track, or do I have to create another track?
