Panning, volume and EQing

[twsknight]

I'm an experienced gigging drummer, starting up a punk band with similar experienced friends. Although I've not got my ideal home studio set up at the moment, I'm recording rough demos of songs as we write them, and using these rough demos to work on my mixing techniques.

I receintly recorded a rough track with guitar, bass and vocals being recorded through a toneport gx (I'm planning on getting something like a firepod once i've got the cash). I then put a keyboard through the toneport and recorded drums one piece at a time so I had a seperate track for each. It's all going into Cubase.

I'm currently working on getting it to sound as good as I can as practice for when the band get together to record the tracks properly. I've been listening to a variety of albums and I hope to achieve something along the lines of Blink 182's Enema of The State in terms of mixing. Everything is just so clear on that album, despite how many things you can hear at certain points throughout the album.

Panning is my main problem, as I'm not sure of what sounds best. I know the obvious suggestion is keep playing with it til I find the right sound for me, but surely there are standards, or recommendations at least.
I have this uncontrollable habit of panning things equally to each side. So I'll pan the main guitar part say R29, then the bass L29. Then it comes to the ocassional second guitar part, and the instinct is to pan it L29, but I don't want it to muddy up the bass, as I want the bass to be heard in the mix without getting lost in the mix.
Then I get to the drums, and for the time being I have the kick and snare Centred, with hi-hat, high tom and one crash mixed around L18 and the ride cymbal, low tom and 2nd crash mixed around R18.
I've kept the vocals Centred, and I think that's the one thing I'm happy with.
I've been messing around with it so much, it's got the point I don't know what sounds better and what sounds worse.

Then it comes to changing the volume of the instruments, and I thought I had that down, but the more I listen to the track the more I think I've got the bass too high, but I don't want the bass to get lost, even if I am recording punk.
As I said before, I start questioning my judgement and I think "hmmm, the guitar could do with being louder" and then end up having it back almost to what it was before.

I have tended to keep EQing minimal, but I've been wondering if there is anything I should be doing to make the recording sound better.


So, if you could offer any advice I'd really apprciate it. Again, I know it's all about what sounds best to me, and that i should get another person involved and get their opinion, but most people I ask wont give it too much thought.

Sorry for all the text, I just wanted to fully explain where I am at.

Cheers,
Dan

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Welcome to the board, 'knight.

Wow, basically what you're asking is how to mix. That's a huge question; entire books can - and have been - written on the subject, and entire careers have been devoted to mastering the answers. My best suggestion - besides practice, practice, practice, of course - is study, study, study. Read up; there's no shortage of books and magazine articles out there. Also, keep listening to commercially produced music; while there are a million different ways to skin this particular cat, you'll start noticing some patterns if you listen intently enough.

But for now, some comments based upon your particular statements:

[I've] recorded drums one piece at a time so I had a seperate track for each.

If I read you right, you're saying that (for example) for a four-piece kit your playing the part for separate times, recording a different part of the kit each time. I personally would recommend against this.

First of all, to sound good, it requires *extreme*, machine-class precision on your part to play the same thing exactly the same each time. Even the best drummer in the world is going to have small timing issues that, when all the parts are put together, going to cause the composite result to sound wrong. Not only will there be a loss of a natural-sounding "groove" to the performance, but because of bleed into the microphone from all parts of the kit in each recording, things just will just wind up not lining up and you'll have a bit of a sonic mess on your hands.

The more mics one wants to put on a kit, the harder the job is. Walk before you run. Forget about Blink 182 for now; work on getting a good basic recording first. Try just a stereo pair of overhead mics (theres plenty of info online about "overhead mic placement") or a single overhead mic and a kick mic, if you want to emphasize the kick a bit more. Get good at that first, then start working your way up the chain. but working your way up the chain at that point will require either having the hardware to record more than two tracks at a time, or using a small submixer to submix the drums into stereo for a stereo "stem" or drum submix in Cubase.

Panning is my main problem, as I'm not sure of what sounds best.
...
I have this uncontrollable habit of panning things equally to each side. So I'll pan the main guitar part say R29, then the bass L29. Then it comes to the ocassional second guitar part, and the instinct is to pan it L29, but I don't want it to muddy up the bass, as I want the bass to be heard in the mix without getting lost in the mix.
Then I get to the drums, and for the time being I have the kick and snare Centred, with hi-hat, high tom and one crash mixed around L18 and the ride cymbal, low tom and 2nd crash mixed around R18.
I've kept the vocals Centred, and I think that's the one thing I'm happy with.

A few *general* rules. I hesitate to give them here, because there are a million exceptions to them, and a thousand other "general rules" which will affect these rules as well, but I guess one has to start somewhere. Just keep in mind, these are not "recipes", but generic ideas from which to build and modify:

In general, bass and kick are kept near the center. This is for two reasons; lower frequencies tend to be less directional, therefore throwing them to the sides has less obvious stereo effect, and by having the bass stuff centered, you're using both loudspeakers equally to drive it, giving you more speaker surface area to push the low frequency sound - kind of like using two smaller drivers to simulate one larger one.

Panning drums is something that is all over the map, hard to define many rules there - or better yet, there are many different sets of rules to go with different tastes. but going with the recommendation above of starting with just two mics, a simple stereo image from stereo overheads, or dual mono from an overhead and kick mic, with the kick in the center and the OH balanced with the rest of the mix would be a good start.

As fr the rest, keep it balanced, and don't stack frequencies when you can avoid it. in other words, for example, of you have a guitar and a piano (or two guitars) that are sharing much of the same sonic space but not playing the same line, pan them separate L & R. If they are playing the same line, then it can be OK to stack them. if they are sonicly quite different (e.g. a Telecaster and a B3), then they can co-exist on the same side better, even if they are playing different things. And so on.

I've been messing around with it so much, it's got the point I don't know what sounds better and what sounds worse.

Then it comes to changing the volume of the instruments, and I thought I had that down, but the more I listen to the track the more I think I've got the bass too high, but I don't want the bass to get lost, even if I am recording punk.
As I said before, I start questioning my judgement and I think "hmmm, the guitar could do with being louder" and then end up having it back almost to what it was before.

This is a common syndrome we all get on occasion. When you feel this happening, the best thing to do is to step away from the mix and give your ears and brain a rest. Sleep on it if you can, and come back in the morning with fresh ears.

I have tended to keep EQing minimal, but I've been wondering if there is anything I should be doing to make the recording sound better.

Look up the term "parametric sweep" in the searc function of this board. That's a general EQ technique no one should be without, IMHO.

Also look for references to "high pass" filtering of your tracks to get rid of some low frequency mud that may help your bass and kick punch through better.

There's a whole lifetime more of stuff to know and learn, but this should give you some good starter stuff to chew upon .

Good luck, and have fun!

G.

 

[twsknight]

Thanks very much, that was really helpful. Just one thing, in reference to recording each drum seperately, that was using a keyboard with a drum kit setting on it. I've recorded a proper kit once (I'm moving soon so it's been packed) and it was using 5 mics and they were going onto Cubase as one file, so mixing was very limited. I really cant wait to get some cash together so I can record drums properly.