Pimp my mix

  • Thread starter Thread starter dkerwood
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dkerwood

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Hey, all you budding recording engineers out there!

I'm just trying to get some opinions before I finish mixing these tracks. Please give your thoughts and any tips you might have.

MYSPACE - Leave Thursday

The songs:

You Are My Only Hope (Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi)

Good Old Days (acoustic) - the one's a little rough, but that was sort of the intention...

One More Time - this one's not quite done yet. We still have to record bass and backup vox, but everything else is pretty much where I wanted it.

I'll take any comments short of "this song sucks"...
 
Last edited:
Sorry, guys, I guess that free file hosting site is a little too good to be true. 15 Meg of bandwidth is a little less than desired, isn't it? Keep trying them, and I'll look to relocate the tunes.

If I can't find a better location, I'll just post them on Myspace so they can stream.
 
Updated links

I have updated the links to the mp3s in the original post. Hopefully this new site will stand up to the bandwidth.

Comment away!
 
A couple things first -

You should post this in the mp3 mixing clinic. If you need songs hosted for that (with direct links) you should try www.lightningmp3.com

As far as the song - it sounds almost like it's in mono. A few performance issues. But it has potential. :)
 
Yea...this should be moved to the mixing clinic.

Anyways.. some quick comments...

I'd like to know what recording set-up you are using so I have an idea of what you have to work with.

You Are My Only Hope
Vocal has a little proximity effect to it. Back away from the mic a bit. Overall vocal also sounds muffled. Are you using a SM58?

Distorted guitar has a good start but it sounds up in the air and overpowering the drums. They just don't sound normal to me. Need some serious eq or less eq.


I feel sorry for the drums. They seem way back with only cymbals flaring. Are you using a mic on the kick?
 
Ok. Sorry, I'm a newbie in this site and didn't know that you had a groovy mp3 mixing clinic. Should I move this, or wait patiently for a mod to do it?

Well, apparently my mixing skills are defeating my equipment. No, the vocals were recorded with a MXL 990 condensor with a pop filter at about 6" or so.

Somebody elsewhere thought I was recording the bass by using a vocal mic on a combo amp, when I actually recorded it direct.

I think that the myspace ends up screwing up the mix to stream it more easily. I could be wrong, though. I could just suck at this... lol...

There is a mic on the kick, and on my system here, it's really punchy. I even had to back off of the bass frequencies to keep it from getting too boomy.

To answer your question - I'm using Adobe Audition to record. I'm using a Behringer mini mixer to run into my computer's stock card, which means I have only to simultaneous channels to work with. I have a PreSonus TubePre preamp, which the vocals and guitar have all run through. Vocals were recorded with a MXL 990. Guitar is run through a Fender 2x12 amp and then mic'd with a SM57 at close range. Drumset has an Audix kick drum mic on the kick and a MXL 991 condensor as an overhead.

At this point, I'd like to not rerecord anything, as I've already torn down the studio and brought everything back home... but if you notice any major performance flaws, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Tomorrow I'll look into the lightning mp3 site and see if I can't use direct links rather than the myspace streaming...

Thanks for helping me out with this!
 
Chibi Nappa said:
What are you monitoring with when you record and mix?
When recording, we're monitoring with a couple sets of headphones... both are closed, one is a little better quality than the other, but both are pretty solid.

When mixing, I'm doing it a few ways. I'm using my somewhat crappy computer speakers to get it in the ballpark (they present a fairly flat version of things as long as I don't turn them up loud). Then I route it through my stereo, and check the mix in hifi sound. Plus, I will occasionally hit the bass boost button and make sure that I don't have too much bass in there (or at least I try). After I have a solid mix, I take it out to my car and chew on it with the car stereo for a few days, or at least until something hits me that I need to change.

I'll also listen to it through as many stereo systems as I can get access to. My goal is to like the track on all of them (although I've never actually gotten there).
 
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