please critique this rock song/mix!

  • Thread starter Thread starter nedm5000
  • Start date Start date
Hey man.

The snare sound is very clicky to me.
Vocals are too low in the chorus'.

what all is going into your guitar sound? the distorted guitar is really bugging me.

I guess over all the song sounds noisey.

Sorry, not trying to beat up on ya. I can see your objective with the song and it's pretty cool. Everything seems to be getting lost in the noise. I think it's mostly the distorted rythem that's doing it.

Good Luck:)

F.S.
 
Yeah that snare is a mess. Sounds like youre slapping tennis shoes together to get the mud off. Like mentioned already, the guitars sound weird. Fuzzy and muddy. Can't even tell what they're doing. Were they recorded direct? Vocals are done well, but they're kind of all over the place. Maybe use some compression or volume envelopes? The whole mix sounds mono.

Not a bad song. Theres potential there. Just get back to work on the mix so we can hear it. :)
 
Greg_L said:
Sounds like youre slapping tennis shoes together to get the mud off.
Click to expand...

That's it! I was trying to come up with it... it sounds like.... like...

I'm hoping you have gobs of EQ thrown on the snare. I'm hoping this because if you do, you can get rid of it and start from scratch. Otherwise, I'm not sure you can salvage that snare with EQ. Maybe it can be doctored enough to get by if you have it on a seperate track.

Things really start to get muddy in the refrain and I can't really tell what's causing it. Are there a lot of low-mids or lows in that keyboard part? Maybe cutting some there will open it up... something is gumming up the works during that bit.

Snare is the biggest problem for me at the moment. I just can't get my ears past that to think about what I'd fix next.
 
I agree with the other guys.
There's something wrong with the whole sound/recording process.

It sounds dull and lifeless.

The tune iteslf is not bad from what I can tell.
The vocal quality itself sounds very good, all you need is a better recording medium.
 
I like the song, its a good tune. Something when horribly wrong in the recording though. Can you tell us what you are using to record? Whats your interface etc., what mics?


Mike
 
Thanks again everyone for the comments.

Basically I was using sm57s on the snare and a d112 on the kick w/ awful overheads. The drums need to be re-recorded. There are several layers of guitar on there as well through with a 57.

The guitar went through a old vox amp, miced with a 57, and sounded muddy all the time.

As far as cubase plugins - roomworks reverb and the dynamics compressor plugin that came with cubase. Nothing extra really.

We just used the mp3 encoder in cubase.

EQ is basically a mystery to me at this point, if that isn't obvious already. If anyone could point to a resource that we could use as a starting point to understand how to use EQ - after a decent quality recording - it would help so much!!

Thanks again everyone! :)
 
Nightfire - just from the first glances at these links, they look like they will be very helpful. Thanks for passing these on!!
 
Nightfire said:
Hey, your doing better than I am so far.
Im still trying to wrap my head around EQ as well, check out these sites
http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/articles6.htm

and this one is very helpful too
http://www.recordingproject.com/articles/article.php?article=10&page=2


Mike
Click to expand...

I guess there is NO "how to use EQ". You just listen to the track many many times, and try to make it sound as natural as possible.
You have to know how a real snare sounds and how it sounds on good record, and the kick as well.

One thing that really helps me to get sound I want is the Voxengo CurveEQ. First use the 7-fixed bands preset (or 12) and try to get a general idea what improves the sound. Then you can un-fix the points, remove or add new, and move them around to get the final curve.
 
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