Pop punk record done in our house (Four Year Strong/New Found Glory style)

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xander.moser

New member
Hey everyone,

I moved into a house with a few friends last year, and over the past 5 months I tracked, mixed, and helped produce their new record. I listen to this type of music pretty frequently, but this is the first album I've had the chance to track and mix an album in this genre.

A few friends also came over and we shot a music video in the garage for the single. Here's the video of the single.



We did 100% of the recording and mixing in the house, and sent it out for mastering. Drums and guitars were tracked in the hardwood floor dining room, bass in the basement, and vocals in a treated corner in a bedroom. The only samples used to reinforce the drums were recorded at the time of tracking. My equipment was set up in a small room in the basement with basic acoustic treatment.

Let me know if you are interested in more equipment details; I'd be happy to provide them. Let me know what you think of the mix. Thanks in advance for any feedback!

EDIT: Finally figured out how to get the video embedded :facepalm:
 
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I think it sounds exactly how it should. I love pop punk too.. makes me want to snowboard. I can't think of anything I'd change on the song.

On the video, I wish there was some debauchery going on. Instead of everyone just dancing around it would have been way better with some beer pong, heavy drinking and whatever else. See -> Makes No Difference, lol. I still think it's well done and is effective to complement the video. But IMO it looks more like a groupie-fest than a garage party.

Still way better than anything I can do though!
 
Guitars and bass sound great. Just the right amount of crunch, good weight and body. Likewise the drums, nice & tight, beefy. Good job
 
Wow, thanks everyone! Everyone in the band is really cool (sort of rare these days, right?), so I went the extra mile on this project. I'm happy to see that it seems to have paid off!

Bruiser said:
Well recorded and professional looking video! Is it hard to do a video synchronized in post like that?
Click to expand...

Syncing isn't too hard. In the garage we just played the song over speakers (with a click before the song starts) and just did a whole bunch of takes. Then in post you just use the audio on the camera to sync the video with the song. There are a couple parts in the video where the performance is a little loose, but I think they chose them because they just liked them so much. I'm just the audio guy; I didn't have a whole lot to do with the video part.
 
Yeah man, sounds great, looks cool too. Everything is well done to my ears and eyes. I'm kinda jealous. :D
 
Wow, this is fun! You got a superb, tight sound out of the band, the mix is a suitable wall of sound. Very very enjoyable! The drummer's feet are just flat exceptional. Everyone's rudiments are enviable. This is not my genre, but I have a BIG fat smile on my face there is joy bursting forth from this music, and you took great care to extract the best performances and really accentuated all of the advantages you had to work with; and the result is a totally pro sound; the master is pushed really hard, but some of that might be the lossiness of mp3 encoding. Overall, a stunningly fun piece, very well done!!!
 
It's really well done but sounds like it could be any of an 1/2 doz pop punk bands.
 
rayc said:
It's really well done but sounds like it could be any of an 1/2 doz pop punk bands.
Click to expand...

Well, yeah. Originality is another issue. But as far as sound and production goes, it's well done.
 
Cool, thanks for all the feedback! We started with some guitar and vocal scratch tracks. Recorded drums to those, then guitar, then bass, then vocals.

We set up the drums in the dining room, which is about 12' square with a 9' ceiling, but one entire wall is open to the living room, and it has a hardwood floor. I put OC703 panels on both sides of the drums, all the way to the ceiling. Then I placed rolls of pink insulation in the corners for bass traps. We also set up guitar amps in this room after the drums were done.

The bass amp was set up in the basement (due to issues with using the dining room at the time). It has a very low ceiling, but we found the spot where it sounded best and went from there.

We used a corner of a bedroom next to the control room for the vocals. Straddled the corner with OC 703 panels, attached one to the ceiling, and covered the walls close to the mic. The singer sang into the corner, with his back to the open room. It gave us a dry sound with minimal boxiness that you can get from the usual "vocal closets". No egg crates or "acoustic foam" allowed, haha.

Here's the gear list, off the top of my head:

Vocals:
Blue Kiwi -> Blue Robbie -> UAD 4-710D (with compressor doing up to 6 dB GR at times)

GTR 1 (Les Paul into Marshall JCM800 + Marshall 4x12 cab):
A blend of Shure 545SD -> UAD 4-710D and Audix i5 -> UAD 4-710D

GTR 2 (Gibson SG into Marshall JCM800 + Marshall 4x12 cab):
A blend of Shure 545SD -> UAD 4-710D and Cascade Fathead II -> Blue Robbie -> UAD 4-710D

Bass (Ampeg SVT-3Pro + Ampeg SVT 8x10):
Shure 545SD -> UAD 4-710D

Kick: Shure Beta 52A -> UAD 4-710D
Snare top: Audix i5 -> UAD 4-710D
Snare bot: Shure SM57 -> Focusrite Saffire preamp
Tom 1: Shure 545SD -> Focusrite Saffire preamp
Tom 2: Shure 545SD -> Focusrite Saffire preamp
OH: Audio Technica AT3035 -> UAD 4-710D
Room mics (only used for effect on a couple songs): Audio Technica ATM21 -> Focusrite Saffire preamp

There is also acoustic on a couple of the other songs, which is the Blue Kiwi into the Blue Robbie

And there are a couple clean guitar parts on a couple other songs where we used an Orange head into the same Marshall cab with the same mic setup.

The interface for everything was a Focusrite Saffire Liquid 56. Whenever the UAD 4-710D was used, I used the AD on the unit and went ADAT into the Focusrite


For mixing, I invested in a couple UAD cards. Here are the plugins I used most heavily, both UAD and non-UAD:

- UAD 1176 collection (drums, vocals, bass)
- UAD Massive Passive (vocals, guitars, sometimes on OH)
- UAD Shadow Hills Mastering Comp (on the 2-bus)
- UAD Neve 88RS channel strip (vocals)
- FabFilter Pro-Q (go to EQ)
- FabFilter Saturn (bass)
- elysia mpressor (vocals, drums, bass)


It was mastered by Tom Garneau at AudioActive. I would highly recommend him!
 
Thanks for posting your signal chain and technique info, good to know. The look, feel, and sound of this video are astounding for a home recording.
 
Well Done!

It is great to see something like this to aspire to.

I may have missed it, but I am curious as to whether having now created such a well polished product has resulted in any producers or distributors showing an interest in you.

I know a lot of people here (not me) dream of realizing something tangible in return for their efforts,
and if anything could draw record company interest, it would seem that this might be one of those things.

I don't even know if it can work like that anymore.
 
This is a really pro sounding mix. Could be played on the radio no only because of the sonic quality but because of the tight playing/singing and great songwriting
 
I remember when punk was dangerous and not swoopy haircuts and dance parties.

That said good production. Quite possibly over produced, but i think that is what pop punk does now these days. So, Mission Accomplished . . . ?

O.P. you should ask that bass player if she wants to go out for ice cream with me.
 
Sounds great to me too! I really like the kick, it is prominent and bassy, not so clicky as it is the rule nowadays.
 
Aren't punk and pop contradictory? Punkish songs with over processed pop production? Don't get me wrong, I'm truly impressed with the result. But for what it's worth, in my worthless opinion triggered drum sounds have no business on a punk song.
 
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