question about procedure

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brookman

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If I post a link to some files (individual tracks) from our bands practice - can some one explain to me what I am doing wrong when I mix it. The final mix sounds hollow. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong.

I need to produce a demo so we have something to give out to bar owners to see what we sound like and I would like it to sound reasonably good.
 
COOL thanks !


my crappy mix

source tracks

There are 7 tracks - they were recorded simultaniously.


the room is layed out as follows:



room layout

1 - Andy Guitar 3 guitar cabinets all mic'ed into a 3 channel mixer and sent to the aardvark (interface to the computer for recording)

2 - George Guitar 1 guitar cabinet mic'ed

3 - Jim Drums - digital Roland td-10 direct input to aardvark

4- Jeff Bass (me) Direct into aardvark

5 - Andy Voice mic

6 - Henry Voice mic

7 - room mic (only added as reference for me - henry's body blocks sound sometimes.

Background - we have been playing together for about 2 years - practicing once a week (most of the time) for 4 or 5 hours. we have about 50 songs in our set list - and once they start drinking we get inconsistent. :p our singer is flat very often we have determined (I hope) that he can not hear himself. We are going to put a set of headphones on him and see if that helps.

Thanks for any attempts made!!!!
 
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Muddiness is from the lo end or lo mids. So listen out for the mudd and cut the los or lo mids accordingly to each individual track.
If the bounced mix is still a bit muddy then take a mellow small curve out at around 200Hz roughly. but too much and your mix can end up sounding thin.
Im gonna do a quick mix to see what I can do with it as the track seem pretty good.
I like the drums although the kick is a bit boomy and muddy. Did you cut a hole in the kik drum before recording? what mic did you use?
Eck
 
Chandler AZ eh? I'm right over in Gilbert.

I like your sound here. I like the multiple singers, gives it a fun bar feel. Cool guitar playing too. I agree about the room noise, but I think ecktronic will take care of that. Maybe reduce the highest frequencies on the rhythm guitar too, it sounds like (in the intro anyway) it's creating some extra fuzz.

Cool performance ;)
 
Noticed there is quite a bit of spill in the guitars so this will make a mix more muddy also. When recording live try and place the amps ao they are as far from each other as possible and facing intowards the corners of the room, but watch for refelctions from the wall going into the mics.
 
At first it sounded like the Pre's on the mixer were a little hot to me. I also noticed that the guitars and vocals are all panned center; pan the guitars and backing vocals away fom each other. Pan 'em like if you're watching the band from the audience.

Here's an example:
1 - Andy Guitar: Jesus! Three cabs? Maybe you could give him the right side of the stereo field like, hard right-3 o'clock and 1 o'clock(?)

2 - George Guitar: panned somewhere between 9 and 10 o'clock

3 - Jim Drums - Who care's he's just a drummer! (j/k) that can stay in stereo since its a 2-track drum machine.

4- Jeff Bass (me) keep center and a little loud, give it a little more low-end to hold down the groove.

5 - Andy Voice: off center to the right (giving the impression that he and his rig are on the right side of the stage)

6 - Henry Voice: off center to the left. (giving the impression that he and his rig are on the left side of the stage)

Aside from the pan mix, I think it sounds pretty damn good! Miller Lite me now!

Hope my 2 cents helps a little!
 
Ok heres a quick mix I did.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=1149

All i tried to do was make it less muddy really. Andys parts were faulty files so he isnt in this mix, sorry Andy. :)
Anyway I didnt edit out any of the noise when tracks werent playing or anything as I was just doing this real quickly.
I got marginally better results with the muddy factor.
I used the room mic a bit too give a live feel also is added some nice natural high end to the mix. (I cut the lo end on this track around 130Hz tog et rid of boominess.)
See what you think for yourself.
Eck
 
Thanks for all the constructive comments! What do you mean when you say andy's file is faulty?
 
brookman said:
Thanks for all the constructive comments! What do you mean when you say andy's file is faulty?
Click to expand...
Well there is nothing in it.
It says 0 kB.
I tried opening it but it doesnt work.
 
I can see all the files. I have to play tonight but I'll down load the stuff in the morning and take it into the studio and see what I can see.
 
First of all, no EQ except on the drums and bass tracks. The drums track has a 4 dB boost around 100 Hz, another 2 dB bump around 3.5 KHz and about 2 dB on top at 10 KHz. Bass has a 3 dB boost at 100 Hz only. All other tracks are flat.
I also put compression on the drum and bass tracks and the vocals too. For the drums, I set up and FMR RNC on a subgroup, sent the drums to the main stereo buss and to that subgroup so the track in the mains was dry and the compressed drum track on the subgroup was pushed up underneath it. The dry track still has all its dynamics and the compressed drums pushed up undeneath adds a lot of thickness. On the bass I have a Behringer Composer set up to level the performance a bit. On the vocals I used the compressor section out of an HHB Radius 5 Fatman. As far as effects, there's a short delay on the vocals too.
I forgot to mention, I did NOT use the room mic track. It just didn't add anything attractive to the mix.
 
I also took some liberties on the bass track and did a few edits. :D
 
What did you do to the bass track - I listened and didn't hear the difference ( did you fix some mistakes?)
 
I've taken it down already. I just had it up as an illistration for Mr Brookman.
Yeah, there were a few spots were I spoted some holes so I filled them.
 
Track Rat said:
I've taken it down already. I just had it up as an illistration for Mr Brookman.
Yeah, there were a few spots were I spoted some holes so I filled them.
Click to expand...
Cool, so I aint goin mad again. :D

Eck
 
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