Quick mix...

[sonusman]

I recorded 4 bands last night live at the club I work at, and today had to do some push mixes of them to give a CDR to the record label owner so he could decide which songs to put on a compilation CD that I am going to mix in a few weeks.

This one was sort of an interesting song.

Before anybody decides to say how I might have recorded it differently, remember that I do not get the benefit of a sound check and the ability to listen to a sample of the tracks before we record. Basically, I throw the mics in front of the instruments and set levels on the fly and record it to ADAT (Blackface Type I's) using Mackie (yuk!) preamps. Usually no eq is applied going to tape, but I usually will roll off a bit of low shelf eq on the over-head, snare, guitar, and vocal tracks.

Mixed in about 10 minutes. No mastering except fade in and fade out.

Enjoy.

Ed

 

[Kelly Holdridge]

Well, that there sounds like punk "Asia."

Yessiree Bob, that's'n incarneration there!

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

Hey Ed,

I wish you had mixed many of the commercial live albums I've heard!! I generally HATE live recordings 'cos the fidelity and clarity is so piss poor, but your recording is quite good - you can actually hear stuff!!! No lost attack on cymbals (a lot of live stuff I here has that cymbal wash, but any stick articulation is lost!) Vocals, instruments - every is clear!

Mackie comments aside , Nice work.....!!!


Bruce

 

[jrlemonz]

I like the recording, sounds good. Everything is really clear, and sounds really good. The Mackies seem to have held down the fort pretty well to me. The guitars sound a little thin, but thats probably not your fault, and more of the actual sound of their amps plus the lack of a soundcheck.

Jake

 

[pglewis]

Great live mix, so all criticisms are just being picky.

Drums are really good, how many tracks did ya use? Bass is pretty good level-wise, but lacks some punch and butt. I realize it's probably a lot more thumpy in the room and understand the limitations of the set-up. But for the recording, I think some of that stuff on the bass down to 70-80Hz might help without eating up too much headroom. Guitar is pretty good, but seems a bit mono and maybe a little too far back, space-wise. Vocs seem fine.

Good job. It's also a good performance, which probably makes your life a bit easier .

 

[sonusman]

Well, call me picky too! But I sort of hate listening to it because I feel with a little time spent mixing that it could clear up quite a bit more, and a few problem areas in level and eq would improve. I am thinking this song will make the CD, so you can compare later!

pglewis - 7 tracks on the drums.

kick - That Audio Technica kick/tom mic in their drum pack.

snare - sm 57

toms - first two are the CAD R11's in their drum pack, and the floor tom is the AT snare/tom in their drum pack

overhead over ride cymbal - C-1000S

overhead over hi-hat - Peavey 480

The bass was problematic because it was passive pickups DI'ed. I already boosted quite a bit of low end. My plan for that track will be to use some post eq compression on it. I need to eq out some of the "pluck" in the 500-1KHz area first some it isn't what is triggering the compression. I will then boost a little around 100Hz with a wide Q. Through a 3630, it should get a nice big fat sound!

I was not happy with the guitar tone at all. It was all low end mush on the track. The label owner even said the guy has a funky tone, so I didn't feel bad about not capturing it very well (or maybe too well eh? ) I had to add a lot of eq above 1KHz and roll out everything below 80Hz just to get it to sound like that! Of course then comes in that thin ass clean tone and the eq just doesn't work. If I had at least 4 or 5 hours per tune to mix, I could copy the guitar track and use two channels on the console with different eq settings to fix that, but the label owner only wants to spend one day in mixing 12 songs, so unless everything else works out fast, that guitar isn't going to improve too much. Oh well.

Ed