Rat To Rat Capter Three Dish Out The Strychnine, It's An End To The Rat Race

[rats]

Rat To Rat Chapter Three Dish Out The Strychnine, It's An End To The Rat Race

OK this is it. This is the last of the three songs that Track Rat and I have tried our hands at mixing on. If you haven't checked the other two threads, you can go back and read up on how this whole thing started, why, and that IT"S NOT A CONTEST! What it is, is an experiment in different recording techniques, and what makes a good mix. We'd like it if you could listen to both tracks of

Jonathn

..and tell us what you think. We'd like to know which mix you think best suits the song, and it would be a bonus if you could tell us what you did or didn't like about each mix!

If you listen closely to these songs you will hear many differences in nuance, room, panning, eq, and mastering.

At least for me, this has been a pretty helpful excercise on how I can improve upon my own mixing skills.

When it's all over we will probably reveal which rat came out on top!

Remixed/remastred Blue Sunrays CD to follow!

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=1331&alid=-1

 

[participant]

well... rats...

so far, Mix A is kicking ass... haven't heard B yet... but jus' a sec...

 

[participant]

Well... mix B isn't as bad this time... but...

The voice gets lost during verse one... the guitars are a bit... "cloudy" ... kind of a "mesh"... decent separation, but not like Mix A... the voice gets lost in verse 2 too.

Something that could be nicer in each mix? The snare drum sound... but that's not in the mixing--it's in the recording... seems to need more thud and less sizzle...

For the third time... Mix A...

 

[chrisharris]

A-gain

The title's supposed to be a play on words.

A wins A-gain. See how punny I am?

 

[B.SABBATH]

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[rats]

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Don't you hate how you can't write in the img stuff into the response unless you're in the cave?

Yeah OK A wins.

I mean A WINS!!!

If anyone couldn't figure it out, The 'A' Rat was of course Track Rat!

I have to say that these threads helped a little in the beginning, but I was hoping for a little more technical feedback than the basic I choose "A" response, but that's OK, it's better than nothing. I mean as of this point there's been 62 hits to the thread and only 4 responses! I guess around these parts you have to be happy with what you get.

Thanks party anticipate for the feedback. That helps. The voice thing and the guitars were my biggest challenges with this song. Through the middle section of the song I havce double-tracked my vocals, but also Cris my bass player sings, and we are using this really crazy modulated, heavily delayed vocal effect that goes on these modulatred cycles of the speed of the echo changing along with a massive detune cycle. It's a really weird effect and tends to make the whole thing really noisy. You will notice that Track Rat appears to have completely removed that vocal track from his mix. Also, there is a really loud "fuzz bass" that I have more up front in my mix that thumps out the bassline and Tracky set it back a little further. The analog keys are a little harder to hear on his mix as well.

Recording the drums has been a struggle for me although I think I keep getting a little better each time. Tomorrow I have a four hour block with my drummer to work on recording drum tracks so I'm looking forward to getting in there and experimenting.

Overall I think Track Rat did a really nice job on these tunes. My favorite was Polly Ethelline, then Dick Oskie, then this one. My only gripe is that I think TR took a more conventional approach to mixing these unconventional songs. That works OK in a lot of situations (we're not THAT over the top) but when we get our groove on sometimes it'll take strange forms, and teh strangeness is what we feels make it special, so we like to put that in the front rather than disguise it like you would a mistake. Sure, it poses challengesdealing with all of the fucked up frequencies, but challenges that we are ready to make for the better of the uniqueness of the piece. A perfect example was a post a few weeks back of a song reflections of pandora and the chubby red auto I posted here a few weeks back, if anyone had a chance to listen. I got a flack over my overuse of cycling choruses and flangers, but that was something I was trying for. Now I'll be the first to admit that it didn't come across very strong based on my recording, but now I see that I can go back and make some adjustments to the saturation of teh effects on one of them, and the recording of the guitar to still be able to have those wild effects flying but keep it in check with relation to the song. Those are the things that I found missing from Track Rat's mixes. Granted he can't be held at fault because we weren't there to instruct his as to what our priorites were, he just did what he thought sounded good.

The only other problem that I had with his mixes was that he placed the songs in bigger rooms than I like, preferring a more in-your-face production. However this reverb did a nice job of softening some of the harshness of my recordings. Either way this was really good stuff.

Thanks everyone for playing.