Reason to Rhyme - any feedback appreciated

[Wankenstein]

What a compliment—thanks! After listening to that song and some of their other stuff, it is definitely right up my alley. The balance between grunge and clean sounds in their music is really cool.

yw. I also like their clean/grung balance. They were labeled as a one-hit-wonder band for their song Flagpole Sitta. However, they made solid albums and mixed-up styles. Sean put out the album Make Good Choices below a few years ago after being out of music for a decade or so. (IMO) It's another solid album.

 

[maxmax77]

@HumanPlanet I finally got my home studio set up enough in my new place where I could run the mix through an outboard compressor, plus a bit of saturation! Any thoughts? (Or anybody else!)

Cheers

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[HumanPlanet]

@HumanPlanet I finally got my home studio set up enough in my new place where I could run the mix through an outboard compressor, plus a bit of saturation! Any thoughts? (Or anybody else!)

Cheers

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Hi maxmax77.

What's up with volume? You must be at like -30, I had to put my amplifier up to 11 just to hear it!

Crank it up a bit and I'll let you know what I think .

 

[mcmac74]

@HumanPlanet I finally got my home studio set up enough in my new place where I could run the mix through an outboard compressor, plus a bit of saturation! Any thoughts? (Or anybody else!)

Cheers

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Hey, I listened to this and then the original (which I'd loved). I'm only on earbuds right now but for me you've lost that warmth in the new mixes. They're stacked with reverb and delay and it all sounds very live...but its lost something (lots) in the process. You've had a lot of advice from people far more knowledgeable than me and have perhaps tried to take a little bit of everything on board without fully understanding it. I know I don't, and I still arrive at a finished song with endless fucking around trial and error. If I knew how to get from A to B with deep understanding of Eq, reverb, etc I'd cut my recording time and frustration by 75%...thats why most of us are hobbyists...but trust your ears. Go back sort the flabby bass out and write some more cool songs cos you've got a good style going on there.

I might add that I also struggle recording decent bass through DI as I'm no bassist and it is hard getting good tone. Yours reminds me of an old fender bass I used 15 years ago and could not get a decent note out of the E string even with new strings. I ended up for a while writing bass lines that largely excluded this string!...until I got round to buying a new one


Mark

 

[spantini]

My main issue with this, throughout all versions, is when the bass comes in another guitar comes with it, following the bass. That guitar causes a dissonance, either it's not playing the same notes or it's out of tune. Everything goes sour when this guitar comes in with the bass. That's what really jumps out at me and would be the very first thing I would address.

 

[maxmax77]

Hi maxmax77.

What's up with volume? You must be at like -30, I had to put my amplifier up to 11 just to hear it!

Crank it up a bit and I'll let you know what I think .

Lol I honestly have no idea. The gain staging with I/O’s for the master got all out of whack, and for some reason the output is really quiet.

I think at this point though, I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity that my new little home studio provides to start building from the ground up again, with the goal of producing a track I am proud to share. I have been going back and listening to the individual tracks, and I hear a lot of room for improvement in my technique and composition, particularly for the different guitar parts. I also find that I’m fighting against the qualities of many of the original tracks, which I am thinking is a sign that I should re-record them with different chord voicings that are occurring to me, using a pick vs not using a pick for different parts…mic positioning for the acoustic guitars and lead/background vocals is also something I really want to focus on for this next iteration.

You've had a lot of advice from people far more knowledgeable than me and have perhaps tried to take a little bit of everything on board without fully understanding it.

I think that’s a fair assessment. I’m at a point where I understand the terms that people are throwing around, but I don’t usually have the know-how to sort out the issues people notice and/or bring out the qualities in the song that I’m looking for—at least not in a linear way. I end up just screwing around a lot like you said, going through a bunch of trial and error. But this whole process has been really good practice, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from goofing around and also from the help of everyone here.

Mostly what I’ve been reflecting on is the need to maintain that somewhat removed perspective where I’m always trying to keep what I’m aiming for in mind, sort of like how HumanPlanet was describing the use of reference tracks for mixing. When I find myself making change A and then making a whole series of other alterations in order to accommodate that change (which leads down a rabbit hole of arbitrary tweaking), that is quickly becoming a signal to me that I need to take a step back and think again about what I’m really going for.

and yeah..the DI bass can be a bit rough, I’ll admit. I do indeed have a relatively inexpensive Fender bass, but I need to take some more time getting to know it better. It has a lot of flexibility in the sound it can output, so I might be able to tame that E string (or so I tell myself).

My main issue with this, throughout all versions, is when the bass comes in another guitar comes with it, following the bass. That guitar causes a dissonance, either it's not playing the same notes or it's out of tune. Everything goes sour when this guitar comes in with the bass. That's what really jumps out at me and would be the very first thing I would address.

Thanks Spantini, I always felt like something was a little weird with the bass and I couldn’t put my finger on it. There’s an acoustic guitar that comes in there, and I will need to check but I believe I remember tracking that one, and I don’t think it’s totally in tune. As I mentioned above, I’m going to take the opportunity that my new home studio presents to get back to the foundations of this song and re-track things.

 

[spantini]

... and yeah..the DI bass can be a bit rough, I’ll admit. I do indeed have a relatively inexpensive Fender bass, but I need to take some more time getting to know it better. It has a lot of flexibility in the sound it can output, so I might be able to tame that E string (or so I tell myself).

Thanks Spantini, I always felt like something was a little weird with the bass and I couldn’t put my finger on it. There’s an acoustic guitar that comes in there, and I will need to check but I believe I remember tracking that one, and I don’t think it’s totally in tune. As I mentioned above, I’m going to take the opportunity that my new home studio presents to get back to the foundations of this song and re-track things.

The Fender bass should sound good, unless someone has made some arbitrary adjustments to the bridge and/or pups to where it needs a setup to get the intonations right. If the strings have been replaced it could have one bad one - that E?

 

[maxmax77]

The Fender bass should sound good, unless someone has made some arbitrary adjustments to the bridge and/or pups to where it needs a setup to get the intonations right. If the strings have been replaced it could have one bad one - that E?

It could definitely be the E string, I’m actually not sure I have replaced the strings since I bought the bass earlier this year. The intonation was off when I bought it, most of the strings were a bit sharp at the 12th fret. I corrected it myself, but I’m thinking now that it might be worth re-checking it once I get new strings.

I love new bass amp strings, as a side note. The tone is just wild

 

[maxmax77]

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Alright, so I went back to the stems and built it back up—including a lot of new takes. I’m feeling good about this! @HumanPlanet, you should be able to hear it this time lol


I think I took care of a lot of the harshness, the guitars are tighter, and I got the ambience I wanted in the lead vocal by adding in a vocal double for certain words and phrases throughout. Not sure I got rid of all the resonance issues, but I identified the main problem frequency in my new home studio (~90Hz) so I EQ’d to correct that area. I think a lot of what I “lost” in the previous mixes was removed in my effort to tame the resonance and harshness issues, but with the new takes I didn’t have to be nearly as aggressive with it to get it to a place I liked.

Again, any thoughts or feedback are always welcome! Cheers everyone. I’m learning so much

The only thing I want to do off the top of my head is bring up the acoustic guitars a bit more, and work on “spreading it out” (particularly the harmonies) with panning in the builds and chorus.

 

[maxmax77]

Hi all,

At this point this is as much an effort at documenting my progress as it is asking for input--hopefully it helps out some lurkers in addition to helping me structure my mixing process better!



I've been listening critically and I'm thinking that the main electric guitar has too much low-mids. It felt like it was muddying things up, and clouding out the acoustic and vocals a bit more than I liked. Once the electric muddiness was cleared up, I noticed that the main acoustic also seemed to have some boominess going on. I tried to locate the problem frequencies, which to me seemed like they were in the 180-350ish area and a bit below 500, and when I took some of those out I liked what I heard more.

Also, I wanted the beginning of the song to sound more 'straight down the middle,' and to have it open up gradually as the song builds. I made a change which I think helps in this regard. In the previous version, all 4 guitars kicked in at the beginning of the song (Hard L panned acoustic with no pick, hard R electric, and an ever-so-slightly panned R acoustic and panned L electric in the center). Now I have it starting with just the two down the center ones. It sounds more solitary to me, if that makes sense, and I like the vibe for the lyrics of the first verse. At the end of the first verse, right before the harmonies and bass come in, the hard L acoustic enters followed by the hard R electric.

Something I like about starting out more minimalistic in the intro is that you can really hear the ambient vocal reverb I added. I use a lot of guitar pedals with a Radial EXTC for creative mixing purposes, and for that I used the Walrus Audio Slo set to 100% wet. The vocal reverb is actually derived from the full vocal double, which I later chopped up to just use specific phrases.

The next thing I really want to mess with is panning automation, to change the feel in different parts of the song. I've read several different approaches to panning in this thread alone, so it seems like there isn't necessarily even a standard set of best practices. It would be very interesting to hear these concepts discussed in the context of this song specifically.

RE the bass resonance--I actually spent some time really sitting with and playing my bass the other day and I think @spantini was spot on, it's just a dud low E string. I'm gonna pick up a new set and re-track the bass.

Cheers all!
Max

 

[HumanPlanet]

I think this is a good step on from the first mix you posted.

For me, it's a bit muddy around 400hz, I'd be looking around there (and cutting 2 or 3 dBs maybe) to add clarity.

I might lower the main vocal a bit (1 or 2 dBs) and raise the background vocals and see how that sounds.

It'll be interesting to hear what you do with the panning.

 

[maxmax77]

Thanks! I am definitely happier with this as a foundation than I was with the original. I did some more tinkering (tried to keep it focused and purposeful).

Reason to Rhyme 5-8-22

Indie Rock music with some punk and folk leanings. Thanks for listening!

soundcloud.app.goo.gl

I’m grateful you brought the 400hz-ish area to my attention, I think it’s a bit of a problem range in my recording space as well around 100hz. I’ve also noticed that 270hz can be pretty bad on a lot of the tracks I’m recording in my new space, across sound sources. Room mode calculators don’t help much when your room has five walls, and either way it’s about time I get a move on and build some corner bass traps and some movable panels!

 

[mcmac74]

Its definitely tighter than when you started out. Everything comes together much more coherently as the bass kicks in and there's improvement in the tone of the bass. Some of the not quite lead guitars flailing around the chorus section seem a little superfluous but overall its sounding good. Have you got much other stuff ready to record? I like your vocal style and look forward to hearing it.

Mark

 

[maxmax77]

Thanks Mark! Yeah I originally wrote this song on just acoustic guitar, so I wove a lot of riffs and melodies into the chord progression. I agree that a few parts in the chorus don’t transfer as well to electric guitar though. I’ve been thinking about re-developing a few bits of the electric slightly, maybe spread out the center electric from the center acoustic to add some width to the chorus!

As far as this song goes, my friend is going to record live drums for it eventually. We’re both gonna build some acoustic treatment for our home studio spaces, so we’re kinda waiting on that to record anything too purposeful.

Beyond this song, I’ve got a whole project I’ve been working on! Around 12 songs. It ranges from grungy blues to indie rock. I have maybe 6 or 7 other songs I’ve written too, but I’m keeping those for a more mellow project down the line.

Max

 

[dobro]

I haven't been following this thread, but I went back and listened to the first mix, and then to the most recent one (5-9-22). The recent one's way better - the opening guitar's a more open, interesting sound, and the space you've put on the vocal is great. I'm going to offer one idea (and then I'm going to read the whole thread from the beginning to see if anyone's talked about it) - I find the background vocals add a layer of sound to the mix that detracts rather than enhances. What happens if you mute it? Does it sound better?

 

[maxmax77]

I haven't been following this thread, but I went back and listened to the first mix, and then to the most recent one (5-9-22). The recent one's way better - the opening guitar's a more open, interesting sound, and the space you've put on the vocal is great. I'm going to offer one idea (and then I'm going to read the whole thread from the beginning to see if anyone's talked about it) - I find the background vocals add a layer of sound to the mix that detracts rather than enhances. What happens if you mute it? Does it sound better?

Thanks very much! For others’ reference, here’s the 5-9 mix:

Reason to Rhyme 5-9-22

Indie Rock music with some punk and folk leanings. Thanks for listening!

soundcloud.app.goo.gl

Changes from 5-8 are that I ran it through my RNC as a mix bus comp (I think I got 2db gain reduction maximum?), and used my little analog mixer to really send the dry the mix to a reverb bus (same ambient reverb pedal as used on vocals, but different settings) and blended that in with the RNC output. I also cranked the gain so it was almost clipping, just to see how it affected the tone of the mix. Think I did some super minor independent eq tweaks to the left and right channels, too. I kinda rode the reverb fader as I went, and for the end I engaged the pad setting on the reverb pedal for 4 bars at a time.


Interesting idea about the backing vocals, thanks for the input. I’ll experiment with muting those and see what it does for the sound, I’m curious now. I do like the more Rick Rubin style mixes with the really limited use of backing vocals, so I might also see what it does if I chop the harmonies up and just use certain parts.

Cheers!
Max