Recorded my first ska band...

R

roflcopter

New member
Thanks for reading...I did some of these recordings recently. Let me know what you think.

"Party" and "Gotta Piss" came out super well I think...I hate the vocal tracks on "Homies" but the dudes in the band love them. That song was rushed though. So go lightly on me for that song ;)

http://myspace.com/stealinggriswold
 
sounds kind of muted to me. I'd try to add more clarity and crisp with your high frequencies.

I also don't know if it's just me on this one but I always go crazy with the bass and I was wanting more bass too.

like the music though
 
I thought "Gotta Piss" had a shit ton of bass...the others probably could've had more, I agree.

I wonder what's making it sound muted? Is that all it is, just an EQing issue?
 
roflcopter said:
I thought "Gotta Piss" had a shit ton of bass...the others probably could've had more, I agree.

I wonder what's making it sound muted? Is that all it is, just an EQing issue?
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How bout you post better quality MP3's instead of gathering clicks for a myspace page?

Anyway, they do sound dark and lack air and high end clarity. But it's hard to tell from a shitspace link.
 
Greggles I love how snappy you can be sometimes.

BUT ANYWAY, I'm just going to agree that it needs a little more in the highs, but also, as greggles said, it's hard to tell from myspace's compression bullshit.
 
Sheesh man, I gotta agree...a little harsh. That's the best I can do for now, due to the fact that the hard drive of the laptop with which I recorded took a shit...so if I hit up the bands, I might be able to get ahold of copies of the songs pre-myspace posting, but I didn't know there was that big of a difference. I suppose in being a total n00b, the difference is impervious to my untrained ears. :confused:

I'm hearing more than once that my mixes lack definition and clarity...is this possibly because the only thing I use to "master" them are the mastering VSTs in Fruity Loops? hahahahaha

I'm sure another factor is the fact that I record all guitars as follows: Guitar > Amp > Mic In on laptop.

All drumming done is sequenced by me...it's ghetto as fuck but I sit down with the drummer and discuss the drum tracks for a few minutes, start programming them into Fruity Loops' step sequencer, and go "Does that sound right?"...I happen to pride myself in that ability, actually. Because the drum tracks are usually pretty convincing.

Needless to say, I've been doing them with an extremely low-budget setup but I think overall I do better than anyone else in town cutting demos for new bands, even some of those rich kids with 6-channel USB interfaces and shit.
 
Your lack of clarity probably has little to do with your "mastering" and more to do with your monitor/room situation. A bad mix mastered will sound like a bad mix mastered. How are you monitoring?

I didn't mean to be harsh. I just hate myspace links. Very few, if any, songs sound good from myspace. Or at least they don't sound good enough to give accurate mix critiques. I don't know what mysace players do to songs, but it's not very good. There's also a shitstorm of "hey check out my myspace" posts in here. You know, people just looking for page hits and listening to/critiquing nothing else in here. Fuck them. Not that it means anything, but your link was the last myspace page I'm clicking on unless I know the poster.
 
Greg_L said:
There's also a shitstorm of "hey check out my myspace" posts in here. You know, people just looking for page hits and listening to/critiquing nothing else in here. Fuck them. Not that it means anything, but your link was the last myspace page I'm clicking on unless I know the poster.
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I like the way they do it at FP where they say they'll return feedback, that way it's a two way street and we help eachother not just help ourselves. I also know that being new, my ears are untrained and there's not much advice I can really give. For example myspace and soundclick sound identical to me.

anyways, if you comment on one of my songs I can guarantee atleast, that I'll listen to one of yours and say whether I like it or not. maybe we can spread this idea of reciprocity on this forum some how or do it like they do at FP.
 
I wasn't even trying to "promote" their page or anything like that...it's not even my own band. This would be kind of a silly outlet to promote a band anyway.

It was just the most accessible and convenient source I could think of. No downloads necessary or anything. I suppose if one wanted to avoid the myspace player, you could file2hd the URL of the band and open them in whatever media playback software you use. I will keep this in mind for future reference.

And as for the monitors being used, I just plug in whatever computer speakers are on hand wherever I'm recording. I recognize this as a problem, but like I said it's an extremely low-budget setup for now.
 
Just a thought - sometimes the muffled highs can be down to dodgy compression. Have a look at your attack times and how hard you're squashing it down when you 'master' - you could just be battering the transients into submission.
 
I should add that I'm only listening on PC speakers, but just listened to Gotta Piss. The verses sound a lot better to me than the choruses, which sound a bit squashed when everything's in at full blast.
 
roflcopter said:
And as for the monitors being used, I just plug in whatever computer speakers are on hand wherever I'm recording. .
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Lol. Holy crap man. There's your freaking problem. All highs and no bass computer speakers. No wonder there's no high end for the rest of us. Your computer speakers fooled you into killing it all off.

If you can get people to pay your for mixes like this, then rock on bro. :D
 
roflcopter said:
Hmmm...so would a longer attack time make it sound less squashed?
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Balancing act. At the mastering stage you need to keep an eye on peaks - if you start letting transients through, you risk tripping the little red lights on your master bus. But spending some time tweaking the attack and release can be very productive - depending on how high your ratio is and where you've set your threshold, of course. Don't ever use automatic settings though. :)

But you're not going to even hear the effect on cheap speakers. You could hear it better on a half decent set of headphones but it still wouldn't be very accurate.
 
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