tell me how to fix this mix

[stupidfatnugly]

I know it's amateur because I'm amateur

critique the poop out of it please

http://myspace.com/stupidfatandugly

 

[Johnny Rojo]

Less Boom, More Presence

As I Listened on my JBL Nearfield monitors, I notice the piano line is very boomy in the lower register, almost to the point of distortion. If you are using a tube preamp, you might want to roll the tube gain down a bit, and if not, you may wanna roll some 125 khz out of the EQ.In general, the piano line could use a little brightening up. The synth sounds great, cuts through nicely, but not piercing.

Cool song though. Overall mix not bad, just some tweaking on the piano line.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

the piano is just straight from my keyboard into the interface.
should I re record it through an amp?
is it ok to play your keyboard through a guitar amp?

you're right I've got to fix that piano

know of any piano samples that I could use in REASON?

thanks Johnny Rojo

 

[KineticSound]

I agree with Rojo... too much on the bottom of the piano. Either it was tracked too hot or it's mixed too hot. I don't think it has to do with your sample, just the level setting and eq.

As he indicated, roll off the bottom of the piano with eq to see if that removes the low end distortion. Solo the track: if there's distortion in the recording, you'll need to make another pass at the piano recording with much less gain.

I do like that your guitar & pan flute parts take up very different parts of the frequency spectrum. Well done there.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

I do like that your guitar & pan flute parts take up very different parts of the frequency spectrum.

how do you know this?

 

[stupidfatnugly]

i made a duplicate track of the piano part and panned one left and the other right all the way.

is this causing the distortion b/c I didn't hit any red lights when I recorded?

rolling off the low frequencies isn't helping

I lowered the fader volumes on both piano tracks. should I lower them more or get rid of the duplicate?

 

[KineticSound]

how do you know this?

By that I meant that they occupy different frequency ranges. The guitar and pan-flute (or whatever patch it was) didn't have a lot of bottom end, which was a good thing. They weren't battling for position against the piano.

There's more to setting the input level when recording than "not hitting any red lights". You want a signal with plenty of headroom.

 

[Farview]

Redo the piano part. This time, take the left and right output of the keyboard and record both on different tracks. Pan those tracks hard left and right.

Set the levels so when you hit a not, the sustain of the note sits about half way up the meters. Hopefully, that will take care of the distortion problem.

What kind of keyboard is it?


Another thought: This seems pretty loud for the type of song it is, what was the level of the mix? Did you do anything to make the mix louder once it was done?

BTW, you generally don't plug a keyboard into an amp if you are just trying to record the sound of the keyboard as it is. You would use an amp if you were trying to distort the keyboard.

 

[pehjott]

disagree

brian eno recorded synths,keys through amps which makes them sound warmer...everything affects the sound of your recording...mic,air,sweat,amp.when going out of a line out,maybe without DI, it will sound good, but one can improve and get more brightness with an amp

 

[stupidfatnugly]

What kind of keyboard is it?


Another thought: This seems pretty loud for the type of song it is, what was the level of the mix? Did you do anything to make the mix louder once it was done?

BTW, you generally don't plug a keyboard into an amp if you are just trying to record the sound of the keyboard as it is. You would use an amp if you were trying to distort the keyboard.

roland xp-80

I limited the master fader at the end


I'm mostly wondering if I'll damage my guitar or bass amp by playing the keyboard through it.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

brian eno recorded synths,keys through amps which makes them sound warmer...everything affects the sound of your recording...mic,air,sweat,amp.when going out of a line out,maybe without DI, it will sound good, but one can improve and get more brightness with an amp

it does need more brightness

thanks

 

[stupidfatnugly]

By that I meant that they occupy different frequency ranges. The guitar and pan-flute (or whatever patch it was) didn't have a lot of bottom end, which was a good thing. They weren't battling for position against the piano.

There's more to setting the input level when recording than "not hitting any red lights". You want a signal with plenty of headroom.

you can just hear it then?

what does headroom mean exactly?

 

[Farview]

I limited the master fader at the end

You probably went too far, that caused the distortion.

I'm mostly wondering if I'll damage my guitar or bass amp by playing the keyboard through it.

No, but it will dirty the sound up. You are having problems just cleanly plugging the keyboard into the interface, it would be better if you get that together first before you start worrying about doing something artsy.

 

[Farview]

brian eno recorded synths,keys through amps which makes them sound warmer...everything affects the sound of your recording...mic,air,sweat,amp.when going out of a line out,maybe without DI, it will sound good, but one can improve and get more brightness with an amp

What sort of amp? Preamp? Guitar amp? Bass amp?

There are a lot of things people do to mess with their sounds. I've been known to run drums through a Marshall. I wouldn't try to pass that off as common practice or good advice for someone just starting out.

 

[Farview]

it does need more brightness

thanks

I'm sure the keyboard was plenty bright. You need to figure out what happened to the sound that came out of the keyboard. Somewhere it went south. You either cooked the recording levels, cooked the mix levels, EQ'd it, beat it to death with a limiter or a combination of these.

 

[KineticSound]

Correct. It's about letting different sounds reside in their own little part of the frequency spectrum. Think of it this way... If you have two bass signers singing similar parts at the same time, it's difficult to distinguish the two, and the individual sounds get lost. But put a bass singer and a soprano singer singing similar parts together at roughly the same volume, and separation becomes quite easy. Mixing instrumentals isn't that different...

But I digress. Your immediate challenge is leanring to set proper levels. Farview was pointing you to this, "Set the levels so when you hit a note, the sustain of the note sits about half way up the meters. Hopefully, that will take care of the distortion problem." He's right, and he's leaning you toward headroom. Basically, the headroom is how much dynamic (volume) space you have between the signal and the point where your system says "here comes the distortion, buddy". Learn to use your dB / dBfs meter... a quick search of the forums on "setting proper input levels" will provide you with some tips.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

I've done a little searching and found

-18dbFS

db is for decibel correct?

what's dbFS?

basically I need to have less amplitude on my sound wave when I'm recording, correct?

 

[Farview]

db doesn't mean anything by itself. You need to know which db scale you are talking about.

dbfs is the scale that's used with digital equipment and is the scale that is used in your DAW.

dbVU is the scale used on analog mixers.

 

[KineticSound]

-18dbFS

basically I need to have less amplitude on my sound wave when I'm recording, correct?

Yes. Set your input so that you're hitting -18dbFS. That gives you plenty of room before you're in danger of clipping or distorting.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

-18 is considerably less than what I was doing

I mean that seems really quiet, like I wouldn't even get peaks. it would be just a straight line nearly.

are you serious?

I put another version on there and I sampled another piano and made a new track that I am playing along with the old one but at different frequencies.
I think it still sounds too hot but it has brightened up a bit.

what do you think of it now?

In those previous posts they say "tracking" what does that mean exactly?

is -18db what I think it is?: anything in the positive range clips so you have no choice but to record at less than zero
most the stuff I have done before has been maybe up to -1 db so this seems odd.

in wavelab I have a decibel meter but not in protools, I think. Should I check that it stays under -18dbfs in wavelab?