Tomb Raider - VHS collaboration with Greg_L

  • Thread starter Thread starter VomitHatSteve
  • Start date Start date
chuckduffy said:
Oh no, I said the opposite - I said 'I mean gel up in the sonic sense as everything is grooving time-wise.' :-)
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So you did! Clearly I can read.

Chili said:
I wouldn't mind a crack at this tune. Would you be willing to submit it to the Mix This forum?? If so, give jimmys69 a PM and he can set you up. It's a fun tune and I hear so much going on, I'd like the challenge. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to it for a couple of weeks as I'm heading out of town and my studio is currently in disarray.

I'm still hearing the guitars overpowering everything else. And all instruments seem right up the center. It feels one dimensional. Keep at it!!!
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Sure, I'll PM him.

Hmmm... I feel like I've got a pretty wide stereo spread. The only things I have down the middle are some of the drums (kick, snare, toms), the bass, and the lead vox (and main harmony). All the guitars and the synth are pretty far out. I'm always pretty paranoid of panning too far because I usually listen to music on headphones, and it annoys me when it's panned too wide.

rayc said:
Mix 2 - def improvement.
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Thanks!
 
VomitHatSteve said:
So you did! Clearly I can read.



Sure, I'll PM him.

Hmmm... I feel like I've got a pretty wide stereo spread. The only things I have down the middle are some of the drums (kick, snare, toms), the bass, and the lead vox (and main harmony). All the guitars and the synth are pretty far out. I'm always pretty paranoid of panning too far because I usually listen to music on headphones, and it annoys me when it's panned too wide.



Thanks!
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Yeah, I've got to rescind my statement about the 2nd mix. A few days ago I disconnected my interface and some other things, so now I'm listening through my headphones with the Realtek HD onboard soundcard and I just realized it is totally messing everything up. Like completely weird stuff. Can't hear vocals on anything, everything is centered. So please disregard my comments on the 2nd mix, I'm totally out the window. Onboard soundcards SUCK!!

But still, I'd like to try my hand at mixing this song in a couple of weeks.
 
Chili said:
Yeah, I've got to rescind my statement about the 2nd mix. A few days ago I disconnected my interface and some other things, so now I'm listening through my headphones with the Realtek HD onboard soundcard and I just realized it is totally messing everything up. Like completely weird stuff. Can't hear vocals on anything, everything is centered. So please disregard my comments on the 2nd mix, I'm totally out the window. Onboard soundcards SUCK!!

But still, I'd like to try my hand at mixing this song in a couple of weeks.
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OMG - so you got hit by this too? Our 'family' computer has a realtek card and my kids mess with the settings. Mess with the EQ, turn on surround sound, it even has REVERB SETTINGS you can add. Every once in a while I go to spot check something there and lose it, until I remember to restore the defaults...
 
Okay mix 2....definitely better

Try this now....flip the phase on the kick and snare track. See if that makes a difference to your liking. They're either gonna pop more or get thin and weak. Pan the OH's as far left and right as they'll go and bring them up some. Not much but just a little. Get the toms off center and bring them up. You could also EQ some boxiness out of the kick.
 
I think it's getting closer. I'm still not hearing any pop from the kick, snare, or toms though. Cymbal crashes and toms are almost non-existent. Just make everything drum related way louder....or bring the other stuff way down. Either way. I know this stuff can be tough when you're not used to it. We'll walk you through.
 
The drums are too low in volume and the major part of the mix seems extreme left and right... like everything is hard panned. Obviously there is stuff in the middle.
I think this is tough one to mix, as a lot of vocals and stuff happening.
Take the good advice around here and ignore mine!!

Nice song.
 
I DL'd your tracks. I see what the problem is in my opinion - it's a lot of tracks all at different levels doing different things at different times. Just doing a quick level mix I can tell that getting one portion of the song sounding balanced completely throws off another portion when the extra stuff pops in and out. Yikes! You've got your work cut out for you man. Some of those tracks seem redundant. You could probably do away with a few of them and that might help clean things up some. Get busy with EQ, compression, and automation. I can tell you that my drums like compression. I get a lot of variety with manipulating compressors when need be. This might also be a good candidate for parallel compression on the drums. Bus them all to a group and squash the shit out of them and blend them back in. On the plus side, all of the tracks seem clean and usable to me. It's just gonna take a lot of fiddling around.
 
Alright the "Cleab it! Side-chain compressors everywhere mix" (mix 4) is up. I started about halfway over: turned everything down except the drums; turned the OHs and toms back up a bit. Turned the bass and lead vox up. Then gradually turned each other instrument up from 0 until I could barely tolerate how quiet it was.

Then I threw fsking side-chain compression on everything! The kick compresses the rhythm guitars and bass. The harmony vocals compress the rhythm and lead guitars. The later harmony parts compress the earlier harmony parts. (i.e. when the "oohs" come in, the "bah da das" get quieter). Everybody's compressing everybody!

For the first bit, I honestly can't hear the difference between this and the previous mix, but suddenly the last chorus hits and the kick comes through again! It was also a lot easier to keep the mix from clipping, so I'll probably continue using the SSSSSIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDEEEEEEEE CCCCCHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAIIIIIIINNNNNNSSSSSS!!!!! strategy.

Please keep the feedback coming!

Same Regdar channel. Same Regdar time.

Edit: Oh yeah panning and EQ are mostly unchanged.
 
Mix 4,
Much more bass drum from the intro certainly. The ephemeral bits 'n' pieces are all there but the seems a huge separation between the up the middle stuff (kick, bass, vox snare) to the guitars & keys way out on the edges.
The song is lodging in my skull.
 
So you think I should pan things more up the center then?

Also, I think this is my first clinic thread to get ellipses in the pager. Yes!
 
Okay mix 4. Better still. I think for the most part you're very close. Now you just need a little clean up EQ in the overheads and/or kick/snare tracks. Get some of the woofiness out of the kick and snare.
 
Cool! Any specific frequencies you'd recommend fiddling with? I'm pretty bad at EQ and tend to either do some kind of "fire and forget" solution or just fiddle with sliders and hope it turns out OK.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
Cool! Any specific frequencies you'd recommend fiddling with? I'm pretty bad at EQ and tend to either do some kind of "fire and forget" solution or just fiddle with sliders and hope it turns out OK.
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For the kick, I'd say look around 125-200, in that region, and notch some out. Maybe a narrow boost around 50. Sweep the lows and listen for bonky basketball sounds. Lol. Whatever muck you find in the kick, look in the overheads and see if the muck is there also in the same frequency region. Notch it out from the overheads as well. How much varies and depends on what it does to the toms. Then look around 400 and scoop some out there. Look and boost for attack in the 4-5k region.

For the snare, you can probably roll off everything under 150 and do a gentle wide scoop from like 350-500. Boost around 5k for some attack and again around 10-12k for snare sizzle. Again double check in the overheads.

These are just general ideas. You're gonna have to decide for yourself.
 
its all about the drums still for me.... follow gregs advice.... everything is all over the place... the mix really needs the drums to set everything home... they need to sparkle and need to be a lot louder
 
Finally got a chance to check this out. I actually think the overall drum level is pretty good for the style. Your stuff isn't really straight up guitar rock and I don't think the same mixing choices apply. The kick gets a little buried at times, but it seems like there's quite a bit happening down is those lower freqs. If it were my song I might pull the bass back a little, but that's a personal thing and I might be fishing a little. Greg did a great job serving this song. The vocals sound excellent as well. I really like your WOOWOOOOs.
 
Thanks guys.

I got some more EQ advice from another recording friend too. I'll try revisiting it tonight and see if I can get the kick and snare to pop out more.
 
*sigh* This thing doesn't seem to be getting better.

Mix 5 is up.

I can hear the kick and snare alright, but I had to resort to sample replacement for the former. That can't be the best solution here!

I dunno. Thank you all so much for your patience and help with this. Hopefully, I'll get this stuff figured out (and get the CD finished in time for the (already scheduled (I'm a moron)) CD release show)
 
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