turd polish

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cellardweller

cellardweller

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Yep. This is a turd.

I've only recently come up with the arrangement, and now it could take 1-3 months for enough practice to be able to play it consistently enough for a "final" take.

My question is, where the hell is that mud? I phucked with this thing for 2-3 hours last night, just trying to thin the mud out, to no avail.

Granted, this version is a lost cause for so many reasons, but this particular mud is a recurring nightmare, and I'd like to find the source.

Here it is, and now you all will realize why I've never really posted in here before :o EDIT - THIS LINK HAS BEEN PURGED, TO DISALLOW FURTHER CONTAMINATION OF THIS FORUM.

EDIT there is a bit of silence at the beginning..
 
Last edited:
Clever job of hiding that link in your post. I had to look twice to find it. I am listening now...
 
It's really fuzzy. Back the gain WAAAAAAY off, as it seems that the lead is really saturated. Shave off some of the lows in the eq, and see what that does for you. I am on my work pc, so I can't really hear all of it. That's just what I could pick up.

Nice playing!!!
 
Slap a high pass filter on every track and adjust the eq on each track one at a time soloed then put back in with the whole mix it should clean up A BUNCH.
 
Generally speaking 'mud' lives in the 300-340 hz region. A nice wide cut at 320 cleans it up a bit to my ears but...
The big problem with this mix in my opinion is the lead guitar tone. It's swampy and fuzzed to hell.

Oh, cut me off huh?
 
rokket said:
Nice playing!!!
Click to expand...
I didn't think so, but most sincere thanks.
Vocals totally blew goats. Seems I'm still not over my malady...
Believe it or not, that does have some lows shaved off of all guitars, especially the acoustic. I sat here so long, I totally lost focus and said fuck it.

I always tend to oversaturate, and then have to incrementally cut back during takes that follow. I'd made the mistake of "under" saturating once, and of course it was a PERFECT take, but had no ballz or sustain...

Thanks for listening.
 
In my ears a frequency collision between the guitars? Or is it just the fact that they are dead center both and play both all-the-friggin-time (no offence)? Pan them slightly left/right anyway! Any verb you can lessen?
 
jake-owa said:
Generally speaking 'mud' lives in the 300-340 hz region. A nice wide cut at 320 cleans it up a bit to my ears but...
The big problem with this mix in my opinion is the lead guitar tone. It's swampy and fuzzed to hell.

Oh, cut me off huh?
Click to expand...
Yea, I couldn't tolerate the horrible vocals, they were really bad. I couldn't carry a tune to save my scrotum last night.

Thanks for the pointers.
 
Emusic said:
In my ears a frequency collision between the guitars? Or is it just the fact that they are dead center both and play both all-the-friggin-time (no offence)? Pan them slightly left/right anyway! Any verb you can lessen?
Click to expand...
Not quite dead center, but yea, you're right. I listened to it in two locations last night, and my home stereo didn't sound as verbed as my monitors did. Point taken though.

*edit*Actually, (I forgot)the guitars are a single track slightly offset, could that be the collision you're talking about?
 
cellardweller said:
Not quite dead center, but yea, you're right. I listened to it in two locations last night, and my home stereo didn't sound as verbed as my monitors did. Point taken though.

*edit*Actually, (I forgot)the guitars are a single track slightly offset, could that be the collision you're talking about?
Click to expand...
That can happen when you double the guitar track and add a simple delay to make it "faux" stereo. Widen the pan on them and it should clear up. It's better to just track a second guitar, so the the differences between them will be enough to clean it up. If you want to hear what the delay can do to the track, pan them both dead center. It gets all fucked up...
 
bigwillz24 said:
Slap a high pass filter on every track and adjust the eq on each track one at a time soloed then put back in with the whole mix it should clean up A BUNCH.
Click to expand...
That's how I used to attempt this, but I've read here lately that soloing the tracks does nothing (*edit-little) as far as how it sits with the other tracks...

Noone told me this would involve work... and thought...

damnit...
 
Rokket said:
It's better to just track a second guitar, so the the differences between them will be enough to clean it up. If you want to hear what the delay can do to the track, pan them both dead center. It gets all fucked up...
Click to expand...
Yea, I got lazy. I probably shouldn't have even messed with it last night, but it's been gnawing away at the back of my mind. This is the first time I've done the offset on a rythm guitar... and probably the last time...
 
cellardweller said:
Yea, I got lazy. I probably shouldn't have even messed with it last night, but it's been gnawing away at the back of my mind. This is the first time I've done the offset on a rythm guitar... and probably the last time...
Click to expand...
It can still work, you just have to eq them a tad differently to make one stand out from the other. In the long run, the time it would take to fix it, you could have already tracked the second guitar...
 
Well I don't know about that, that was a pretty complicated rythm... :D :p
 
cellardweller said:
Well I don't know about that, that was a pretty complicated rythm... :D :p
Click to expand...
It's the simple ones that I always fuck up... :o
 
Thanks to all, I now have some new things to try...

I think I need to significantly cut back on lows and gain during tracking.
It's been a while since I've actually recorded anything new, and kinda gotten out of "practice", if ever I was 'in'....

Hopefully my head clears from this muck of a sinus infection, this song is screaming at me for completion...

I'm going to kill the link now, before too many people realize how bad I suck. :o
 
cellardweller said:
I'm going to kill the link now,
Click to expand...
dammit.

Well, I didn't get to hear it, and I wanted to, but I saw something you typed that caught my interest. When you said you didn't cut any of the lows/or low mids on the acoustics, those can be a huge culprit of mud in a mix, even if they're not mixed very loud. I use a lot of acoustic tracks in my songs, and I'm learning more and more that you don't need much below 200Hz on an acoustic guitar if you have bass/drums. I always end up cutting the mud area too, but I'm getting a little better at TRYING to track them away from the soundhole...it doesn't sound as good when I'm tracking, but it works better in a full mix, I think.

I'm sure I'll have a different opinion in 2 weeks, lol.

C'mon, put the song back up.
 
cellardweller said:
That's how I used to attempt this, but I've read here lately that soloing the tracks does nothing (*edit-little) as far as how it sits with the other tracks..damnit...
Click to expand...
I think ya'll are talking about 2 slightly different things.

1. Yes, high pass every track...to find out where, solo the track and keep going up on the filter until you HEAR it change the sound, then back off a hair. The idea is to clear up any subsonic issues without thinning out the mix audibly

2. Cut each individual track somewhere between 160hz and 500Hz. You have to just solo each track to see where it clears up the best...but you can't just EQ it to sound good by itself, you have to cut it wherever it needs to be in order to fit into the mix. Ideally, you'll be cutting each track in a different area.

That's the shorthand version of the best mudkilling advice I ever received right here: http://www.recordingproject.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=1033

Forgive me if you've seen it already...it was a real mixsaver for me.
 
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