"Wasted Years" Old demo for friend.....need mix help

  • Thread starter Thread starter evhwanabe
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evhwanabe

evhwanabe

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Looooong story short, my band broke up about 1 year ago. We worked on a dozen or so originals before we broke up. The bass player is moving to Nashville to pursue his music career and for a going away present I would like to give him a cd of all our old stuff........but fixed up alittle lol.

Here is tune #1 off of the long lost Jameson's Curse demo
Wasted Years

Performances are what they are.....All I can redo is guitars and vocals.
bass and drums are as is.

Mainly just looking for suggestions on how to make this sound as good as it can with what I have to work with. Thanks, and get ready for more lol. Im going to try and do one every few nights or so.
 
Well, first thing I'd do is work on the bass and drums. Bass is HUGE rumbly/woofy/wallowy; roll the bottom back, inject some presence into the upper mids and highs. Drums lack punch and the highs are rolled off far too much. If you can fix them first, then the clear guitars and clearer still vox will fit a lot better.

Really cool tune though, great moody thing going on...
 
Llarion said:
Well, first thing I'd do is work on the bass and drums. Bass is HUGE rumbly/woofy/wallowy; roll the bottom back, inject some presence into the upper mids and highs. Drums lack punch and the highs are rolled off far too much. If you can fix them first, then the clear guitars and clearer still vox will fit a lot better.

Really cool tune though, great moody thing going on...
Click to expand...

Thanks!
I will try and tame that bass, and get on those drums!
Thanks for the comment. I will post a newer version soon.
 
Dude, this is a nice song!!!! Really dig the vocals on it. Reminds me a bit of When I'm Gone, by 3 doors down. Lots of emotion in it. Very good song. Nice playing. Really like the guitars. Solo fit well, and had a nice tone. I don't know how much you can work on the drums, but if you could give them more punch, that would help. Is it a seperate drum track, or is it mixed in with something else? That's the only thing that I hear that could use some real work. If you can't, it still is a great tune. Loved it.
Ed
 
Dogman said:
Dude, this is a nice song!!!! Really dig the vocals on it. Reminds me a bit of When I'm Gone, by 3 doors down. Lots of emotion in it. Very good song. Nice playing. Really like the guitars. Solo fit well, and had a nice tone. I don't know how much you can work on the drums, but if you could give them more punch, that would help. Is it a seperate drum track, or is it mixed in with something else? That's the only thing that I hear that could use some real work. If you can't, it still is a great tune. Loved it.
Ed
Click to expand...

Thanks ED,
It is a multi-track recording. We didn't have many mics to work with at the time, but I believe there were 4 mics on drums (atleast there is 4 tracks in the file)
1 kick, 1 snare, 1 overhead, and 1 tom lol.........dont ask me why but I think thats how it got recorded. I always have trouble with drums. The snare was horrible and I could never get a good sound out of it.
 
evhwanabe said:
Thanks ED,
It is a multi-track recording. We didn't have many mics to work with at the time, but I believe there were 4 mics on drums (atleast there is 4 tracks in the file)
1 kick, 1 snare, 1 overhead, and 1 tom lol.........dont ask me why but I think thats how it got recorded. I always have trouble with drums. The snare was horrible and I could never get a good sound out of it.
Click to expand...
I guess what I meant, was, are the drum tracks seperate, so you can work on them specifically? If so, you should be able to fix them, without messing up the rest of the tune.
Ed
 
yes the drums sound a bit thin...perhaps using drumagog would help. Definately I think the snare is to dry for my tastes and for this style of music. Give it a little verb maybe.

There were a few notes sang out of tune in the very beginning. Maybe you could re track that, or apply auto tune just in a few sections.

Loved the guitars...the leads, rythym, solos. Great Job. However maybe widen the "chordal" type parts when it get distorted and heavy. Once again I'm just spewing my personal taste at ya. It sounded good the way it was tho if you don't want to change it.

My closing statement...just fix that snare and I think you got yourself a great recording.
 
First off, great song! I can't stop listening to it. Loving the harmonies in the vocals.

If you have all 4 drum tracks separated so that you can tweak each, then there is quite a bit you can do. I don't know what mics you recorded drums with, but you may not remember either. The over head track needs to come up, and close mic tracks should come in after that. This will most likely get you a more real snare sound. I don't think EQ can do much to the close mic snare track, but a little bit of verb could do wonders. Even a lot of reverb could sound great on that snare track especially in a song like this. Bass drum is good enough, or even perfect for this song. Drums are a bit low in the mix. Guitars and vocals sound great, although the vocals are a bit to in front in the mix, except for when the harmonies come in, they sound good loud.

This is a great song, and with just a tad of work it could sound as good as the song deserves. Keep it up.

Ben
 
Cool guys! Thanks for all the great comments! Once again I love this forum lol

lets see....drum mics....
Snare most likely a 57........on top I believe. I know we experimented with putting the mic under the snare to get more of the "snare" sound, but im not sure this recording was done like that. (this was back when we really had no clue what we were doing.......not that I really do now either though haha)

Overhead was probably my SP-C1 or a cheap Nady condensor I have.

Kick and tom(s) were Audix mics out of a drum mic kit that the band has. Not anything special.

The kit really just doesn't sound all that great (its a late 60s ludwig). I always had a hard time recording/mixing it........because evertime I got something I liked, it was time to go play a show and we had to tear it all down again. Even with writing mic positions and eq settings down I could never get it to sound the same twice.

Thanks for all the comments! I have Drumagog so maybe I will try replacing the snare, if adding some verb doesn't help.

I am pretty busy this week with 4 concerts that I am going to, so I will try and get a new version up this weekend.
 
If you have drummagog I am surprised you haven't used it. Many people don't do it because they want that natural sound, but I'm not sure you have much of a choice. Play around, be free!
 
Alright guys........sorry for the delay... too many concerts to go to this week!!

here is the updated file with some of your suggestions.

better or worse?

Wasted Years
 
Cool...dowloaded it. Damn, if it was an hour earlier, I would have done it tonight and put it up, but it's too late now. Definitely tomorrow, though.
 
Cool thanks RAMI !
I hear ya! Back to work tomorrow for me.........;-(

Im working on one more tune right now entitle "You're Gone Now" its another electric tune with crappy sounding drums haha..........

once these three are done the rest are all acoustic and should be easy.
 
RAMI came through once again! He is the man!

Here is the new mix. I had to remix everything on this one because of the drums (or because of everything else haha) SO if anything stands out then let me know.

thanks RAMI

Wasted Years
 
Cool man...You cranked the guitars on this mix, no? They definitely lift the chorus. Pretty cool.
 
RAMI said:
Cool man...You cranked the guitars on this mix, no? They definitely lift the chorus. Pretty cool.
Click to expand...

I had to bring everything down because it was so much louder than the drums. I actually backed of the guitars. But I also dropped the clean guitar way down. Maybe thats why it seems like such a dramatic change from verse to chorus. I wanted to add some dynamics to it.......and actually have the chorus come in pretty hard. I think I need to re-track the main vocals though. They just don't sound right on the "time to say goodbye" parts. Maybe if I add harmony parts thru the whole chorus, instead of on just the last word, that will help too. Its so much easier to mix when the drums are as tight as this!! Thanks Man! I can't wait for my buddy to listen to this!! Not only has he not heard these songs in well over a year, but he has never heard them sound this good.
 
Hello evhwanabe I would like to mix your recording's. I promise they will sound a lot better.
 
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