Wilbur's back. And this time it's heavy. (Snare Help?)

W

Wilbur

New member
Here's my first heavy mix for local band Red Morning Voyage. It's meant to be a tester/demo of an old, old song of theirs, for more current stuff look here

Mics used:
57s on snare and toms
Beta52 on kick
Samson CO2s for OH
R144 in the room
Oktava 319/57 on guitar, mixed together and panned hard for each guitarist
Bass went direct into Ampeg SVX (dead strings!:spank:)
All vocals w/ 319

While I welcome all comments good and bad, I'm particularly puzzled at why my snare continues to stay fairly lost in the mix and really give away the hasty, basement nature of the recording. It's a Truth 14x7 with an Emperor X, tuned to my ears perfectly, and the kid hitting the skins is incredible. It's probably bad mic placement on my part, but let me know what you think.

Cheers,


 
I think your overall frequency EQ is bottom heavy. The graph bars on the player confirm it. Most of the high-freq componants of the instrument sounds...like the snare, are buried in the mook. play with the EQ in the player....more high end...the work springs to life.
 
Hi, to me it sounds very good, not my style but it has good rhythm. About the snare, you're right, is too buried, did you compress it? maybe is just a volume issue. BTW, i noticed that there is too much bass in the mix, i think the guitars need some eq, try cutting the low frequencies.
 
I'd have to say one thing that would help is micing the underside of the snare(as well as the top of course.) I'd reccomend a Beta57 but an sm58 or regular 57 would also work great. It makes a huge difference man, it has made a world of a difference in my recordings... other than that I'd just bring out some of the real snap crackle pop frequencies in the snare.

To be honest, the guitars seem too panned for proffessional music... There needs to be something more up the center, I don't know what, perhaps a third guitar but the bass isn't really cutting it... the guitars sound good to me, maybe apply a slight high pass filter... but I listen to a lot of heavy music like this... it seems that when ever they pan two guitars like that left and right they have another one in the middle... or pads of some sort.

Here is an idea... since you only have two guitar tracks to work with, try taking one of them and copying it onto another track so you have two tracks of the same guitar. Then move it off just a tiny amount... in the miliseconds here. Pan one hard left and one hard right, the same guitar just the slight offset gives it a big hard left and right feel. Another trick is to apply a compressor to each one, and have the compressor set slightly different... or, the oldschool way, have the guitar player record the same guitar part twice... and pan one left and one right. Then take the other track and put it in the center.

It's just an idea of course... I've done that with a lot of heavy music like this and gotten a really sweet sound. Just figured I'd throw it out there, it doesn't work with everything obviously. Best of luck with it bro!

-James'
 
Yeah, I like everything but the snare. I would try to do a little eq fishing and find that ringing sound and cut it out a bit. Maybe try to find a little of the smack in the upper frequencies and boost them.

Good luck,

-jD
 
James' said:
I'd have to say one thing that would help is micing the underside of the snare(as well as the top of course.) I'd reccomend a Beta57 but an sm58 or regular 57 would also work great. It makes a huge difference man, it has made a world of a difference in my recordings... other than that I'd just bring out some of the real snap crackle pop frequencies in the snare.

-James'
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. The underside was mic'd with a Behringer C2 and treated/mixed in tradionally. Maybe I just need more of it in the mix. As for the guitar tips, we opted out of double tracking rhytm guitar due to time constraints but that's something I normally do as well. Although I do plan to trying bringing them both back into the center a bit. Thanks again!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top