Home Recording Newb - 1st Attempt + new band

D

D-Sect

Veteran XX
Ok - Here's the first thing I tracked, mixed, etc on my own with my complete setup:
http://home.comcast.net/~d-sect/BorrowedTime.mp3

Song is missing some parts / players on it, plus it's supposed to be -4mins lol @ drunk recording!

There is so much to this stuff. I don't know where to begin, but I'm trying some basics: Using mixing "recipes" on the channel EQs, using VST recipes, also.

I got so much to learn. The recording side, the technical DAW operation side, the "ear" for mixing, knowing what x does when y, where to place instruments in the mix. I think I may try to record my friend's acoustic project so I can have something with more "acoustic life" to it, to get a feel for stuff.

Anyways - 1st run at it - 2-3 days of experience.

PS - This is my new band I'm recording. Not my old one. I'm still on guitars in this one, though.
 
song is cool. Drums are to splashy. Can't really hear bass line. guitar needs more low end. Over all it seems to need more low end.
 
I think I know what you mean by splashy drums. I tried some new stuff today. Tight gating on the drums. Previously had comp + reverb.

I found some frequencies in the bass tracks (one DI, other mic'd swr cab) that brought the bass forward.

I compressed the guitars and that also helped them come forward. I have "bottom" rolled to about "3" out of 10 as my usual setting on my amp head - will mess around with that.

LOL @ Kiss! Now to convince him to do the "Axel slither"..
 
Sounds pretty good. On the drums, you need to pull down the overheads. Drums in general are pretty hard, but here's what I hear:

1. Overheads are too loud. Put a highpass filter on them, and roll off everything below 1000Hz.
2. Kick sounds a little muddy. Boost about 6-9dB at 3500 to bring out the "click". If you can boost around 60Hz with a fairly narrow Q, add maybe 3-5dB.
3. Snare is el boringo. Boost around 1kHz, and compress the shit out of it, maybe a 10dB reduction (!), 7:1 ratio. Be careful to not get too much hi-hat in it.
4. Where's the bass? Turn it up. If it sounds muddy, carve out some of the 150-250Hz range with an EQ, and boost at 90-100Hz. Also - since you have both a mic and DI track for the bass - zoom in REALLY FAR until you can see the actual waveform, and line the two of them up. It takes a little longer for sound to reach that microphone, so a mic and DI feed are naturally a little out of phase.
5. Guitars sound pretty good. I might add a little top-end sheen to it. You made the right call in rolling off the bass, but maybe a little too much was rolled out. Add some girth back in at around 300Hz.
6. The vocals are fine but would benefit from two things: one, roll off the low end below 150Hz, and two, compress the hell out of it. Lose the reverb and use a short slap delay instead, that'll help to de-mud the mix.
 
Gonna track new drums tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll get the performances down 100%.

I did the only guitar on there on that mix. I use a Peavey Ultra (kinda like the early 5150 / XXX). I use EV tubes for the pre's and Sovteks for the power tubes. Guitar is LP classic. Both amp / guitar = stock. Speakers are Crate cab, but I put Celestion G12-somethings (same as the Mesa Twin Rectifier cabinets)

The other guitarist will add a lot to the sound, as his extra stuff brings a lot.

Thanks for the comments! Much appreciated.

I am so much a beginner that I think the magic is simply compressing everything. This may or may not be true, but I can't wait to learn more.

This stuff is funny though. You know what the Mona Lisa looks like, a painter has all the tools and equipment to re-create it but could you copy it? Similarly, I know what a good recording sounds like, and have a decent set of gear, but I know that I may never copy the "big studio sound". Thank God we're a "looser" band and don't need all the big studio accoutrements.
 
I'm hoping to post some raw tones for you guys. I am having major problems with the bass, and the guitar(s) can be better. The bass player is using a Crate head, SWR cab, and a US Jazz Bass. His sounds is great live and in practice, but it's not coming through the mix - or at least not doing it justice to what it sounds like IRL. I DI'd and mic'd his signal and they both sound good in solo. This is obv an EQ prob?

Great info again, guys. I hope I look back at this and say, "If I knew then what I know now". So fun, though!!
 
One more thing. I use an extra mic on the snare bottom / bass head beater. It brings a lille click to the track for kick and gives me the wires from the snare. Anyone else do this?

Here was my starting point. @ BenVesco.com Mixing

It would have been super-sucky without that as a launch point - at least at my early stage of development.
 
i've done enough mixing to more or less know what i like and don't like and i've taken advice from music forums and from old skul and lots of other people... but even now i don't feel satisfied that i can do it right... years later!...

but i've finally started working, for real, on an album in the past few weeks... i'd like to know what oldskul thinks of the DRUM mix in this clip http://talkingmeat.com/july14clip.mp3 (it's an original idea, not a cover, the guitar and bass are placeholders) - and if you like anything you hear Dsect i can tell you exactly what my EQs and levels are at, if it helps at all.
 
Trav, there's a couple of issues with your drums.

The cymbals sound like they're phasing in the overheads. One of the things you can do to fix that is to find a snare hit in the overhead tracks, and line them up at the sample level. Just like lining up a bass DI and amp track. The overheads also sound too loud in the mix.

The snare could use some clarity and pop, too. I would boost in the 1-1.5kHz range, just something to bring out the body of the snare, and maybe just a *touch* in the 4.5 range, to bring out the brass. Finally, compress it until you can hear it pop! I usually use around a 7:1 ratio and run the threshold down until I get a good 6-10dB of reduction, and then adjust the attack for a transparent yet forceful POP. It depends on the sound you want.

The kick sounds pretty good. Maybe a tiny boost would help in the 55-65Hz range, just to give it some girth. I can hear it's compressed somewhere along the line.

A new thing I've been doing: I create a "drum group" fader, and then take a send off of that out to a compressor. On the compressor send, I use a FUCKING AGGRESSIVE compressor that makes it sound like a completely squashed drum track. I then mix in just a bit of that track alongside the original drum group, and it acts as a parallel compressor on the drums, which sounds awesome.

I used that technique on this mix of my old band Kohai:

Verona Sorry for the slow host.
 
D-Sect said:
One more thing. I use an extra mic on the snare bottom / bass head beater. It brings a lille click to the track for kick and gives me the wires from the snare. Anyone else do this?

Here was my starting point. @ BenVesco.com Mixing

It would have been super-sucky without that as a launch point - at least at my early stage of development.
Click to expand...

When you mic a snare, there's two traditional methods. The first is to put an SM57 on the top head, angled down at the head on the edge. Put it somewhere where the drummer won't hit it much.

The second technique is just the first method, and add a second mic on the bottom head. When you record, flip the phase on the bottom mic, or do so during mixing. The bottom head is naturally out of phase with the top head.

Experiment with different angles and different mics. I currently use a Blue Ball ($50 on sale at musician's fiend) on the top head only, but I have used the two-mic technique to great effect.
 
Are there any hi-hat tricks out there? To get that full elegant splashiness instead of the singular tinny metallic buzz when the drummer rides on it partially open/open.

If that doesn't make sense, I suppose I can look for examples. It seems to me there just HAS to be hi-hat tricks out there just based on the difference I hear from most big production records vs. home recordings.
 
Sure. Small diaphragm condensor, from above, pointed directly down at the outside edge, as far away from the snare as possible, so that the hats "hide" the snare. A tiny bit of compression helps.

Edit: An SM81 makes a great hihat mic. Also, when you mix, rolling off everything below 1.5kHz can make it work. Pay attention to phase :)
 
i don't know how to fix my phasing problem if in fact i have one a) because i cant hear it and b) because it's not a real kit i'm just damn good at sequencing :p help
 
travelyan said:
i don't know how to fix my phasing problem if in fact i have one a) because i cant hear it and b) because it's not a real kit i'm just damn good at sequencing :p help
Click to expand...

If you're sequencing, you don't have to worry about phase. Phase occurs when two mics record the same sound source, and during playback, they are played at different times (separated by milliseconds). No worries if you're using samples.
 
Soo.. Time went by. Got Sonar 8.5 under control and tracking, recording etc.

Mixing. Mixing Mixing. Jeeze. What a can of worms. I don't even know where to start. There's so much to it.

Trying some new stuff:

I tried mixing by working on solo'd elements, then when it all pulled together it was suck. 2 friends gave me some advice: Mix your levels with everything on - nothing muted. Work as a "whole". Also - for a cheat, throw a lil compression on the main bus out while doing this.

Also - Room coloration. I am learning about what effect the room has on mixing. I thought with near-field monitoring that the room was not an issue. Found this : RealTraps - How To Set Up a Room - gonna try some of the placement things and room analysis.

Anyways - Anyone got any magic-bullet beginner mixing advice? So far, the thing about ' "leveling as a whole" will help. Stuff like that is great for nooobz.

GGZ
 
For a rock band, I do actually solo everything out and do compression and EQ in general.

Then, I solo the kick, and get it so that the loudest kicks are between -6 and -10dB on the master buss. Then I LOCK the kick level, and reference everything else to that.

Then I'll add in the snare, then the overheads. I then go in and edit the toms so that the only parts of the tom tracks I'm using is when they're being hit. Then I make a group track and put all the drums on that.

Next comes the bass. I usually have a DI and a miced track of the bass, so I make each of them sound decent with compression and EQ, I line them up at the sample level to fix phase issues, and balance the two so that it has a good sound. Then I group them and mix it with the drums.

I follow this with guitars & keys, and then the vocals are last. I like to have four group tracks at the end of a mix: drums, bass, guitar/keys, vocal.

Once things are sounding good, *then* I will throw a compressor on the master buss, along with a limiter, and a UV22HR plugin for sample dithering.

And yeah, it's a can of worms. I can't do a full band mix of one song in anything less than around 4-5 hours. The whole deal is basically getting each instrument to sound fucking awesome without stomping on the frequency range of everything else. One of my buddies says "A good rock mix is when everything is louder than everything else."
 
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