gents- here's the latest mixometry.

i did the recording and majority of the mixing on this--- lemme know what y' think.

DEFINITELY not going for uber slick on it-- the goal was 'sound like a live band in the room-- throw down what you hear-- and i'll throw in some details if'n you want 'em.

http://billowsdoom.bandcamp.com/

Nice! Always nice to hear something all put together-like.

Drums sound great, nice snare volume level and cut. Is this the GJ + crotch mic? How much compression are you running on that snare? Buzzing snare wires definitely give it that "live sound" cred, how loud did you track this? What kick mic? Is this one with ribbons for the overheads, or some kind of LDC? Cymbals seem nicely smoothed at the top. (Of course, like 90% of what i hear is going to be drum related. )

Wow that second song is a long beast huh? How the fuck do you even go about mixing something like that? Break it into sections?

Lastly, what did you run the vocals through?

Sounds great to me, I like the sound of a live band rather than overproduced stuff

awesome- thanks chris!

well lessee:

drums ARE indeed gj with a crotch mic. snare is really only compressed like 1.4:1- but it's not only on snare-- but rack tom bottom, kick front, snare rim, and floor tom- and it's flipped out of phase. we hadda mute quite a few sections to get the rattle under control during drum-free sections. overheads on it are... ready for it... mxl v67g's.. no shit. jt is a basher with some BRASH cymbals.. so i chose those, and they REALLY get all the shit under control. depth on toms with his kit is pretty small.. he tunes basically ring free, and it's kinda a flat.. very sabbath sound. so i chose these mics (which were part of my payment ) to record him with having a sneaking suspicion they'd do the trick for his kit. i wouldn't use them for a more subtle drummer with a ringier kit-- but they seem like a good sheen drier to me.

kick mic is a d112. tried a beta 52, and it sounded like shit for this drum.. which again.. not super resonant.. so the cut worked better over the POOONNN.

no ribbons-- just the v67g's in steereo, and the c1000 as a crotch mic.

this was recorded full tilt loud as balls. 100w jmp, 100 watt butcher, and a gk400- and it was all running about 6-7 on the master. no compromises.. full stop rock music as it oughta be. all in the same room, no goboes, line of sight for everybody. not even attempted isolation but for the angle of the cabs.

believe it or not-- that mix for the second song was just multiple sits and listens of THE WHOLE TRACK... it's 3 songs.. and yep, they pulled it off live in three takes. this is why i record bands who can play live ONLY . it was, in fact, a grueling mix session that took 8 hours, and that was after an initial 2 run throughs of probably 4 hours solo to dial it in-- so there's probably 20 hours in the mix.

vocals were totally a blast to mix. never had such a good time getting it straight-- but here's the scenario. tracking-- richie DID NOT like tracking with a condensor. he couldn't get seated to his ears-- so i set up an sm7, a v67, and a heil pr40. the sm7 was right near him and routed back into the phones. the pr40 sounded awful. the v67 was 2 feet out. he heard the sm7-- which sounded nasal, plasticky, and ill seated-- but LOUD... and crappy like a 58- which is his live mic and he could practically eat it. so he was happy. then i just ran the v67 as the vocal mic. NOBODY liked anything else in the mix... so it wasn't just me.

anyhow.. after that-- i eq'd it to beef up midbass, semi-de ess, and get some presence clarity, then i ran the signal through a tube amp sim (i think the TLs one), which consequently compressed it pretty nicely, but dirted it up a good piece. seated it JUST right. after that-- i just put a short verb on it- just enough to get it to work-- which hopefully is pretty inviso in the mix-- but the space filled out a bunch to get it in the room with the drums.

what a good time-- it only sat in the can in master state for 8 months before we finished mixing

Are you running any EQ on the kick there? Or is that just the D112 straight up?

Also, mixing a twenty minute song in one fell swoop is crazy! Excellent!

gat damn that is sounding swell. What can I say, I love it.

This sounds teh awsum. Nice and natural, none of that super limited stupidness.

I recognize this. I'mma have to download this and A/B it to the roughs I have. This has been slickified, in a sense, or more aptly betterized. Going from what I'm hearing streaming the vocals are definitely a fair bit clearer. Gotta get into a better listening environment.

thanks gents! seriously-- about everything that COULD come together on this totally did, and the band was dead nuts-- we put this thing down in a day and a half, finishing a half day early on the band tracking. the vocal tracking.. welll... that was three different runs.. but in the end it worked out alright. lots of envelope work .

the kick had some eq on it- but nothing crazy.

my only worry about this is that it's too midbass heavy... but y'know... the BAND is midbass heavy. they're kinda this big shambling heap of midbass in fact...

yeah! you've heard this a LONG time back-- and we finally put the band seal of approval on it. i wasn't gonna mix it myself... 'cause.. well.. it ain't my band, and that's a band job. but in any case-- the drums were redone, the vox were certainly redone, and the full mix has been recalibratorized to get everything working aite. you heard a pretty rough mix of the end product of the first two abandoned vocal sessions.. which neither the vocalist or i thought were on the money. i'm pretty glad.. cause the third one he did way better on.

yessir! throw me some impressions-- very curious to hear!

meanwhiles-- if you gents like-- those guys used to be old crow-- .homewrecker's. band over at HCAF-- so buy their stuffs and go see 'em when they tour this summer!

Definitely a fitting mix for the band.

I think that kinda goes with the territory given their chosen noise.

hey-- question to all as well--

this thing got... well.. as i kinda like to call it... MASHtered. i just put like 4-5db of gain redux on the master buss, which i'm loathe to do 'cause i spend all my time PRESERVING dynamic range up til the final mix.. but i knew it wasn't gonna get sent to the mastering engineer.. so i just set it up so it'd translate loudly enough via bandcamp or whatever free distro channels it'd eventually see.

absolutely NOT fishing for compliments or any such crap-- but genuinely asking-- can you hear artifacts of mushery, and does this thing sound majorly mashed- and secondly- IS it translating as overly dark?

Aw hell, i mash a lot more than that on everything i do, so i wouldn't be one to ask!

My own tastes are: if you can here it pumping somewhere, maybe back it off. Even then, sometimes a little pumping is okay with me.

In your case, i think that because you don't tend to do a hell of a lot of compressing on the individual elements, you can get away with a bit more on the master than perhaps you feel comfortable applying. I mean, i usually don't go much more than 2-3dB on a master myself, BUT, i tend to completely destroy everything else with limiters before it gets there...

I.e., sounds fine to me.

What Chris said. I make shiny noisepop. My stuff's hammered with layers of compression. You don't compress much, so you could beat your mixes down pretty hard and it would be fine.

That bass tone and the drum sound really make the mix what it is, IMO.
Great balance of bass and guitar levels for sure.

also, you may now change your disclaimer