Actually, a band i recoarded in February 2011, but which did not then haz, but now does haz, a singer, so i recorded him over three of the songs from the first recoarding.

This is just one of them, but you can get a pretty clear idea of what it is all about.

Oblivionation Track 03.

Mix is like... superfucking SUPERFUCKING hot. A bit of crunch around all the edges.

Still just roughmixey though, might do more or might do less with the vox. Depends on what the doods want.

Sands angreh! I like the roughness, though maybe I wouldn't with headphones. I bet recording the vocalist was one of those 'stifling a chuckle' occasions, but it all comes together well.

Nah, vocalist was just normal. I have seen/heard enough hardcore vocalists do their thing to know what to expect. I actually kind of like the timbre of his voice compared to some of the other dudes who use this style. There is a little added dirt here(guitarist/writer wanted it), but not as much as you might think. His voice just kind of has an edge to it.

I actually kind of wish that i could control my own voice's volume like this guy does. Like a death growl or something, he can do this at a fairly low(compared to my shouting voice) volume. That would be handy in this house, and probably means that he doesn't lose his voice as much as i would. Style-wise, he does use a bit more affectation than i would myself though. But that is also how/why he can do it at this volume.

Also, i don't know if you just listened to it, or if you listened closer to when i first poasted it, but i originally put up a wrongversion first then replaced it. From an outside perspective, you may not even have noted a difference between the two versions though, so it probably doesn't matter which one you heard.

Well I listened around when I posted, so...

Yarr, prolly the newer one.

An aside: It is interesting how quickly my ears get burnt, trying to mix to this sort of stuff. I have like five mixes that basically sound identical to me right now, but which have kind of drastic things changed between them.

I feel like the moral of the story is: it doesn't really fucking matter. Angry sounds are a lot easier to work with.

Another aside: Also, flat/dead drums can be very liberating. If the drums sound shitty, it can be way easier to get them to the right level in the mix without worrying about losing one element of them or another. I guess partly that also has to do with it not being me playing the drums, so i care less about a whole pile of tiny nuancey details that well, don't actually matter at all to the mix.

Compressorpumpingviolence on the drums! The bass guitar seems to be hiding the kick drum, but I'm not sure if that's intentional. Listening back again, most of the drum sound seems like overheads to me? Or it might just be the effect of big furry bass. It does give the impression of "very loud band".

Listening back another time, kick & snare seem more prominent on speakers than on 'phones.

I like the dirt on the vocals. Nothing here should be totally clean anyhow.

The toon definitely has the proper In Tent City; where are you planning on taking it mix-wise aside from maybe more/less going on with the vocals?

Drums were in such bad shape i didn't have much for options. The snare was horrid, actually mostly duct tape on top. Many of the cymbals were cracked up pretty well, all heads beat the fuck up, all tuning pretty wonky, a very quiet drumset in general.

Had to record a scratch guitar simultaneously, so i only had seven channels for drums, and this was before Tor let me borrow his 990s, so my options were a bit limited. Very low ceilings. The drummer actually suggested moving the whole kit upstairs into the larger/taller living room, but when i heard how they sounded i felt that it was not likely to make a whole heap of difference, as pretty much everything was going to be close mics, and there were some time concerns at play as well. (The time concerns turned out to be unfounded as the whole tracking thing took all of maybe twenty minutes for five songs, two to three takes each? The drummer is kind of a machine for this style, kind of understatedly impressive to watch.)

Anyhow, so it is this one nasty drumkit smushed into the corner of a basement.

I actually used no overheads at all.

Had to close mic the toms because they were so dead they would be completely inaudible otherwise. So that ate up three of the seven. Put a snare top almost touching the top rim, mainly for the same reason, it was putting out comparatively tiny volume levels because of the duct tape head, and i knew i was going to need a pretty cleanish snare-only mic. Pretty heavily stuffed kick drum, flattish, quiet, just put the CAD KBM412 as far in as i could and moved it to get a little more attack. A PZM on the floor under the snare to try to pick up some more of its dull rattle, and also some more of the kick attack.

In front of the kit maybe four or six feet, i had my MXL2001 at about or slightly lower than, cymbal height. That is like 90% of the cymbal and "room" sound.

Basically, this is a technique that has worked well enough on my own drums for getting simple sounds with seven channels for a close mic'ed 5-piece arrangement. It worked less well on this kit, but because of the ceiling height and drum sound, i figured it was one of my better options for this thing.



As for plans for it, if it was up to me, i might try to un-smash the cymbal sound. But, largely, it is there because they liked it that way. And partly it is there because of how hard i had to limit the snare arrangements to get that dead thing to come out at all. I can't gate it because that actually makes it worse with this quicker-paced stuff.

In general, my feeling however on this one, is that they are a loud crunchy angry band. And the recording should be sort of be that as well.

The kick drum thing was totally intentional. Too much kick sounded unnatural and mismatched. Sounded wayyy better with a simple tight kick that was kind of getting stomped on by the bass guitar. Where the kick needs to be, it pops out just enough, but for the most part what you hear is just enough kick in conjunction with a healthy amount of fuzzbass. [The bass, by the way, was recorded direct, just a Squire P-Bass deal, sent in clean, a little EQ and a little (simulanalog) TS9 vst. Kind of a pleasant filth to it i thought.]

Mainly, my current desire, is to get the vocal to sound close enough to an angry dood in the same room as the band that it is believable. They are just going to be using this as a sort of this-is-what-we-sound-like show acquisition sort of demo. So i want it to be clear enough to be honest, and crunchy enough to be accurate to their intentions.

Mainly, modern music is not really my reference point(or theirs really). Rather, sonically, i am aiming more for the glorious golden age of DIY hardcore records when bands actually sounded pissed off, not all clean and clear. It is pretty close to that for my tastes. I do wish i had one more channel and the 990 pair when we tracked this though, as i would like a little more choice available to me in the matter of the cymbal pump. Though again, i don't know if that would really help me at all, given the sound and state of the kit.

And the fact that the band likes the way it sounds kind of as is.

Yeah, I kinda figger'd you're not going for modern glossmetal here. (And if the band was, than they're playing the wrong style!)

I thought I was hearing a lot of undersnare in there in parts. That 'splains it. Not really getting much from the top head save for the initial smack- which is probably for the best (or, all you're gonna get from a guy whacking a roll of duct tape). The kick/bass relationship is actually kinda cool- the super-muffled kick I assume doesn't have much going on save for a dull thud anyhow? so while there really isn't much drum tone happening, you do get the punch hitting pretty well in time with the bass guitar, which is where the real action in the bottom end is happening. It works as a rhythm section. (The bass tone is a good sort of dirty, btw.)

Hardcore isn't supposed to sound pretty anyhow. And as you said, you're limited by the sketchy kit in where you can take things, and everything else sounds fine, the rhythm section is doing its thing, and the band as a whole sounds hella pissed. It works.

What did youse guys use for the guitars, anyhow?

The guitar sound is a stock SG Standard into a 50w JCM800 clone that was built into a 2x12 Crate Vintage Club combo cab with the original crate VC speakers [which are actually solid sounding(and possibly just relabeled Celestion something-or-others?), as was that whole older(like late nineties/early 00s, i think) style Vintage Club line, maybe the best things Crate has done.] Anyhow, a nice JCM build in there now, and he runs KT77s in the power section.

All the guitars are two takes, 100% hard left and hard right, probably a single Shure PG58 on the thing, at that point in time. Then some obvious overdubby sorts of things(the band only has one guitarist). I actually am "playing" on this particular track myself, in the feedback part, as it took some doing to get the sound he wanted for that part, and i have some experience in such matters from my days of playing in a (bad) hardcore band back in the day.

Actually i just heard back from the guitarist/writer(actually an old friend of mine who i have been in other bands with in the pasts). Now that he has heard it a bit with the vocal, he wants me to cut the bass down a bunch. I liked it here(i usually like it loud, with the vocal low, maybe the opposite of where this might go now that they are hearing it with the voice). I actually think he might be leaning towards maybe wanting it a bit drier sounding also. I may aim to fix some cymbal shit while i am at it for giggles/shits actually, and see if that is part of what he is looking for.

Spiffy. The guitar tone here is pretty quality.

Re: bass, maybe sidechaining it to the kick? Duck the bass a bit when the kick hits. You can do some interesting things with perceived bass/kick levels that way. You could get the impression of there being more drums while still keeping the bass high in the mix. (I agree re: mixing the bass loud and the vocals fairly low for pretty well all heavy musics.)

I hesitate to do anything the end result of which would be the automatic modulation of the volume levels of something. Or rather, anything more than the compression pumping that i am already stuck with.

My impression was that just in a general sense, he wants a lot less bass sound in there (like except for the breaks where it is like only bass). I don't know that i agree with the choice so much, but he and i do have slightly different ideas of what the finest craptone for hardcore recoardings really is.

So probably i will just drop the bass a pile, which will bring the kick up as a side effect. And then i will probably drop the main room mix a little which will cut down some of the pump i think.

Actually, i have already done this, but it is sister-naptime/headphone-hours here now, so i don't know if it actually works this way yet. On the HD201s it really makes the guitars a bit stabby, especially the overdubs. Probably because more of them is hitting the limiters in the absence of all that bass content. I probably won't be able to figure out a proper solution to it until i can listen through speakers tomorrowlike.

Figured I'd throw the idea out there. I find it useful a good amount of the time. Not all, but most. Helps keep things from stepping on each other, but in this context I thought it might help provide the illusion of less bass without there really being, y'know, less bass.

Are you just pulling the fader down to get there? Or is there any EQ/compression foolery going on? If you're up for being the sort of prick who'll split the difference to keep at least some of the thing in there, even if it's not as in-your-face.

My current ghetto mixing technique involves a combination of faders being slammed none, some, or tons, into various buss limiter stages.

It is pretty horrible actually. I have a reasonably solid feeling that some day i will have to spend some time 'breaking up' with my limiter crutches, but that time will not be today.

Mainly, when it works, i like it and it produces loud solid/decent mixes.

But when it doesn't work, or i have to change one thing, it tends to throw the balance all out of whack because of the interactivity of all of the stages, how they are bussed, and what hits what, where, and when, and how hard.

I actually like it because it is fairly non-linear, and somewhat non-intuitive, so i feel like it provides a location for accidental interestings(which are an integral part of why i like to like, do things) to breed.

But in something like this where i am working for someone else's idea of how things need to be, it can make something simple like "uh yeah, if you could just turn the bass down in the mix a little, that would be good" potentially turn into having to change a little bit about... er... everything, just to achieve the originally simple desired result of like, just a little less bass in the mix.

Oh, but limiters are such good times! No, seriously. I stick them all over things. Pretty well the only thing I don't wind up throwing them on is distorted electric guitars! Lead vocals pretty well always get them, bass stands a good chance, occasionally close mics on drums (usually parallel for effect), acoustic guitars, synths damn near beg for them at times...

So I totally get the comp/limiter gain staging thing. I have a tendency to use multiple stages of compression in different places (sometimes in parallel, and sometimes parallel distortion, too), and pulling down the level of one thing is going to eff up the rest of the chain to various degrees once I've really gotten into routing stuff to where I think it needs to go.

I haven't used anything on the master buss in a good long while though... And I suspect you are, here? (Judging from the guitars getting stabbier 'cause the bass isn't hitting the limiter. Unless you have the guitars and bass bussed together?)

I am doing a lot of weird things here. One of which is using a limiter on the master buss set for like -0.3dB with a threshold of something less than a dB. So like, basically doing almost nothing unless something gets near 0dB. So if i pull all of the faders down to like -5 or -10dB the master buss in most cases/typical tracks i work with, won't limit a damn thing.

Rather than fucking with the limiter settings, i will just feed excessive amounts of various things into the master buss. It is kind of six-vs-halfdozen sorts of biz, but removed somewhat from linearity of intention by porpoisely avoiding actually adjusting the limiter directly/correctly.

So for instance, i might have the drums sitting at 0dB. If, in a mix i decide i want a little more drums, i may

1. Lower everything but the drums.
2. or, just push the drum fader above ye olde 0dB mark, causing it to violence more with the main buss limiter than the other things are.
3. or, just duplicate the whole drumbuss so that there are two of them, thus twice as much drum hitting the limiter compared to the proportions of the other things that are there. then i might just use the volume level on the duplicated buss to adjust just exactly how much Super Bonus drums are there.

It is really kind of the same thing for the last two, but it SEEMS like the increase has a different linearity between them. And really it probably does, because we are talking digital models of probably logarithmic taper pots, and in #2 i am using the top of the fader taper, or, where it is most rapid, and in #3 i am using the bottom part of the fader more(e.g. usually cutting the volume on the duplicate buss) or the part where it is the most gradual.

Really it is just a sort of willful avoidance of being too direct about what needs doing.

And really, it is the master bus limiter thing that i was talking about eventually needing to break up with. But i also do the same thing on other busses which then also slam into the master buss. My projects files have a certain naturalist/tree-like aesthetic quality to them. Lots of things feeding things feeding things feeding the master buss. Lots of places to allow trouble in. You know, so i won't get bored or something, i guess.

Interestingly, the more i hear this, and the more the guitarist hears it, we are hearing it more and more differently from each other.

Sounds like he actually wants the smashed up very first mix i did, possibly with some reverb on the vocal to make it sit better in the mix, but like, way loud vocal, wayyyy loud everything else.

In other words, totally not what i would do if it was my own thing. Oh well. I am feeling slightly burnt on listening to it and coming up opposite, so i am not going to even listen to it until tomorrow and then i will just go back to the very first mix and do what he wants to it.

Funny how ears work.

I HAVE INTERNET ABILITIES.

Really dig the instrumental half of this. And I think it sounds like you made the most of what you were given, and it sounds pretty righteous to me for what it is. Dat bass tone!

But er, do not dig broskis vocals, to be honest. The distortion is a nice touch, though.

Yarr. Now that i have heard it too many times, i would probably drop the vox a little more, but on the latest mix they seem to be where they want them, level-wise, so they will stay there.

Speaking of which, this is looking like what the final mix will be:

Oblivionation Demo. Possibly Last Mix?

I think the singer is going to do some edits in the first song(i tried but they know precisely where they want them and were not really able to convey that accurately enough to me for me to do them cleanly enough for their liking, not without them here in the room). And they also had me send over a version that crossfades the second song into a manson sample from helter skelter, but that isn't here. Also i think the order of the songs is wrong? I think it is actually supposed to go 2-1-3? I don't know, but that is the order that they had me do the mix from a year ago.

Otherwise, i think this is basically what the three songs we tracked vox for will sound like on their demo tape/cd/whateverformat.