Whilst occasionally tracking the odd vocal here and there, finally, I've been overcooking the instrumental not-so-rough-anymore mixes for want of anything better to do. I still don't like my drum sounds most of the time, or how the bass sits.

But for the most part, I'm pleased with the like-a-record-ness of it all. Not, precisely, how I would have liked to make a record, and the manner of recording might make it a bit too glossy, being all ampsims and fakedrums, and it took too damn long, but I think I learned something- a lot of things. I've heard worse.

Extinguisher

Bass and guitars sound just about perfect, IMO.

Most of the drums sound fine too.

The only bit i am not sold on is the cymbals which seem a bit over-eq'ed to me(which may be a feature of the sample set as well, or indeed, merely the fashion in which the samples respond to 'normal' drum eq'ing). They seem too high end pfshhhhhhhh-y, as if big-boosted @ >10khz or summat. A little swishy with the compression on them aslo. Honestly, the rest of the drums sound totally fine to me. Were i you, i might just drop the cymbals down, bury them in the mix some(even just pulling a bunch of the compression out of their channels) and then i think you have a Totally Fine Mix.

I think you are just aboot at the point where you can leave these horses alone, man.

Hrmm... The only EQ on the overheads is somewhere around there, probably 4 dB on the API if I'm remembering right without opening it up- they seemed a little dark, the ride in particular. It's Joe Barresi's Evil Drums, mostly (a couple other things blended in there on kick + snare for a little boom and a little ring, respectively). And I thought they were, perhaps, buried a bit already. But it might just be me.

There is a fair bit of compression on the overheads; Softube FET, which is their 1176-flavor with a parallel mix knob I have set at around 50% with fastest attack and release, 4:1. There's a lot of snare in the overheads, and I'm trying to smack it down a little and bring up the wash of the crashes and ride. There's a hat mic as well, which is uncompressed and seriously EQ'd, dumping all the lows and a bit of top at 7k, with the mids up. Supposed to sound like a trashy hat in the room, not how hats sound in a mic over the kit. (Which is, in my experience, usually a bit brighter/thinner than how they actually sound IRL- apparently this has to do with how hats project sound as well as OH placement.) Nothing on the room mics at all, IIRC except console + tape emulation.

There is a parallel compression buss for the drums; I don't recall if the overheads are going there, though, or if it's just kick/snare/toms.

The drum samples themselves are super-dry; I don't know if Mr. Barresi did anything to them on the way in; I know he's fond of tracking with compression and EQ, but if anything was done here, it's nowhere near as heavy-handed as most sample sets.

And thank you, good sir. I'm thinking that myself. The tones are there. I might tweak some automation here and there to ride up fills and maybe the bass in the chorus, but aside from vocals, it's there.

I tracked some vocals tonight after work, actually, for another one of the songs, and I think the verses are solid. The chorus I'm sketchy on, but I think they came out well despite being just a 58 into the board. Not my first choice, but if I can't make it work, it's my fault. We'll see; just got home a little while ago.

I suppose I can make a 58 work, just takes a little EQ is all: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13184331/AWBR_12_19_vox_test.mp3

I might actually keep the takes, too. The chorus, which was supposed to be a scratch track, turned out to be an almost perfect natural double. It's missing its harmonies, but those can wait.

Something in there is distorting, and I think it's nifty sounding. Not sure if I'll keep it that way, but I like the idea. Also, slamming the input of the Waves 1176 plug set, more or less, to "nuke". Which is certainly adding to the dirty. But I know I like that sound, probably too much.

I tried faking a sorta Eventide Harmonizer pop vocal thing on the verse vocal (+2/-2 cents pitch shifter, 7ms and 12 ms delay), but I don't know if I actually like it or it's at all useful as it's buried pretty deep- sorta the nature of the thing to be almost inaudibly subtle unless you're Ozzy Osbourne anyhow. (Apparently it's all over The Smashing Pumpkins stuff, so I can justify it to myself that way. )

Nice mixes. Very wide stereo image. It is good.

Imaginary Girl rough vocal comp

I suppose I need to tighten up the vocal edits here. They're obvious. I just grabbed the best sounding lines from a handful of takes and slapped 'em together. Thank you, Mr. Dan newholland, for use of the NT1. I have to EQ it a bit more than I did the NTK when I had it; it's not quite as glossy sounding mic, but

Five trax o' vox roughly assembled over a rough stereo mixdown of the instrumental bits (of which the "real" drums will doubtlessly be replaced anyhow). Not a real mix, but most, if not all, of the component parts. Change some drumsounds, mix it and Bob's your uncle.

Recording sounds fantastic to me. I catch some some odd orphaned fizz scrizzle on something(maybe the bass, as it seems to show up when the bass does) but maybe it is just a synth turned low, as when the actual synth bit kicks in it seems the same sort of frequency range on its topend.

I like what you have changed with the arrangement of things. Less Bowie, and moar Snaxo. Not that i have any problem whatsoever wif the Bowie-like qualities i hoid in the older versions, but i always support one's messing-about wif one's own ideas about how things do/should go together.

I think the orphaned phizz scrizzle is a drum machine layer, actually. I compressed the bejebus out of some vinyl-flavored drum samples and there's a good bit of crustiness that gets brought out. The piano at the end is very Bowie, still, but that's just its nature. I think the vii chord in the chorus forces my hand on that score. I think this'll clean up nicely when I drop the vocals into the actual multitrack session.

Dropped the vocals into the multitrack and recieved thusly

This is probably release-able with a little cleaning up of extraneous noises and whatnot. The sonics are there. Still some questionable editing here, but that's not really my forte. I'm not entirely sold on a few notes here and there on the lead vocal in parts. We'll see. I'll sit on it for a bit until a few more of them are done and release an EP sorta thing whilst I finish up the rest of this.

Of note: there's no EQ at all on the acoustic guitars. None. Just a blend of the NTK (bridge) and NT5 (12th fret). Just my old Ibanez acoustic, nothing special. Bass is an EMG-loaded Jazz into a Sansamp and Ampeg SVX.

Acoustic drums were completely re-done. Combination of Evil Drums and samples from my actual drummer's actual kit.

Those impulses I posted in the recording forum? There's a few on here. EMT 140 plate and Eventide H3000 Micro Pitch Shift on the vocals. Along with a little slapback from Soundtoys Echoboy.

Waves NLS console sim, U-he Satin tape sim, Soundtoys Decapitator on everything. Everything. EQs and compressors are mostly Waves stuff. 1176s on vocals, synths; LA3As on the guitars. API 2500 on kick drum, H-Comp on snare. API 550B and Plugin Alliance Maag EQ4 for, well, EQs. Various Logic bits here and there for utility porpoises.

Some stems:

Acoustic guitars and piano
Drums, synthetic and less synthetic
Funk Monstrosity

Needs some cleaning up, and the vocals on the last double chorus out. Proof o' concept: All Will Be Revealed vocal test

Of note, guitars here are all Scuffham S-Gear, save for the "lead" in the bridge, which is the Geiger Counter DIed.

I think the vocals may be a bit too heavily processed, and I'm not really sure how they sit in the mix as I'm doing this on 'phones at late o'clock. So there may be a bit of rebalancing necessary.

EDIT: Added outro vocals, tweaked settings to make the vocals throughout less overcooked, beefed up the guitars and generally tampered with things... but not too much: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tiwqgmqfl3mnr28/AWBR_3_19_test_2.mp3

I approve of these second tamperings. They all improve, an already quite solid thing.

Did you retain that geiger counter, or was it liquidated with the other items?

Gracias señor. They all seem to improve if I can step back from them for a bit. Doesn't have to be a long bit. Alas, the Geiger Counter was sold to pay rent 'n' bills last year when I was... Selling gear to pay rent 'n' bills. I still have the HM-2, the Silvermachine Wah, and a few other miscellaneous bits as well as most of my guitars.

Thankfully I was smrt when tracking this stuff and took copious notes:
Wavetable 75, Gain 1:00, Tone 3:00, Enable toggle on
Sample Rate 5:00, Bits 5 1/4, Mask toggle down
1st LED Red, 2nd LED off, Volume 1:30

...so I can always recreate the more fucked-up sounds on record.

Cleaned some of the murk out of the vocals + other shit

See also: the joys of parallel compression.

Against some of my reference stuff, I think the guitars + bass could be bigger. Also, the drums and vocals are now shinier than the stringéd things. Which I suppose is okay- the whole idea of as long as the vocals and drums are fine, the rest can be shit and most folks won't notice. Overall, though, I think it's holding up and could pass for a "real" record.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j9vdi6dex4xk0ha/Extinguisher_3_27_newmix.mp3
Still needs the rest of the verse vocals. Go figure, I wound up using the verse vocals from an old vocal demo- couldn't beat 'em, might as well use 'em. I keep debating whether to re-play the sloppy-ass solo, but really, I probably won't bother.

These all sound vurry good, I am particularly into the asswhoopin' bass tone. However, I would say that maybe the hi-hat could be pulled down a bit? And maybe crush the OH sound in general? It seems a little poppy outy to me, but that might just be a taste thing.

I'm fond of the bass tone myself. I'm pleased with the clarity, especially considering how overdriven it is and that it was played almost entirely with fingers on a downtuned four-string. There's one full song and two random riffs that were played with a pick just because that sounded better for those parts; everything posted here is all fingers.

I'd experimented with crushing the OHs pretty heavily with an 1176-ish thing, but it did unfortunate things to open hats and the riding-on-the-crash bits. There's a comp on there, of the clean digital sort, taking off about 3dB on snare hits but leaving the cymbals mostly unharmed. The real up-front-ness of the kick and snare is from the close mics, and a Valley People Dynamite in limit mode in parallel with the close mics fed into it. The LIMITER SMASH! buss sounds really odd and pumpy solo-ed, but brought up under the rest of the drums, adds some authority to the kick and snare.

That and the loud hats- the close hat mic is up way loud, and severely EQed- are mostly aesthetic choices to get some cymbal decay and drum shell tone happening through a pretty dense wall of guitars and bass that don't leave a lot of room frequency-wise. There's a lot of parallel compression and that sort of thing going on for a sort of hyper-real drum sound. It still sounds mostly like real drums, just, er, very produced real drums without succumbing to the sort of unrealistic EQ choices that usually entails.

I'm currently working on cleaning up a few things and prepping stuff for release. I even have a FB page created; I'm just unsure of how I want to launch things.