And tell me everything you think is wrong with it. Be mean.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8290798/feared%20xxx%202.0.mp3


I'm doing a LOT of things differently in this one. I'm running each set of drums to separate tracks (kick, snare, toms, and OH).

I find this to be a better way to get things to gel together, and it also makes the toms a LOT easier for me to make audible.. I've always had trouble with the toms.

Every track in this has at least 5 VSTs on it, so expect lots of compression, verb (only on the drums), saturation, EQ, etc.


Master track has the Waves SSL comp on it, followed by Ozone 4 which is doing very little. It makes it loud, and adds some saturation to the midrange.

Sounds good

Nice critiquing, you should consider a career in it.

You see what Im doing

Bass guitar is present- there's lots of obvious lows from the bass- but undefined as an element in the mix to my ears. It doesn't really have a distinct tone.

The cymbals are crushed brutally and are pumping really badly. I'm assuming the high end was boosted quite a bit on the overhead tracks? 'Cause they're sorta suffering from the top-end version of what's going on with the bass guitar.

The midrange seems pretty good, and I like the kick drum- it's got some meat to it; it's not overly hollow or scoopy. Toms are good. The snare is way loud on top of everything and kinda actually reminds me of the snare on NIN's Pretty Hate Machine. Too much "pop" to me in this context, which I think detracts from some of the power of it, but that's personal taste. I like more "crack" to a snare. It is kinda drummachiney sounding though. (It's not the hypersquashed djent snare, for which I thank you.)

Yes, there's tons of obvious compression, but I think that's really just part of the whole "slick modern metal" thing. The cymbals are where it's really a negative, IMO.

That's on one listen through headphones.

Weird, the snare barely cuts through on my monitors, and the cymbals are definitely crushed. I didn't have any EQ on the overheads, though. I'll work on the overhead track some more and update the mix.

I mixed the bass in such a way to make it blend in with the guitar. The guitar tone on this is horribly thin and needed the help. Dude's got some kind of magical way to make a guitar sound twangy as all fuck. I reamped it through every one of my amps, and the XXX that's on this (unboosted, BTW) was the least thin.


You'll never catch me squashing a snare like that, I like snares that go blam, not plop. The only reason I used this particular snare was because none of the fatter ones I had would cut through on the blasty parts without serious automation. I don't like automation, it angers me.

The kick is directly ripped from CFH. It's got a good bit of EQ on it, though. And is squashed to all fuck and back.


Off to tinker now.

As a drummer, i find the kick drum attack to be distractingly prominent. The kick level may just be that high, or perhaps just the high end of the sample is a bit over-pimped.

I also find the snare drum's attack distractingly absent. It sounds like what happens when you close mic and/or over-compress the snare top. The tone of the snare is otherwise good. It is just missing that snare crunch, that the snare wires would normally provide.

As Snaxo mentions the cymbals are pumping pretty hard.

I used to like that a lot, but i have been trying to break myself of the habit lately.

The guitars sound big, but slightly undefined. Maybe a characteristic of so much high end space being taken up by the kick sample, and drowning out some of the pick attack?

In my humble opinion, and in order:

1. Biggest minus would be the waves of cymbal pumping, especially distracting when the pattern goes left-right-left... etc.
2. Second to that, the IMO overly basketball "SPACK" attack on the kick.
3. Third, the guitar's less defined pick attack.
4. And lastly, the snare's missing crunch.


Otherwise, a pretty good mix.

Turn the kicks up a tiny bit if anything. The snare deff cuts through over here for me.

No automation makes lead vocals .

Ouch. What guitar is he using?

I love automation on almost everything. I am a bad person though, i am all about the wrong ways to do things. Really, i just like the idea of robots controlling the show.

Ibanez MTM2, I believe. The music itself isn't even all that djenty, just the dude's guitar makes it sound that way.

Automation is just a fader ride or the turn of a knob without hands. It is a superuseful tool. I automate shit all the time. Because sometimes something needs to come up, or down, or pan, or have an effect turned on or off... Metal tends to be pretty static in terms of dynamics and instrumentation though, so I can see where it wouldn't get a ton of use there.

Drum fills. That's where all the automation I do goes. Sometimes I'll bring the drums up ~4db just so one can hear a fill better.

I tend to split vocals up in chunks and mix them accordingly, so automation isn't needed there. I tend to also automate some subtractive EQ on the rhythm guitars when a lead/solo is playing, as well. Helps the lead cut through the wall of rhythm guits.