https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/GRAPHITE_rough_11_29.mp3

It is what it is.

COPYPASTA from what I sent to the band and the drum engineer:

I'm pretty happy with the tones. It's the balance of everything I'm going after next.

Things to do:

Vocals. Yeah. I made an extra Chris from the second-best takes and am bringing that in as a double at points. Need to do that in this mix, along with the fader rides where the vocal needs to come up/down, and delay automation to accent certain words. Right now it's just the main vocal, megaphone thing on the chorus and my backing vocal on a whopping one line with just a compressor and bugger all else save for the megaphone effect. Vocal is a bit buried during the verse, I know this.

Bass. Automation on Ken's bass that was there in the scratch track. Basically, during the bridge the distortion goes off, the Eventide chorus comes on and the room mics come up for a big stereo chorus/delay thing.

Drums. Kick goes up, kick goes down, kick goes up, kick goes down...

About the edits: Chris and I, yeah, we're comped together from a bunch of takes. Couldn't tell you what/where on guitar and keys. Picked the best parts. Same with the lead vocal. Did five takes, picked the best sounding line. Ken and Randy are one take straight through. Two edits on the bass, first and last measure of the song. There are 16th notes where I replaced a weak hit with a hard hit of the same note. Drums: six edits. Four are the same deal, weak hit/hard hit, all on 16th note single-foot doubles. I moved two kick drum hits that were slightly off. Oooooh no. Kick my ass for that. ;->

Panning, automation and all that fun stuff, yeah... it needs to go on there. But like I said, rough mix. 43 tracks off a laptop at fuckall in the morning.

How's the low end on this? I disconnected my sub, as it lies to me.

[/end copypasta]

Yes, specifically, I know the computervocal in the bridge is superfuckingloud. Fuck me, it's late, I'm not tweaking it.

Also, it's halfassmastered. Which means Decapitator/Logic opto comp/Pultec EQ plugin on the 2-bus. It's probably distorted fuckery, but it's late and I'm drunk and have to get up in five hours and change anyhoo.

I have stuff from the rest of you guyses to listen to and report back. I'm working tomorrow- fuck, I'm working on a Tuesday?!- but hopefully I get out 1-2ish and can get some shit done before rehearsal. Which means EAT COFFEE and MIX TRAXX.

Ballsack. My apologies for posting that as an announcement. That was a total mod-accident.

Aw, i thought the announcement thing was funny.

I won't get a chance to listen to this until tomorrow.

If that was you doing that instead of my drunkasslatenightfuckery, you can put it back, I think?

Oh no sir, i am afraid that was pure drunkasslatenightfuckery.

Delicious whiskey sours, they struck again.

Those bastards will sneek ups upon you like liek teh gooks in Viet-nam

Charlie is everywhere.

Where's my M79?

They made a buckshot round for that thing.

Also I listened to this this morning, sounds very good to me, but I will need to listen later in my proper setting, I am at work with shit speakers and even worse headphones, so I can get an idea of levels which sound great but overall sounds I could not really give you a true opinion.

Singer likes nine inch nails some, eh?

Everything sounds good. I would like to hear a bit moar bass, and i kind of feel like the balance between synth and guitar should be reversed(right now it is like 60% synth level, 40% guitar) but i can see you guys are going for something else wif it.

I probably wouldn't even have done those six drum edits, but then, i am a savage, and i like things savagely. Actually, i recorded some drums, like ten takes of something just yesterday, with intent to cuttey pastey one swell take out of the pile, but in the end, just decided to take the second to last one in its entirety, and leave it ugly where it is ugly. And it is pretty ugly there.

Yeah, he definitely went full-on Trent Reznor on this one. I suppose given the context it works. It's definitely more shouty than his usual singyvoice.

I was kinda struggling with the bass on this; I didn't quite get it sitting comfortably. There's this big grindy bass thing and I want it prominent.

Re: the guitar/synth balance, the main synth line is Chris (from my band, not you Chris ) on the Prophet, and that thing has some serious girth to it. It's stepping all over both the guitars and the bass.

The drum edits were not at all actually necessary, but they only took a couple minutes to do; just things I caught whilst mixing to maximize the savageness- harder hits are more better. No sample replacement or lining stuff up to a grid. It's really not necessary here. And I like the contrast of obvious live drums over all the electronics.

Also, I would like to hear these uglydrums.

I hear that ugly is the new pretty

Pink is the new black.

Not much to 'em at the moment, and i am going to be traveling around for a bit the next few days so i won't get to mess with it more yet. I will maybe poast a bit of them in another thread in the meantime though. Not terribly exciting i am afraid, tho.

Love me some NIN's Fragile.

























Just kidding, I love you.


And it sounds great.

Yeah, the NIN is strong on this one.

I tweaked the mix endlessly last night inbetwixt txting Vol endlessly, did most of the vocal work, brought the bass up and sidechained it to the kick and got everything sounding really clear and big. Will poast later.

I dunno if you've fixed this on your new version or not, but the vocals could use a bit more compression and automation.


And that snare... I think I'll keep my opinion to myself about that...

Agreed that the last time I listened the vocals seemed a little raw still. The snare... I suppose is a matter of taste.

I like the snare on this.

I notice the first time "Quit living like a slave" the "Slave" is loud, so far that's the only thing that has stood out. Once again I am on shitty headphones, but I like shitty when checking levels.

again. Good show.