http://www.mediafire.com/?68sahc88ge83kok

this bitch is beating my brains. i am NOT a pop guy, please let it be said. but this is my third iteration of rough mix. i'm bout outa cpu.

this mix has put the screws to me, for sure, and i could use some help.

here's the skinny. 8 mics.- 4 on drums, one on bass, one on guitar. the guitar tone is as it is by request of the guitarist.. and he's not gonna be happy 'cause i keep de-gritting him. vox and guits are fighting. so he's losing the war.

anyhow-- bass player had an active. its honky. but that's how it was, and i'm doing my best with the tones.
the snare-- yep.. it's flabby and snarey. the drummer wanted that. not kidding.
the vocalist was pretty talented-- i'm working on getting her better represented in the mix. there aint that much meat there though-- she's LOUD-- but from like 500k up.

anyway-- theres fairchilds on room mics to keep stuff in control, 1176s on kick and snare (no.. sims, not the real thing!)-- also on bass. bass is eq'd, compressed, and saturated so it's grittier than it's profoundly ick 9v self was in reality. guitar is eq'd to cut lows (on an ac15!) cut around 1 and 3k, and top roled off. then its split panned and room verbed. vox are pretty heavily worked-- eq into a fuzz/gain set pretty low, comp at about 4-1-- with a pretty low hit point.. it's on, but not pumping, on everything. then it's room verbed. variety of crap on backing vox. whole thing's polished off with a mastering limiter with about 3-4 db on it.

what's workin, what isn't?

to let you know as well-- band wants trashy garagey and of the idiom-- but still good. i want less trashy, more good.. but i'm splitting the dif.

thanks!

any ideas as to what to do to 'to thicken and pop the vox?

i could pound the shit out of it with a comp.. but i haven't got the slightest freaking idea what protocol is on that sorta deal. HELP SNAX! i need help with mashing something..

Compress the bejeezus out of the vocal. Like, really bring it just shy of where you have to edit the file to remove the sound of the singer inhaling before each line.

That would be my main takeaway from that recording. The guitars are way too forward, and the vocal too far back. I might also pull a bunch of the low end out of the kick drum. The more you remove from there, and possibly from the bass guitar, the more of the vocal will come forward there, generally. Massive vocal compression is obviously the first part of that equation though.





Interestingly almostsimilar to the sonic situation i recorded a couple months back that i mentioned:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... D=10925444

Though my go at the mix is pretty damn ugly if you ask me. I can't say i am happy with it at all, but the band said to leave it alone, so there t is!

Low end resonances running wild and all.

yep-- after a few listens in other places-- guitars are too hot. i want vox and guitars roughly equal-- but they aren't- so that'ns been the horror of balancing acts... they TOTALLY live in the same frequency range.. but that's next.

vocals. hrm.. well.. any guideposts on creaming a vocal track? i NEVER go upwards of like 2.5:1.. honestly... this is already at 4:1, and i'm about ready to just CRUSH the fucker. i suspect i'm gonna have to pull back on the onset point, and hit it with like 16:1. not what i'm used to AT ALL! any fave compressors for beating a female vox into submission?

i UNDID the kick rolloff, 'cause i was thinking it was too thin-- but i could pull a little more out. the bass is already rolled off at 250-- but i'll give it a review and see if i magically undid it.

alright.. back to the woodshed... back in a flash.

Obviously there is no hard and fast guideline, and honestly, your kick is not super bassed out or anything, just my theory is that when you are trying to get a bass-light element(like female vox) to sit bass-heavier in the mix, aside from actually messing with boosting the low end of it(which i have also done from time to time, but which can get tricky especially with close up vocals), taking low end out of the bass-heavy elements in the mix might do it.

The other thing is to really just mix around the vocal. In pop or any really vocal-oriented music, hardly any of the band matters at all, sad maybe but often true, IMO. Vocal, and then the rhythm accents on the one and three, and that is most of it. If the bass guitar is locked in, you can often cut the kick out a bunch, and get that accent on the one, more implied, than clearly discerned between kick and bass. You could practically do garagerock/pop with just a snare mic on the drums, a lot of the time. If the bass is locked in, it can work.

I don't know, myself, i would like another go at recording in the style to fix some tracking issues for one, and then to look harder into and experiment with the mixing issues as well.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1yeia17iv8i4o4i

iteration 2- taking into account the guitardedness.

kick lightened, and turned up.
vox mashed. 16:1. i feel dirty.
guitars seated better.

only thing i didnt do, and still may-- is to pull the bass down- but sounding more gluey.

what y' think?

Sorry I didn't get to this fast enough... This is stream-of-consciousness with multiple revisions.

Re: the vocals, I was going to suggest something painful; 1176 on 20:1 or nuke. Push the in/out levels until the thing breaks up. I still might. Like, seriously heinous compression, zero dynamic range. Or slap a limiter on the vocal bus after everything. Edit out silences if you need to. Central vocal track- room 'verb? Slapback? Automate 'em on/off for verses/choruses or even individual lines. Do awful things to the backups in the chorus if you have to that sound hideous soloed re: bandwidth, compression...

Parallel compress the drums. Brutalize the parallel bus on the drums and bring it up under the normal drums. Bring out the body of everything with the regular drum bus providing the attack. Transient shaper on the normal drum bus if you must.

I'd take an expander to the snare track; I'm hearing a lot of noise in the beginning. I like snare rattle, but if that's from the close track I'd try to kill some of it.

Re: bass/kick, try subtractive EQ where you wouldn't expect. Cut a hole out of one for the other. In this case for what they're going for, I'd go for a more midrangey punchy kick and cut out a hole in the bass for it somewhere between 80-250 hz (yeah, that's a bit of a broad range, but it's about finding where it's fighting, sweep the EQ and watch the thing clear up both the bass and kick even though you just took a chunk out of the lows.) I wouldn't be nice to the kick track either. Maybe 5-10ms attack/20-30ms release 4:1. Apply expansion or limiting or both as necessary. Parallel processing if necessary. Sidechain the bass to the kick maybe?

I'd probably add something to the guitars, like 2db, up real high, 8-12k. Not much, maybe 2db. Or I could be hearing wrong.

Overall I like the character of the tones for what it's worth. The snare, guitars and vocals sound pretty nifty in particular.

First order of business would be parallel smash drums, cut a hole in the bass for the kick. Beat on the vocals. I'm not hearing quite the definition I'd go for against the guitars; might be an EQ thing? Notch the guitars a bit?

But yeah, you want poppy, you have to do nasty things that may make you feel awkward and uncomfortable. The trick is to still make them sound like real instruments. A lot of that sound is about beating the everloving hell out of the vocal with insane ratios or even adding a limiter after the fact, hate to say. That and mashing the drums. I like the parallel thing on drums because they still have some balls that way against big dirty guitars.

The bass is holding down the low end here; doesn't need to be where the low end of the guitars or the kick is. Cut out stuff if you need to.

I was so happy when I learned how to do the parallel bus compression thing on SD2. Between that and using the bullet room mic, I quite like how dirty and booming it can make the drums.

As for the track itself, I have really nothing to add because you all know much better than I do. However, I am starting to learn that what I thought were kind of dramatic settings on my comps and eqs are actually kind of conservative based on your guys' advice ....

There are some sounds that bear no resemblance to anything existing in nature. Part of it's an idiomatic thing. Poppy vocals and most kick drums suffer some really heinous abuse. The kick drum's a fairly modern thing, but people have been slamming vocals for a long time. EQing them to make them really bright, I think that came from the '80s But heavily compressed, even distorted vocal sounds pre-date rock-and-roll.

I really just need to start messing with EQs a lot more to get a sense of what lies where in a mix. I keep a lot of my EQing rather subtle and wide open which is why I am thinking my mixes come out so murky.

Compression is a whole new game to me though, but I don't want to derail this thread much further than that.

Also, one thing I've never tried but might would be parallel compression or even parallel distortion on the lead vocal.

EQ is tricky. There are things that you can remove lots from.

BUT. What you are listening through, will hugely influence what you hear when you do your cutting, and what you wind up cutting as a result.

For instance, i try not to get too specific with EQ talk, because well, i know my speakers are shitty. So i can only compare to what i know other records should sound like, kind of only in comparison, which is kind of a sideways backwards way to do things that frequently lets me down(ala: often with the mudmix)

That reminds me how badly I need new headphones.

thanks chris and eric.

alright- heres the end result of iteration 32409846, or thereabouts. http://www.mediafire.com/?tajugrikc1h4ycu

alright.. i revised the kick and bass tones to smooth the bottom out. vox got more high cut, and funny enough, a cut at the bottom. guitar got a little mash in the 2-3k range. i pushed the snare a little louder. i WISH i could alter the opinion of the guitarist.. but he wants a 'signature sound'.. which is a little weird, far as i'm concerned... but i guess we all want to be a little different. some just want to be WAY different... meanwhile-- the top end of the guitar-- added. there ain't much there being recorded via ribbon-- but it opens a bit. fucker's just THAT much midrange.

good lord-- i probably WILL end up parallel compressing a bit-- but at this point-- i already AM- i just refuse to totally kill them. this drummer barely uses toms.. so it'd probably sound like the proverbial hammered shit, as that snare is all PFFFFFFTTtttt and NO fundamental ring.. so all i'd bring out is poop.

i LIKE how the vocals hang now-- it's still not perfect-- but i'm shining this up to put in front of the band so THEY can make some decisions. i'm just gettin the rough together for review, and this is the densest mix of the session-- so makes sense to me to start where shit gets crazy.

hopefully this is getting remotely usable... i had to chuck another 2gigs of ram in my machine this morning to get to this point... like i said-- this is the START of the process, and idiomatically.. its not my cuppa. i'd go even further manipulating sounds.. but i fear the band wouldn't want it, and my poor processor will burst into flames...

anyhow-- lemme know if this honest-to-god sounds like ass-- spatially and sounds wise. i proud not am.

that, sir, is going on here. at least parallel distortion. the vocal tracks are run through fuzz. i tried all means of other dirt inducing things- including the high brows.. no dice.. one track is actually through a tube screamer. two of the others are paralleled through a generic reaper fuzz. did the trick for a very regulatable amount of dirt!

This last one sounds actually quite decent to me.

I think you could go further with compressing.

If it was me, i might compress the bass in this one nearly as hard as the vocal. It comes and goes a little, i.e. bits where it is very present, and then recedes. Being that this coming and going doesn't really seem to have a aesthetic reason for living in this particular song(i.e. there is not massive amount of dynamic from one end to the other), i would probably smash it to even it out, which would make the process of finding a volume level for it easier. It sounds fine in some sections, maybe a little low in others.

Otherwise, i think that what you have here is probably a good balance between how you like to do things, and how vocal forward pop-ish things tend to be done.

But depending on the band, you may have to go further.

phew.. that's good! i thought we were in the ballpark there too- especially for a rough mix.

yeah-- the bassist was a little inconsistent-- tonally, crushing that sound does awful shit though.. i tried it.. but i may end up doing just that. these guys really aren't great players- love them though i do as people-- they're doing it for shits and giggles.. so i guess i'm gonna be THE CORRECTOR.. and if that means 15:1.. so be it.

yer right, after all-- it really isn't about MY way of doing shit anyhow. i'm already doing things i've NEVER done to recordings by a long shot-- so why stop where i did? fuck it.. may's well go all in, right?

drum sounds making muster for a trashy garagey sound? i kinda wanted to set them back a bit so it reads 'LOUD'.. there's no dynamics in the playing-- so i'm trying to at least psychoacoustically give it some rock juice.

What Chris said. I'm liking the kick/snare/vocal better here and the thing seems to have opened up a bit more. I do agree re: the bass.

The drums I think could actually be a bit louder, but I hear where you're coming from here. If I did that, I might send the guitars to a room 'verb; it seems a bit counterintuitive, but with louder drums I think the idea would be to go for a slightly overhyped "everything through the PA at a club" sound. I think the actual sound of both works.

The vocalist is good, so that helps things a lot as does the drummer playing in time.

Oh, another thing about the bass.

The bass is one element that i am consistently quite brutal with as far as EQ goes. If i smash it and it sounds like ass, i will not think anything of going in and hard, with additive EQ, insane scoops, whatever it takes.

My reasoning is that:

1. Most bass players are not carrying a "signature tone".
2. A bass player would rather be heard, than have a signature tone(in the unlikely event that they should possess one) be buried in a mix.
3. It makes just about 180% of everything else easier, if you don't tie yourself to what exactly the bass tracked like in real life.

Basically, i will try to note certain major things like whether the player uses crunch, or whether they roll off all of their high end or something, and try to follow those very loose guidelines, very loosely.

But yeah, most of the time, i get beastly on the the bass tracks. It is one of the only places where you can get away with it, without actually harming the mix.