(post-hardcore) Cera - Ready Boys, Let's Go to the Mattresses

[jambell]

Hi!

After a long recording process and way too much screwing around and fixing old mistakes, I've finally come to a point where I'm pretty happy with the mix. The problems I've run into so far are trying to fix an awful kick sound and more recently, having no reliable monitor situation. Click links for a history of what I've been doing.

Anyway, here's what I'm left with now, in a 320kbps mp3! This is the second iteration of this mix.

Right now on my list of things that I've already got on my list of notes for the next mix are:

-snare down a wee bit (maybe the sample down a bit)
-"quiet snare" part down down (part starting at 2:12)
-background chorus vocals too prominent (bring lead vox up, BG vox down)
-a little less reverb on the "whoa"s at the end
-automate guitars so in instrumental parts, guitars are a bit louder
-guitar parts starting at 00:19 are too muddy. there are two rhythm guitars, one main lead guitar, and one extra lead on the right. I've been trying to balance all of these but due to bad sounding guitars in general, it's hard to get them all in there clearly

Any more comments would be wonderfully appreciated!

[Phlipper]

Is anyone else getting the buzzing and speeding up and slowing down with this?

[sunsetsoneuropa]

I am also getting that. you can barely make out the song through it.

[magno]

Again it's another MP3 at 48kHz, apparently not good for streaming.

[brandondrury]

Why do people record at 48K when they mix in the box?

Brandon

[jambell]

ah, what the heck? This wasn't happening when I played it a few times last night from the stream to test it out!

I will try to post a fix later on tonight, sorry for the confusion!

[jambell]

There we go! 320kbps mp3 at 44.1khz, hopefully this will fix that problem.

Brandon, do you think you could explain your last post? What am I doing wrong? I'm a little perplexed :$

But now hopefully you can at least listen and bash!

Right now I'm running the snare, kick, and toms to a new group channel in Cubase 4 LE and have the reverb running on the group channel. I think I'm a little confused on how the group channel works, though. Is it basically a whole separate instance from the tracks that were channeled to it? Or is it essentially the same thing as a folder, but with more flexibility and options?

I think I remember Brandon talking about routing his kick and snare to a new bus and compressing the hell out of them or something, and that this was a technique that was absolutely necessary for modern rock drums. Could you explain this technique in detail, if possible? :] Right now I'm running compression on the kick track itself and the snare track itself as well, what's the different in routing them to a new bus and compressing that one?

Thanks again!

[brandondrury]

Brandon, do you think you could explain your last post?

This is debatable, but I see absolutely no point in recording at 48k in you are mixing in the box because it requires a resample that has a terrible effect on audio quality in my opinion. (For guys mixing out of the box, no resample is required and any sample is acceptable).

I think I'm a little confused on how the group channel works, though. Is it basically a whole separate instance from the tracks that were channeled to it?

It can, but it probably isn't. In Cubase you can feed a group via an aux send.

You are mostly likely routing all of the signal from the output of your kick, snare, and toms entirely into this group. You can find out very quickly by pulling this group channel down to zero.

I think I remember Brandon talking about routing his kick and snare to a new bus and compressing the hell out of them or something, and that this was a technique that was absolutely necessary for modern rock drums. Could you explain this technique in detail, if possible?

Getting the maximum volume from a recording

In that example I'm mention the super fast compressor (basically a limiter) but I also sometimes use a compressor set to let the initial attack blast through also. It just depends on what I'm after.

Neither of these is going to do you any good on this mix. Listen to snare from 0:10 - 0:20. The snare drops down to robo wuess levels. I realize he's playing really fast, but that doesn't change the fact that the average country drummer is hitting his snare WAY harder.

Speaking of country. Go to youtube and listen to one of the "rocking" Big and Rich songs. When you realize just how pounding big boy country drums are, it'll kick you in the ass to make your rock drums infinitely more powerful than they are now.

The really good drummers can play this fast without it sounding like shit. Yeah, I'm being an asshole about this. Too bad. If that snare isn't giving you a new headache everytime the drummer hits it, then that snare probably isn't going to work for this kind of rock music. We have a fundamental flaw at the source. Compressors and EQs are nothing more than band-aids when this occurs.

I wish more drummers took their craft seriously enough to understand the importance of balancing their kit. Then again, I wish more drum magazines had less pictures of Danny Kerry or the Slipknot guy and a more aggressive push for the fundamentals that really matter. So it's not entirely the fault of the drummer. It will be on the next recording, though, if he doesn't learn and improve.

Your only solution for this is to change the source. In other words, what the drummer has given you is inadequate and if you want to sound good you are going to have to change it. They call this sample replacement.

His snare drum is out of tune anyway so samples would have probably been necessary anyway. His snare sounds dull. That's how you know it's out of tune.

Drumagog is one tool for sample replacement. I use KtDrumTrigger with Drummer Superior 2.0 or Steven Slate Drum Samples.

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The kick drum doesn't appear to have any attack in it. You can hear a thud sound, but there is nothing on top. Listen at the end when all the double bass is going on. You don't have to have Death Metal 10k click, but you want some of it. You also want dramatically more @ 3k.

The bass is causing some major problems. The distorted bass is fun, but not near mean enough. It sounds dark to my ears. I'd want to bring out quite a bit @ 1k but also some in the 2-4k region. The 300-400Hz is getting clogged up quite a bit by the bass. In these genres I've been doing the scooped bass thing heavily as of late. By pulling out 6dB or so in this region you should be removing a snot-like veil that is covering your whole mix. Try it and see.


The lead guitar sounds boxy to me. It's not something you can EQ out. It's part of the sound on the amp. Try boosting the hell out of 400Hz. That's what I'm hearing.

There are some pitch issues throughout the vocal. One spot sounds like I sang it!

The vocal sound is very good.

Overal, it sounds to me like everyone needs to play tighter. Modern recording of rock music requires a tremendous attention to detail and when music is this busy, it requires Ninja caliber skill to get it to sound good. I know too many kids who laugh at Nirvana or whatever but would sound like shit if they were to attempt it as a full band.

If you don't make extreme tightness a mega important goal, you won't grow as a band. Give it hell!

Okay, there you go. I've been an asshole but I've given you 20 minutes of my life. Remember that when I start selling shit on this site, dickfaces!

[jambell]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

This is debatable, but I see absolutely no point in recording at 48k in you are mixing in the box because it requires a resample that has a terrible effect on audio quality in my opinion. (For guys mixing out of the box, no resample is required and any sample is acceptable).

Ah, I get it! Well, in the future, I'll record in 44k then!

You are mostly likely routing all of the signal from the output of your kick, snare, and toms entirely into this group. You can find out very quickly by pulling this group channel down to zero.

Ah, yeah, I'm definitely doing this. How do I do an aux send out to a group channel?

Regarding all of the drummer stuff, don't worry, I am in the same boat as you but I'm to blame, too. Back a few months ago when we first started recording this thing I knew absolutely nothing, a complete dolt. This has been my first project, really, so I was learning as I was going along which is fine but looking back now I go "haha what?" to most of what I did, and the rest of the process has been trying to fix what was done during drum tracking.

If you'll remember in the "terrible kick sound" thread, I was struggling with a crappy sounding kick that sounded like an awful tapping on a hollow wooden door, and now the snare is rearing its ugly head. I've actually gone down the sample replacement road but the bassist and guitarist of my band both didn't really dig the way it sounded. I'll chalk that up, however, to a crappy sampling plugin (DrumTrig, it doesn't play the entire sample before playing the next one, as far as I can tell.) and a crappy sample (recorded on the crummy snare drum in my house to test). I'm going to look into some sample packs or something like that and get this going right, using samples to replace that snare sound.

Drumagog is one tool for sample replacement. I use KtDrumTrigger with Drummer Superior 2.0 or Steven Slate Drum Samples.

Yeah, I loved the Drumagog trial but then it ran out. Definitely something I'll look into. I've got KtDrumTrigger right now too, and I've been using it to make MIDI tracks of the snare track and layering a sample underneath of the actual recorded sample. I'm going to do away with the actual recorded sample completely and go full on sampled snare with a good sample.

Do you know of any great sounding free sample packs? That's been my biggest problem, really, in the sampling drums world, is that I have a hell of a time finding decent samples.

The kick drum doesn't appear to have any attack in it. You can hear a thud sound, but there is nothing on top. Listen at the end when all the double bass is going on. You don't have to have Death Metal 10k click, but you want some of it. You also want dramatically more @ 3k.

In the mix that I had right before this iteration, I had much more click to the kick drum, but the aforementioned other two bandmates complained that it sounded weird. I'm just going to chuck it back in there and go with what you're saying and I'm feeling.

The bass is causing some major problems. The distorted bass is fun, but not near mean enough. It sounds dark to my ears. I'd want to bring out quite a bit @ 1k but also some in the 2-4k region. The 300-400Hz is getting clogged up quite a bit by the bass. In these genres I've been doing the scooped bass thing heavily as of late. By pulling out 6dB or so in this region you should be removing a snot-like veil that is covering your whole mix. Try it and see.

Yeah, I think that "snot-like veil" is a huge plaguing issue to me. Right now I'm cutting around 7db out of ~250Hz with a pretty with Q that cuts into some of that 300-400Hz region, but I'll center it at around 350 and make an even deeper cut probably and see what that does. I definitely think the whole thing sounds very muddled and almost kind of blurry, so I'm definitely going to throw on a high-end boost on the whole mix at the end.

What do you think would fix the bass sounding so dark? New strings, different bass? Different strings?

The lead guitar sounds boxy to me. It's not something you can EQ out. It's part of the sound on the amp. Try boosting the hell out of 400Hz. That's what I'm hearing.

Yeah, I agree. I have that boxy comment on my mix notes, I'll try the 400Hz thing to see what I can do.

There are some pitch issues throughout the vocal. One spot sounds like I sang it!

The vocal sound is very good.

Probably the end of the first chorus! That's my fault, I'm re-recording them tonight :] I'm glad you think the vocal sound is good, that's wicked. Thanks!

I've been an asshole but I've given you 20 minutes of my life. Remember that when I start selling shit on this site, dickfaces!

No way, you weren't being an asshole at all. I don't come here to hear "hey good job man, your mix is sounding cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!", I come here for some honest "well it kinda sucks but here's what you can try to do." Hopefully later on the first part of that sentence will be gone! haha. Also, you can bet on your life that I will be buying a book! I've been looking for something like it for a million years, and it seems you're the perfect guy to do the job.

but again, thank you so much and I will post an updated mix with some attempted sample fixes soon!

[brandondrury]

How do I do an aux send out to a group channel?

You'll need to check you software manual or post a question in Solve Technical Problems for your software of choice.

No way, you weren't being an asshole at all.

Alright. I'll try harder next time!

I've actually gone down the sample replacement road but the bassist and guitarist of my band both didn't really dig the way it sounded.
Then you didn't do it right or you used shitty samples.

It still takes work, but if the sound doesn't improve (usually drastically) from using the samples then there is a major problem.

Note: Some people will decide they want the natural sound before they even listen. If you have to use a ton of EQ, compression, and tricks than it makes sense to use LESS processing and sample.

Do you know of any great sounding free sample packs? That's been my biggest problem, really, in the sampling drums world, is that I have a hell of a time finding decent samples.

Off hand, not really. Do a search here on the forum as there is a new one that I just found out about this week that isn't bad. If I were you I'd save your cash for Superior Drummer 2.0 as it's been a life saver in this department.