PUNK: Stanton's Grave - Shut Up And Eat Your Freedom

[Tony Ramone]

Shit, it's a long time since I posted a mix for bashing - I've just spent about 5 minutes trying to find the old rock section :P
Anyway, at the moment I'm working on a 3 song EP, and I'm sure there's a buttload of stuff wrong with each mix, but the thing that's bugging me most at the moment is that the drums right here in this song feel kinda dull and lifeless. I've tried a few tricks to get some grit in them, but you can hear the problem right at the beginning - they should be kicking you in the balls as soon as they come in, but instead of coming in with the force of a size 12 boot, it feels more like a crippled mouse... I don't know, maybe I'm being too critical, but I doubt it.
Please help.

EDIT: d'oh, looks like I missed the drop-down menu for adding a genre, I thought we had to type that as part of the title, my bad...

[kakeux]

Hi,

Really love the song....A good rough punk feeling that I like!!

I think there is a sort of tubby sound....don't know how to describe it....Might be just solve with a simple EQ trick, guessing....might be in the 400-500 Hz region...

The clapping should maybe be centered a bit. They do sound a bit too wide....

It seems that there are some slight distortion when the drummer hits the cymbals hard...

Hard to say.

Cheers!

[Tony Ramone]

Hi,

Really love the song....A good rough punk feeling that I like!!

Cheers dude

I think there is a sort of tubby sound....don't know how to describe it....Might be just solve with a simple EQ trick, guessing....might be in the 400-500 Hz region...

Yeah, this is what I'm trying to fight. Especially in the toms. Actually, I just went back to it tonight and discovered that somehow, in my flipping back and forth between this and 2 other songs, I hadn't actually applied any EQ to the tom tracks! How the fuck did I miss that?!

The clapping should maybe be centered a bit. They do sound a bit too wide....

Actually I might drop this part - I've gotten feedback from some of my bandmates and they don't like it I figured it was at least worth trying...

It seems that there are some slight distortion when the drummer hits the cymbals hard...

Hard to say.

Cheers!

Yeah, this could be cause by my parallel compression buss - I was trying to add even more punch/zing/sizzle/whatever to it, so I threw a distortion plugin after the compressor. It could probably do with being a bit less prominent though...

Cheers for the input dude, it's much appreciated.

[bobbybovine]

Fun tune, I love Punk stuff. I got exactly what you were saying about the drums, and a crippled mouse is being too nice . But seriously, I think what is needed here is Heavy Compression on the drums room mic!! If you didn't have a room mic you can still "imitate" it. Create a drum bus and send all your drums to it and get a rough level of everything, if you remember what drum room mics sound like (i am sure you do) there is more cymbal and snare than anything else, then you can just compress the crap out of that or also you can record that bus to a track then shift that waveform a couple of milliseconds to simulate the position of a room mic and then Compress the crap out of that track and then blend to taste. This trick actually works pretty good if you don't have a good room mic track. You can even add some early reflections with verb or delay before you compress it. It may work for you, or may not, but it is sure fun to try. That kick should definitely be in your face. Otherwise for "true" punk the rest of the track sounds great.

Bob

[LazyE]

- they should be kicking you in the balls as soon as they come in, but instead of coming in with the force of a size 12 boot, it feels more like a crippled mouse... I don't know, maybe I'm being too critical, but I doubt it.
Please help.

now thats funny! lol
literally wettin myself mate crippled mouse!

song wise, it all seems a little synthesized for punk to smoothed out, i`d like to hear it raw and peaking, drums sem to get lost amoungst that pulsy bass trigger sound, maybe try layering the kick or start the mix again trying filter sweeps and creative panning so u can isolate the parts u want/ dont want.
but hey, i`m new to this and not the best to help when it comes to technical issues, no doubt others soon b along to give their more profesional advice.
like the track though!

cheers
E

[Tony Ramone]

Fun tune, I love Punk stuff. I got exactly what you were saying about the drums, and a crippled mouse is being too nice . But seriously, I think what is needed here is Heavy Compression on the drums room mic!! If you didn't have a room mic you can still "imitate" it. Create a drum bus and send all your drums to it and get a rough level of everything, if you remember what drum room mics sound like (i am sure you do) there is more cymbal and snare than anything else, then you can just compress the crap out of that or also you can record that bus to a track then shift that waveform a couple of milliseconds to simulate the position of a room mic and then Compress the crap out of that track and then blend to taste. This trick actually works pretty good if you don't have a good room mic track. You can even add some early reflections with verb or delay before you compress it. It may work for you, or may not, but it is sure fun to try. That kick should definitely be in your face. Otherwise for "true" punk the rest of the track sounds great.

Bob

Cheers for the tip dude. Must try this out - I didn't record any room tracks, because I was limited to 8 tracks, but for the most part in this song the toms aren't being used, so I'm thinking of using them as room mics. Obviously this will take a lot of EQing to get rid of the resonances of the toms when the other drums are hit (I was using mics mounted to the drums because I still haven't got enough stands), but I managed to get something pretty good using this trick before...
I'll also try your trick of faking the room

now thats funny! lol
literally wettin myself mate crippled mouse!

song wise, it all seems a little synthesized for punk to smoothed out, i`d like to hear it raw and peaking, drums sem to get lost amoungst that pulsy bass trigger sound, maybe try layering the kick or start the mix again trying filter sweeps and creative panning so u can isolate the parts u want/ dont want.
but hey, i`m new to this and not the best to help when it comes to technical issues, no doubt others soon b along to give their more profesional advice.
like the track though!

cheers
E

Cheers dude. I'm not sure what you mean by "pulsy bass trigger sound"? There's no synths being used here, maybe I've just overprocessed everything

Actually, I've messed around with it a bit more over the weekend. This is a version I did on friday night. I have changed it a little more since then, I just haven't exported a mixdown yet, cos this time I want to give my ears a day or two before going back to listen to make sure it's still OK.
Bear in mind that this version has a bunch of crap thrown on the 2buss - EQ, slight compression and some pretty heavy handed limiting. I was just checking to see how well it would stand up to being mastered, and I seem to have buried the drums a bit

[Tony Ramone]

Hey folks, the other day I had an epiphany: why not augment the snare hits on the intro with gunshots?! And here's the result.
I also downloaded the demo of PSP Vintage ****er, which is pretty damn cool! Unfortunately it expired yesterday, but I managed to get this mix done a few days ago

[Tony Ramone]

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but I'm worried that the kick wasn't cutting through with enough power in the previous version, but then again, I'm afraid that in this version it's a bit much...
Maybe I should take a break again for a while :P

EDIT: sorry, there was supposed to be an attachment on this post, d'oh!

[kakeux]

Hi,

I've listened to it on "not so good" headphones, but the kick isn't cutting through in the hi-freq...I mean maybe there is a lot of energy in the lows, but on my headphones the kick is barely audible. You should maybe try to get something out of the kick in the 10kHz region. It will give a more klicky sound to your kick, but it will help it to be audible on any audio equipment.

I still find this song to be a great punk-hardocre one...I like that.

Cheers!

[Tony Ramone]

Sorry, I meant to actually attach a new version to my previous post - it's there now...

[kakeux]

Hi,

Ok, so now I can here the kick ...That sounds good to me. Only downside of the "louder" kick, now there are some timing issue that are sometime a bit distracting. But not enough to ruin the song.

I can suggest a last thing if you're still want to remix it..I suggest trying to get a tighter drum sounds, by basically killing a bit the resonance of all element and add some room sound artificially by using a drum reverb. This would be at least something i would try..I can feel there are a lot of bleeding in the drums, this is not necessarly bad but here, removing it, can help a bit to have a more punchy drums.. I might be completely wrong as well.

Cheers!

[Tony Ramone]

cheers for the tips dude. yeah, I think there are some hits that are a little off, and the bass guitar isn't perfectly sync'ed either, which I keep forgetting to fix :P