Shedding Skin - again...

[Vulconizer]

Thought I may as well post the second mix of Shedding Skin in a new thread. Not sure how many folks would check the old one although it's posted there as well.
Just hoping for as much feedback as possible to see if we're on the right track with it.

[sergio]

Is that you on vocals? I like it!
Nice tremolo on the guitars!
0:41 Great Guitar tones powerful!(Maybe a little to powerful ; ) )
1:10 Drums a little far away os soft.

Again, I'm listening on my laptop with my Ipod headphones hehe..
but great rock ballad man!

Other than the drums a little soft... great job Vulco!!

[fHumble fHingaz]

This is a great song... Reminds me of early Stone Temple Pilots. Great vocals & I love the crushing/complex/detailed guitar sound - how do you get that? Overall I think the rythym section should be louder...great sound, great recording, great song.

[aubic]

Wish I could comment on the mix but my gear's still in the shop - from what I can hear this sounds really good. I particularly like the tune at the end of the chorus where the vocals trail off. Have you thought about putting a harmony on the "straight into the sun" line?

Jus

[vega]

the song is great..but give the gutiar more power..and the drums are to far.

[jamie78]

Great track.... I agree with earlier comments though... the drums need to be a bit louder when the guitar gets cranky....

[MetalDave]

The drums sound good where they are at. The guitars get just a tad too loud at the chorus and it does drown out the drums Also the guitars are biting my eardrums a bit. Maybe a bit less 2.5k? I wouldn't do any drastic changes to what you have so far. very slight changes are going to work I am sure. Vocals are awesome. The bass is blended right in with guitars Maybe after the guitars are turned down a bit it will balance out better. Vega? You must be a guitar player. And you must have just got done playing you guitar cranked and so now you can't hear guitars? Is that it? Guitar players are deaf!

[defianttek]

i love it....i would download the cd....hmmm deff some stp hinted in there
guitars deff brought down...and then my guess is that youll need to bring the vocals down aswell...
the hats sound really tinny untill around 3:21 then are fine for a little but...i think there isn't enough meat on them...they amost remind me of a click track...but other than that its great

[Vulconizer]

Hey folks, thanks for the comments. Been busy working on a yet another remix of the song ( plus mixing a few other tunes and tracking on yet another ).

Sergio, that is my brother on the vocals. This is his song. He wrote it and played everything except the drums, which icedan programmed. I've just been lucky enough to be involved with the two of them on this song as a tracking and mixing engineer/ co-producer.

fHumble, my bro has a pretty decent guitar rig. Gibson Les Paul into a Marshall amplifier. Line 6 effects rack. Jackson 4x12 cab. He gets the tone he likes for the song, then I ruin it. hehe

Basically, I took an SM-57 and moved it around until it sounded like his rig was sitting in the control room with us. About 9 or 10 inches off the grill, pointed at one of the speaker cones, midway between the center and outer edge of the cone. I angled the mic face to be lined up with the angle of the cone. I listened to all 4 of the speakers up close, picked the one I liked the sound of the best, and that's the one the mic got pointed at.

EQ-wise on the guitars, I tend towards cutting the lows around 100hz or a tad higher. I use a high pass filter with a "Q" of 1. I then notched them out pretty heavy at 800hz to allow that freq for the bass guitar body. Then I made sure to take a lot out at 200hz because that seems to get muddy to me. ( More on this at some later time, I am making some discoveries about this region of the low-mids that I need to explore more. )
On the guitar group buss, I used a bit of high shelving to keep the high end in check and took out a little notch at 5khz.

Used my favorite compression plug-in from Modern. The VDME. Set it to taste: threshold about -3, ratio @ 4 to 1, attack just under 30ms and release just under 20, I believe.

aubic, we had thought about putting a harmony to that particular part, but the night we tried it, I left my Chris Cornell voice in the shop. lol, I keep wanting to try a part on it, but I need to get my vocal chops back up to par. I've been slacking while doing so much mixing.

vega, I agree with you. The drums are too far back in the mix. Next one is going to have my best Bonham impersonation on 'em and I hope to have them sit just right.

jamie78, same as for vega. I'll do my best on 'em.

MetalDave, I messed around with the guitars at 2khz and it helped a lot. Much less harsh on the ears. Gonna pull 'em back a tad in the mix during the chorus and allow a little more room for the other parts to breathe. Seems to be working well at this point.

defianttek, I have pulled the vox down a bit in the latest mix. Once the guitars came down some, the vocals had to follow as well.

Glad for the comments and the help from all of you. This mixing thang gets crazy at times, but the suggestions here really can come in handy.

[brianinogang]

hey bro. nice mix. i think you put a little too much comp on the guitars. i can hear some highs popping up (right guitar) form time to time on the verses and a loud hiss before the intro (left guitar). i like the heavy guitars better on the first mix. the second one lacks some lows and i think you boosted on the high mids, maybe cut some on the 7-10k. you could roll your setting back on the first mix.