Easy Come

[Barryw]

OK - here's a recording of a co-workers band I did in my living room, and I've been trying to get the mix right.

I've been having a hard time getting it to sound good on various monitors. Sounds good on my speakers, but then unbalanced on some others. Arrgh.

If I could re-do this, I'd mic the drums differently, and I'd move the singer a few inches closer to the mic.

What changes would YOU suggest for the mix, or the recording?

Thanks,
Barry

[Vulconizer]

Is the reverb on the guitars added or a part of the room?

Personally, I'd go a lot less on the guitar reverb. It seems to be putting them way back in the mix. I'd brighten up the first guitar and pull a little low end out of it. It's pretty dark and muffled sounding to me. It has a good core-tone, just needs to be brightened up some, I think.

Cool song. I've always liked this style. Has a bit of that Tesla thing going on.

[Barryw]

Originally Posted by Vulconizer

Is the reverb on the guitars added or a part of the room?

I think a lot of the guitar sound was from his efx, then I added some more reverb during mixdown trying to give a more stereo/open image.

Thanks for the tip!

[fHumble fHingaz]

Cool song, band sounds good too.

It's pretty dark and muffled sounding to me.

Vulc, you hit the nail on the head here. But apart from the muddy guitar tone (hint-try splitting the signal from the guitar & taking a direct recording straight into the board, that way you can re-amp it later, or process it with an amp simulator if necessary) I feel it's the BASS tone that is primarily responsible for the overly dark tone. It doesn't seem to have any top end to it. Sometimes you can put 2 copies of the bass track in your sequencer (or send the same track to 2 differently processed busses), then process & eq each completely differently - one with all the lows & sub info, the other with all the high end & distortion/overdrive. I found this works great for keeping the low end punch, while retaining audiblity without completely muddying up the mix with bass.

[Vulconizer]

I like making two, or sometimes even three, tracks of the bass and processing them. Good call, fHumble.

If I go with 3 tracks, then I usually have one that I do any EQ cuts on and this one gets the distortion. This is the primary track that I use for level in the mix.

The second one gets the fluffy-bass-treatment which basically gives it the huge, fat low end with hardly anything up top. I pull this one up to get the low end big.

The third track I compress the ever-living bug juice out of. I use a ratio of 10:1 at the very least. This is where I boost a bunch of presence and some string bite with the EQ. This I turn up until I get it "exciting".

Still working the kinks out of it, but I'm getting closer to what I want to hear.

[localaz]

it would help if the bass player followed either the guitar player or drummer... his strumming/picking/whatever throws things off at times. it sounds like he's just doing his own thing at times.

the main guitar sounds like you mic'd it in a huge room... like everyone else said, lots of reverb.

the strongest part would be the vocals and guitar solos... they have a pretty clear and bright sound. drums aren't bad either... sounds like the drummer needs to mess with the tuning on his snare, it sounds REALLY tight and high.


you should share with us your setup and equipment used.

[Barryw]

Originally Posted by localaz

...you should share with us your setup and equipment used.

I really appreciate all the comments & tips. I'll make some of the adjustments recommended and post a new sample.

The drums were micd with a overhead ORTF pair with Shure SM81s. I also had a couple mics facing the front of the kit, but I decided not to use them in the mix. I kick myself for not close micing the kick & snare (what was I thinking?)

Bass guitar came in via a passive DI box, Lead & Solo guitars were close micd with EV RE11s, and the vocal was about 8" from a U87 with a pop filter. I think I would have had better results if I put him right up on the mic, and/or used a nice acoustic trap. The singer really belts it out sometimes and I was too-afraid of overload.

A soundcraft spirit board was used for mic preamps which fed a pair of slaved Fostex D90 recorders. The output of the recorders was then fed to Reaper DAW on the computer, and mixed there. Next time I'd probably go straight to the computer, I was simply comfortable with the operation of the D90s.