Comments on my mix...Any will do!

by **DwaneHollands** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 5:37 pm

The more time I spend mixing the more I admire what you guys do....sigh....it's not easy!

Any comments you have I'd love to know them!
http://www.hollands.com.au/R21Studios/A ... urners.wav

Thanks everyone!

by **Chris H** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 10:02 pm

Had a listen to the mix and thought the reverb you use on the vox make it sould too ambient and distant rather than up front in the mix. Have a go at at less reverb or a different reverb. Also a way of getting the vox right up front is to send it to an aux channel with a compressor like the free cammel crusher with soft distortion and over compress it. With the main vox set a bit low in the mix bring up the over compressed vox on the aux till the vox sits at the right level.
I'm not sure what instruments this applies to, maybe the keys or guitar bed traks, but there needs to be a wide band cut of a few Db at around 500 Hz to get rid of the cloudy sound a bit.
The drums also sound a bit too roomy, especially the snare. It might be the reverb again or mic placement, but for that sort of anthemic song i would try to get the snare to smack a bit harder. This would start with the way the drums are played, so get the drummer to pull that sort of sound. Next would be to mic the snare close, then in the mix put a compressor on it that can make it smack a bit. If you explain how you miced up the kit that would help. The track is not far off being really good and doing a few of these sort of things will get your recordings there i reckon.

by **lonearranger** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 2:20 am

Hi Dwayne,

Only things I would add:

There is some excessssive sssibilance - have a look at the eq on the vocal, and possible try some dessing. There is a free desser called snapfish which does a fairly good job. Could also look at mic choice and positioning. What did you record the vox with?

There were a couple of places I thought the pitch was ever so slightly out - most of the time its pretty solid. Something like the free gsnap plug(autotune sort of thing) might help you spot these - it has a graphic display that will show any missed notes. Up to you whether you 'accidently' render those bits, or just use it to help you get a better take.

Also around 3:50 where the song drops the acoustic guitar on its own is a bit week and weedy. Would be nice to hear the guitar up a bit here and maybe miced rather than plugged. The verses and other bits where the acoustic appears as a layer might benifit from a mic version too, but not as crucial.

Electric guitars work well - how were these recorded?

Having some more vocals towards the end might help with the anthemic thing too.

Finally think the strings are too loud in spots, I would see them supporting everything else but never being on the top of the mix. Some of the higher notes sound thin. Might need to look at other sounds or EQ.

Cheers

by **DwaneHollands** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:05 pm

Thanks for all the comments!

Chris H: Yeah I think I will pull out the reverb off that vocal. I noticed during 3.50 that it 'booms' too much. I'm almost completely useless at using reverbs properly. they're either too sibilent or too boomy or too boring! I will try that compression technique aswell! Was having some difficulty compressing the vocal. I tracked the verse vocal with a be!@#$%^& B2-Pro mic with Omni pattern. Into a VTB1 preamp. Then into a FMR Audio Really Nice Compressor on Supernice mode. Then into a digidesign MBOX2 preamp (lol. ultimately since there is no bypass of the preamp on the MBOX2). Just turned the trim knob right down on the MBox2.

I only attempted to compress a little when tracking, since I was noticing artifacting with more extreme settings. (again I'm not a gun compressor jockey though).

The verse vocals I had the vocalist real close (15-20cm) from mic. He leant back on louder verse parts. (we use one of those mesh pop filters. Interesting enough it created a buzzing sound as air was going through the mesh on some notes. The vocalist is really loud and pushes a lot of air!). I used the tube blend on VTB1 about 1 o'clock. Normal phase.

For the chorus vocals I had him stand about 50-60cm away from the mic since I thought that to help with mixing later it would be better to have it more ambient sounding. The room is not great though and I regret doing that! I should probably try and eq some of the room out of the chorus vocal aswell. I reversed the phase of the chorus vocal and I as I remember used less tube blend to make it more transparent. (can't exactly remember). The reason I reversed the Phase is that it sounded a little more 'centred' when I did that. Not much logic involved.

The Drums were BFD2 triggered from a Legacy DDR506 electric kit. Hmm, yeah I had the snare dry before and thought that I should have added reverb. The snare source was two top mics and one bottom. Getting it to smack might not be that hard as I was trying to stop it from smacking! ha ha. I have Stereo Overhead, Ambient and Room versions of just the snare with no bleed from other kit peices and it's more ambient but quite vicious. If I were to use them i need to move the audio forward since there is a very noticeable lagging. (Takes longer to reach OH, Room mics than Direct etc). Again the benefit of a MIDI/BFD2 set up is I can swap out that snare and edit the MIDI velocity to get it the way it needs to sound. We actually edited some really soft snare hits and the made some hard tom hits softer. I think it's a pretty amazing workflow!

I'll hunt for that 500hz source too. See which instrument is really clouding that frequency range. I think I also need to bring the toms levels down. They're annoying me a bit.

Loneaaranger: Yeah I was trying to make the vocal sound all 'high defintion and what' and pushed the top end too much. Using an Avalon eq model in the Pod Farm mic preamps section. I'll check out that de-esser too! I also have cellomony melodyne which I've only spent a few minutes mucking around with. I'll check out that gsnap. See above for what I recorded vocal with.

Yeah I reluctantly tracked that accoustic DI'd. Mind you my rooms not great anyway. But it was hard to get some people to the project studio and we were running out of time. They've never recorded before. (always funny. Oh man does it sound that bad when I play? I suck.) Yeah I hear you about it being weedy. I tried to cut heaps out of it. (that midrangey boomy ugliness from DI-ing!). I suppose it was laziness not automating the levels on the accoustic.

The electric guitars were done straight into MBOX2. The main rythym guitar was Amplitube 2. I used a Overscream pedal full noise but cut the tone down into some vintage tweed head into a quad (all virtually of course). The lead guitar part was Pod Farm using an AC30 type amp with a bit of drive.

I'm currently in love with strings so hence why they were quite prominent. lol. I suppose I was trying to blend genres between anthem rock and Disney. ha ha. I just love the resonance of the instruments and the purety and elegance of them. They were done with Garritan Personal Orchestra 4. I used 2nd Violinist solo, 3rd Violinists solo and 2nd Viola for the upper midrange part playing in unison. 2nd Cello (can't remember the other two) for the lower midrange boom. Then first violinist solo for the high fiddle part. that's what sound quite thin. Love the 2nd and 3rd violinist since their technique is not as good. You hear more prominent bow-restarts which helps me with realism I think. I added a french horn part at the end.

Really wanted the strings to pulsate through the song. But I might have to have another look at my automation and levels. I didn't actually even eq them, possibly where the 500hz problem is coming from.

Thanks again for your comments! They help me heaps!

by **lonearranger** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 1:46 pm

Hey Dwayne,

Melodyne should be more than capable for the vocal fixes - wasn't sure what tech you had, thus the gsnap suggestion - (should find it a kvraudio.com). Although it can be handy to spot problems in real time, if you were going for the best take, rather that post fix approach.

For the vocals, it may be that a dynamic might work well too. The sm7/RE20 are popular. I picked up a heil pr30 a while ago and find it works pretty well for some vocals - definitely a lot less sibilant than some condensors. Maybe even try an sm58 or similar.

There is also the pencil rubber banded to the front of the mic trick to reduce sibilance that I have seen but never tried.

On the acoustic - there is no room in the world that would sound worse than most piezos I have heard :-) - I know where you are coming from on the time issues though.

Feel free to post your next revision (192K+ mp3 would be fine).

Cheers

by **DwaneHollands** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:04 pm

ha ha. I hear you about the piezo's! lol.

Interesting about the pencil/rubber band trick!

Being able to see problems while tracking vocals is a great idea! Also fairly 'scientific' when it comes to showing the vocalists. "ahhh weren't quite hitting it".

Hmm interesting about using a dynamic too! I'll keep that in mind. Don't have any at the moment. But I'd probably be able to borrow one from church.

I'll try and get that LAME conversion program for creating the MP3's. Keep bandwidth down for you guys too! Sorry about the 50MB + file....

Will be diving into the studio after work today!

by **Kurt** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:04 pm

Get most of the various audio compression codecs (pre-built binaries) here: http://www.rarewares.org/

by **Kurt** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:05 pm

LamedropXPd is really easy to use.

(Can't edit previous post)

by **chris p** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:37 pm

Hi Dwayne

Pretty much agree with the comments above - but for a really simply fix, try turning up the drum submix a tad (say 10-30%) the the vocals around twice that (and adjust master vol accordingly).

The guitar hero and strings side will fade back a bit, but the message and groove of the song will come forward more clearly.

For CH's anthemic finale, try doubling the vocal tracks and playing with them. I've used 3 tracks this way with the "main" vox panned 10 o'clock full bore, a second track panned to 1 o'clock at about -6db with compression and some overdrive, and the third panned to 4 o'clock at -16 or so with a small delay.

by **DwaneHollands** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 1:39 am

OK, I have an MP3 this time. (itunes one. ran out of time to try LAME)

http://www.hollands.com.au/R21Studios/A ... turtle.mp3

Take an hour to list what I've done. I'll point out some problems I already know about but didn't get a chance to fix.

1. Have to automate vocals still
2. Have to automate Bass, Guitars when it starts as it clips something crazy. (I previously dipped volume for an instant)
3. There are clicks on the bass from bad patch ins and from bad bass playing and bad bass!
4. Kick is probably too punchy. Needs to be more transparent. I tried to clean the bottom end.

I did a quick accoustic recording for the 3.50 in my 'bad' room with a omni reference microphone! Better than I expected. (best use for the ARC microphone I've found yet ; ) ARC makes my mixes worse!)

Changed the guitar amps a bit. I said previously they were vintage Tweed amp. But it turns out it was two x rectifiers. Tried as best to clean up the 500hz and 100hz and below.

Did my best with the 'parralell vocals' technique. I think it still needs work. Tried to reduce sibiliance, but haven't used a desser as yet. No reverb on any vocals.

No reverb on snare. Did a little eq'ing and compressing. Not sure if it's 'smacking'. I might be misunderstanding what smacking is though.

Overall the song is a little more 'rocky' I think.

Comments on my mix...Any will do!

Comments on my mix...Any will do!

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