Hard rock mix keeps drifting toward mono.

maggot · Post by **maggot** » Sat Jul 09, 2011 8:49 pm

Newbie question here, but judging from the radio, it's applicable to others. I'm mixing one of my own band's recordings. It was ably recorded by Nick Peterson in Carrboro NC, but I'm trying to mix it myself. I have a song with a basic hard rock mix that is driving me crazy. There's no action in the stereo field & it sounds blah.

I've got some movement in the solo section, but for the verse/chorus section, the guitars are basically playing the same thing (there's any number of them if I want to use them, but I'm trying to keep them down to two or three at most.

Anyway there are semi-clean and fuzz guitars, basically playing ringing power chords or unison rhythm parts. Right now I have two somewhat overdriven guitars hard-panned, sometimes with a fuzzier one in the middle.

Bass is in the middle, snare and bass drum are in the middle with overheads and toms hard-panned, but the drummer isn't playing anything but bass, snare and hi-hat so all the actions is in the middle. I've got stuff panned all over the place, but it's so un-dynamic RE the stereo field. What can you do w/ nothing but a bunch of guitar/bass/drums to liven it up without sounding random in an 80s kind of way? I'll post a link to a rough mix when I have access to it, but, for now, anyone have any ideas?

vvv · Post by **vvv** » Sat Jul 09, 2011 9:27 pm

Delays on the guitars, mebbe panned.

Breakdowns (ex., a "drop chorus" of only voc and bass and drums).

Edits such that, say, the distortion is only on the "1".

Feedback parts.

Backwards parts.

Mono to stereo parts.

D.I. dub a keyboard in.

Or, ya could post the raw tracks at mixoff.com, see what others can do ...

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:50 pm

maggot wrote:Newbie question here, but judging from the radio, it's applicable to others. I'm mixing one of my own band's recordings. It was ably recorded by Nick Peterson in Carrboro NC, but I'm trying to mix it myself. I have a song with a basic hard rock mix that is driving me crazy. There's no action in the stereo field & it sounds blah.

I've got some movement in the solo section, but for the verse/chorus section, the guitars are basically playing the same thing (there's any number of them if I want to use them, but I'm trying to keep them down to two or three at most.

Anyway there are semi-clean and fuzz guitars, basically playing ringing power chords or unison rhythm parts. Right now I have two somewhat overdriven guitars hard-panned, sometimes with a fuzzier one in the middle.

Bass is in the middle, snare and bass drum are in the middle with overheads and toms hard-panned, but the drummer isn't playing anything but bass, snare and hi-hat so all the actions is in the middle. I've got stuff panned all over the place, but it's so un-dynamic RE the stereo field. What can you do w/ nothing but a bunch of guitar/bass/drums to liven it up without sounding random in an 80s kind of way? I'll post a link to a rough mix when I have access to it, but, for now, anyone have any ideas?

The only things I can think of from this are:

1) why limit it to 2-3 tracks if that isn't working?

2) try moving away from the bass/kick/snare/hats up the middle paradigm. Bass on one side, kick on the other, hats on one side, snare on the other. Maybe not hard panned. Sometimes moving shit just a bit to the side creates a whole new world. Is this on a computer? You might try slicing and dicing all those "other" guitars. Cut out everything except stellar little bits o' greatness. Have them appear in various parts of the stereo spectrum. EQ 'em weird too.

If you really only have 2-3 tracks that are worth a damn, try carving those into pieces and moving the pieces around L-R. Spread the pieces across a few tracks, or automate pans. Maybe just pan guitar 1 left for the chorus and right for the verse and do the opposite with guitar 2. Maybe reamp the guitars into a space and stereo record that to get some size.

I dunno.

rhythm ranch · Post by **rhythm ranch** » Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:41 am

I like vvv's ideas, but it sounds like an arrangement problem. If everybody's playing the same thing it makes it tougher to manufacture something interesting.

Rather than fighting it maybe you could just go for a mono "wall of sound" kind of thing.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:18 am

i'd have to hear the song to really comment, but my first thought was that there's nothing wrong with straight up L-C-R mixing. i don't find that 'boring' in the slightest. i'll often pile up a bunch of stuff dead center and it's rarely a problem.

but anyway, you can get a lot of mileage out of the big mono to stereo switch, i.e. have the verses (or just the first one) all in mono then go hard stereo at the chorus.

if it's appropriate for the material, and you're not opposed to adding some stuff, a nice drone/pad kind of thing tucked WAY back can be great for adding some interest.

i just asked myself "what would eno do?" and since i have the oblique strategies handy, let's pick one at random.

eno sez: "simple subtraction". there you go!

vvv · Post by **vvv** » Sun Jul 10, 2011 4:02 pm

I love that Eno thing!

I have it on my (Luddite) PDA.

It says, "Use clich?s".

inasilentway · Post by **inasilentway** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:34 am

Pan all of the drums hard left and then put an uber-short 1-repeat slap (like 20 ms) hard right.

Use every single guitar track you have on the chorus and drop it down to 2 hard-panned on the verses.

tough to say without hearing it dude!

maggot · Post by **maggot** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:50 pm

Here it is. Warbliness in the intro seems unique to the Soundclouded version. Be forewarned, when I say hard rock, I mean indie rock meets BTO.

http://soundcloud.com/feierman/basted-and-roasting-1

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:40 pm

I would focus more on the front to back blend than the LR. Like, the drums are super dry and, therefore, should sound up front, but they go back when the rest of the instruments come in. I think maybe rolling off the highs on the drums and adding some reverb, to push them back. Maybe make them sound fuller, some distortion on the kick, some crack to the snare? But still towards the "back of the room." The vox should be louder, way louder, maybe no reverb so they're right up front. I think if we could hear more nuance in the voice, not just the words, it would add a lot of sonic interest. The "breakdown" section about halfway through starts to have the various levels of depth that I'm talking about. Feels cohesive, but not all the same. The other parts have different levels of depth, but they sound all wrong - unintentional - haphazard. Just my take. If I wasn't picking it apart, I might not focus on those things except the drums sounding weak (I'm a drummer, and I like 'em huge) and the vox being too quiet.

jgimbel · Post by **jgimbel** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:57 pm

I agree with every word of what Snarl says. I'd also add maybe cutting a little low end from the snare. But to me, it's the drums that need some help to add interest to the song. Maybe some paralleled heavy compression or distortion (or not parallel). I like the guitar and bass sounds a lot, it's the drums that aren't sitting with it to me. The mono-ness is not something I have a problem with. The snare really sticks out to me as being a little bottom heavy, and it just sounds like it needs some excitement in the drums, which to me says compression.

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:50 am

I agree with what jgimbel just said. And I'm not just sayin' that.

maggot · Post by **maggot** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:02 am

Thanks for the input everyone. I'm close to the limit of my technical capacity right now. I'm just glad I've gotten to the point where the drums are the biggest problem and not the smallest.

I have some ideas about how to distort/compress the drums. I've un-darkified this snare before, so it shouldn't be a problem, but I've been having trouble getting a reverberant crack out of it.

Any additional tips about how to move the drums back in the blend without making them sound dull, weak, slathered in soupy reverb etc? I have no trouble doing that on my home setup (iPhone at chair level, wrapped loosely in a sweater 8 feet in front of drums, a little plate reverb, EQ, stock reaper multi-band compression, tune the snare myself), but this is a lot more involved.

Usually I try to reverberate the vocals just to the point where they don't sound conspicuously dry, especially for a song as assholish as this one. I seem to have overshot that. Turning them up is easy.

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:56 am

You might get farther with a slap back delay on the vocal instead of reverb. A short delay with no repeats will help keep the vocal near the front of the picture while still giving it some relation to the rest of the front to back space.
If you've already got reverbs going and are finding them too washy try pre-delaying the send. This will separate the source and space and let you hear the reverb more (and probably allow you to use less of it.).
As for parallel compression/distortion, on rock mixes I usually bus the kick and snare to a distortion pedal and bring the distorted sound up under the clean mix. Eq to taste and try flipping the phase on the distorted track to see what happens. A Sans Amp Classic is the gold standard for this application but anything can work. The old Ross distortion pedals and MXR Distortion+ are pretty great too.
I love the Alesis Micro Limiter in parallel on drums. Set it so everything is in the red and it's pumping like crazy. It'll sound awful on it's own but it can make the drums come to life when you bring it up under the clean tracks.

maggot · Post by **maggot** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 7:58 am

Thanks for the input, Dave. Right now I have no capacity to do anything outside the box. It's not even on the agenda until I get monitoring issues sorted out. But I know the kind of sounds you're talking about (longtime musician, new to mixing) & I'll try them out as soon as I get a chance.

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 8:10 am

You can do some of this stuff in the box. Although the phase issues and latency can be trickier to deal with.
I've had good results bussing kick and snare to an aux track with the Massey THC or tape saturator plug ins. Amp sims can work well too.

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Hard rock mix keeps drifting toward mono.

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