help on a rock mix...

[weatherbox]

2 piece band (overdubbed bass) that from song to song swings between glam, metal, punk, and White Stripes sorta rock. We tracked in my living room onto my 002r, mixing done in the same room. My monitoring chain and room situation could stand some improvement, so my mixes seem to take a couple stages to get to where they should be. This is the first draft mix for their suggestions and I figured I'd post it up here too for any other ideas - they're friends of mine so it's cool with them to post. I'm thinking the low end might be a little bit too much, and I'm not 100% on the vox or bass right now... suggestions appreciated!

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/File ... 0rough.mp3

[will.record.for.food]

It sounds real good to me!

If you dont mind, what mics did you use for the drums, and what amp/mic combo did you use for the guitars. It sounds real nice. On my work computers eMac speakers the bass could use a little more bottom end, but its probably the speakers. But the bass has the perfect top end sizzle for that type of song.

[weatherbox]

thanks - after listening a couple more times, I came to that same conclusion - just a *little* more push needed in the bass guitar... this song is about the drums and guitars IMO, so not so much that it'll be competing with them for dominance, but just I agree - more oomph wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

this was my first project where I said "hey... I'm actually pretty happy with what's coming out..." After the last project (my own band) I learned a ton and bought some new nice gear, both points that I think helped out a lot here.

Guitars: this is actually a 2-man band; live they go sans-bass and just run two guitar amps, both solid state Peaveys heavily fuzzed. One's a bass amp for more low end. It works live, but wasn't a recorded sound I was too keen on, so I had him try some of my amps running a bit cleaner - I think a couple cleanish-moderately overdriven amps multi-mic'ed sounds way bigger than something that's all fuzz and distortion. There are two takes on guitar - the main sound is my old Marshall JMP with a Royer 121 maybe 6-8 inches off the speaker. Cabinet is a Matamp 2x12 w/ Celestion G12h30s - the all around best speaker for rock to my ears. Can't recommend them (and the Matamp cabs) highly enough; that cabinet was probably the best thing I've done for my own sound in ages. When the guitars seem to kick in a little louder, that's me bringing up the second mic on the cab, a 57 right up on the grillcloth through my UA 2108. I pulled some low mids out of this one to keep it from clashing with the second guitar take. That's the fuzzier guitar, which was a Sound City 100 mkIII head through the same cab with a Big Muff, mic'ed with an MD421 again right up on the grill. Probably the 2108 again, don't remember offhand (don't have my notes handy.) The mian guitar was panned moderately to the right, the "emphasis" track with the 57 fairly far left, and the fuzzy second take slightly left. The fuzzy guitar had a little boost to the highs and low mids.

Drums - this was hard. I record in my living room. Low ceilings, not a ton of space. Used pretty much everything I had for this. Given my current track input limitations, we did the drums first along with a scratch track of vocals and direct guitars through a Vox Tonelab so we could really dedicated everthing to getting the best sounds I had the capability of pulling from the kit - which it's worth noting is a really nice sounding Premier set played by a very solid drummer.
*Snare - SM57 thrrough the 2108. Mic is maybe two inches off the drum, pointed at an angle into the area just below the top rim - mostly getting sound from the side of the shell rather than the top head. A little boost to the high mids in mixing, plus a little 'verb.
*Kick - AT 25 in the drum, into the 2108 again. Really like that pre a lot... bought it back when I guess Sweetwater was trying to get rid of them all and they were maybe $1100. Good buy.
*Floor tom - MD421 through one of the pres on my ancient Soundcraft 200B. Midrange scooped out a bit in both tracking and mixing stages. A little low end boost at mixing.
*Overheads - 2 Blue Baby Bottles in something sort of between spaced pair and the Glyn Johns thing, I guess... one mic over the snare pointing straight down, the other one to the drummer's right (right handed drummer) and behind him, sort of pointed in and down at a diagonal into the kit, somewhere between the drummer, ride, and floor tom. Kept these relatively low in the mix as I a) don't really like the sound of cymbals that much and b) the Baby Bottles aren't my fav for OHs, but it and 57s are the only thing I have pairs of right now, so there ya go!
*Room - this is what you're mostly hearing, along with the kick and snare mics. Charter Oak 538b out maybe 8 feet from the kit at a little under chest level... aiming above the kick. I think it was in cardioid mode. At mix time, I smashed it to bits through the compressor. Preamp was Phoenix DRS-1.
*drum mix notes - I also had my 121 above the kit as a mono OH but didn't use it in the mix, opting for the room mic instead. Drummer also brought a little Audix mic that we put on rack tom but I'm not sure I used it in the mix... The whole kit is submixed together with really light compression. The comp was sidechained to a low EQ so the kick wouldn't get everything else going crazy. The kick drum was mixed in a new way for me. Er, most everything is a new way for me, actually, this is my fifth full recording project since moving up from the ol' Portastudio, and the first time I've felt satisfied with the drum mix. I found this tip on Gearslutz and it worked really well - I split the kick into three tracks, then EQ'd each one for different ranges - one I ran -12db cuts on everything below 40 and above 260, and similar changes for the mids and highs on the other tracks, then giving little spot boosts/cuts to particular frequencies. A little more care and I'm sure it could have sounded better, but all I have is the crappy Digi EQ, and I try to avoid using plugins when possible, so I just made the most basic changes I could (until I get a real EQ...) Then all three tracks are send to one compressor through the Soundcraft and blended to taste. It's mostly the low track, I'd say probably 8 - 5 - 6 on the sliders for low - mid - high.

[weatherbox]

here are some pics, actually (you'd never guess it by these i'm a professional photographer, would ya...)

glad I saw these, actually, it reminded me that the 121 was closer than usual. I brought it in a little because of phasing. The track with the 57 also got a little phase correction from a Little Labs IBP jr in mixing.

drums:


note: this was at the start of tracking. After one song I moved the snare mic down a little for more shell sound. This was in it's original location, more oriented towards the head.

not drums:

[will.record.for.food]

Thank you for your detalied description.

I could tell you were pretty good at photography though. Or at least you have a pretty nice camera. The bounced flash gave it away for me. And the brightness of the light on the marshall head made me think you had a longer than normal exposure. (I do wedding photography on the weekends )

[will.record.for.food]

Wow...On a search for matamp cabs....

On Ebay (UK) there was an a 2x12 cab that just sold for 199. It was buy it nowed in like a coulple of hours.

[weatherbox]

They're pretty expensive; I bought mine used. The shop had another one in the shop, a new cab with 2 12" Fanes in it... $600. Had I the means, woulda grabbed both! I'd love to have heard that cab with the Sound City...

weddings, huh? I do more of those than I'd like to admit. Best way for a young unknown to fund his gear lust...

[wedge]

Everything sounds really tight and present, but I think the lead vox in the verses could stand a little more compression -- possibly parallell compression -- to give them more bite. I think they're a little too far back and not as aggressive. They sound great when the singer's screaming, though. If you could impart more of that sonic bite to the verse vox, I think that'd be the ticket...

[weatherbox]

thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Going to make a new mix tomorrow (today?) Parallel compression... never done that. I'm new to compression, and was sorta scared I'd then be fighting lack of comp knowledge *and* potentially bringing in new phase/timing issues (parallel is when you run the straight track against a copy of it mashed to a solid waveform block essentially, is it?)

[trianglelines]

The performance is really really good and that drummer kicks butt!!

I think there are a lot of very small things you could do here to maximize the punch- I know this is an MP3 of dynamic material so I'm taking that into account.

This tune has a great Nuggets-y psychedelic feel and just needs some front to back dimensions to go with the lively performance.

Try parallel compression as Wedge suggested- and not just on vocals, but on guitars as well-- different compressors bring different "colors" and that can help create a sense of dimension, but also try different layers of delay or reverb that you can scoot in and share between instruments to create a bit of "glue"

You might try limiting the drum overhead so that it "pumps" a bit to get a push pull in there to give it some dynamic life-- just to the point where the limiter comes down on it and backs off it in rhythm.

I am wishing for a bassline, but that is not their gig. I might push the kick harder to compensate or really bring in that second guitar voicing that is more baritone.

My last suggestion is the vocals - I think the guitars can come up and the vox down just barely and use EQ to make that space (unless you are intentionally going for a 60's feel, in which case the balance is good for that style).

OK,

TimT

[wedge]

Parallel compression is when you set up a comp at full squash as an insert on an aux channel, then bus the track (vox) to that aux track to taste. This way -- as you said -- you keep the original signal, but you also have a nicely squeezed version to add presence. If you want to take it a step further, put an eq on the aux track as well, and give it a smile curve, with +6db at each end of the curve. I haven't tried that yet, but read about it. It's called the New York Style, or something like that...