Thread: Another mixdown

did i miss the link?

LoL, forgot to paste it to the message

stranger things have happened, lol. apparently soundcloud mobile doesn't support the latest version of firefox. which is what the error message said. i'd love ta hear the tune, maybe put in on Dropbox? or email me (kmetal@comcast.net)

Crap, here's the dropbox link...hope it works http://db.tt/a6CudJTv

That's pretty well recorded, but the piano sonds a bit empty and flat.
Also, the bass doesn't really seem to be in time.

yea the bass and drums need to work together more. it's making the recoring sound nervous. nice snare sound tho. in a jazz situtaion, i'd really consider micing the bass amp, perhaps his lackluster timing is due to no being able to "feel" it. also, i'd try micing the kick on the outstide to get more boom/woof, rather than beater attack like a modern rock record. to me it's not so much the recording quality, as the performance quality that needs the most work. unfortunately there's no pluggin for that. not a bad capture of the performance.

Thanks for the replys guys! This is actually not a band...it's just me having little to do and playing all the instrumenst myself So the timing of the bass is me that just can't play the bass...I Shure can't get any realtime feel of it when I'm having trouble to get the notes right hehe. I played it several times and cut out the one that was most in time of them all and just copy/pasted that all over the song. No wonder it sounds like theres no feel to it But I made this song just for mixing practice, so it's nothing that will leave my studio.

I also would have wanted to run the bass trough an amp, but I don't own one! It has been on my "to get" list a long time but I havn't found the resources for it yet, and also I really don't know what amp to buy that would be cheap enough for me. When it was recorded it had no softness to it whatsoever and alot of string sound so it took quite a lot of db changes in freqs to get it somewhat softer.

With the kick it was already set up for another heavy session so I did'nt want to change it's position, but it would have probably given a nicer boom sound if I would have put it infront of the kickport? I used a subkick but in my opinion that is something you don't want to overdo since it just boosts >250hz (atleast mine does that) and to mutch of it and it starts to produce a "ringing" boom sound.

Thanks for the snare compliment! It's a Tama starclassic maple snare with evans coated power center on the beater side that is tuned really high, I love it!

About the piano, I don't really know what to do with it? It's a Korg x5d just lined left/right with a some reverb, I thought it sounded nice so I didn't want to eq it at all. Any tips or pointers on what to do to get more life to it?

see your approach to editing is fine but it's missing one thing. to do what you want to, you have to treat the drums and bass as one unit. so when your listen to your performance, you have to pick the section that the drums and bass are grooving, and cut/paste/repeat to taste. cuz what's happening is the drums are going to sway naturally, but the bass part being repeated is just one section, so it is essentially "locked" to only one section of the drums but being repeated over a full drum take.

when your doing things like this, just group the drums/bass/(rhythm guitars) and take your favorite section and repeat to taste. for more realism, you could pick say four different sections from the rhythm tracks, and mess around with putting them in different orders, to create say a "full" verse, so it sounds less machine like. this is the concept that drum replacement and good midi programmers use. they are triggering the same drum, but the computer has say maybe 16 different hits, that either get randomly played back, or usually based on how hard the drummer is really hitting it. if you repeatedly trigger the same hit over and over, it's known as 'machine gun' effect. the same concept applies to assembling a 'master take' our of a performance.

you'll get a jazzy boom if you put a kik out mic off center and away from the port hole (experiment w/ distances). the port hole is typical for rock. i typically use a beta 91, or sennheiesr 421 kik in, and an akd d112 in the hole. this is for punchy pointy rock kicks. in an inside for jazz the more towards the shell you aim the mic, the more round itll get more 'boomy'.

well i love to mic keyboards you get some grit, and some life cuz your actually moving air, it helps it from keeping it 'sterile'. also a little compression can make it pump some more. try a medium attack, and set the release so that the needle gets back to 0 by the time the next set of stabs (in this case) starts. try no more than 3 or 4db of reduction.

again more so than the sound, is the panning. thats a cool stereo guitar sound, but when the piano comes in stereo they start fighting. 2 solutions. 1- mono guitar mono piano. L/R. 2- pick one instrument to be hard paned, and one much less panned. a 3rd could be to pan the gtr left or right, and a tempo sync'd delay (try 8th) much lower, and to the opposite side equally. ditto for the piano. this will get the mix to "dance" left to right, and not collapse the stereo image, or have them competing.

also- are you familliar w/ how to work w/ phase on a multi mic'd instrument like the drums? i'll tell you how if you don't, but i don't wanna waste anyone's time in you do.

keep working at it your getting there.