"Light The Fuse"

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:05 am

Any guidance to making this mix better than what it is would be awesome thank you. I did not do any of the recording on this song I was just given the .wav files from a buddy of mine to mix it.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=881542

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:22 am

The balance is good. Listening on headphones, so I can't hear the real low end. Everything in the mid range seems to be fighting for space. Some EQ work will sort that out. Maybe you could band limit the quite guitar at the beginning a little to emphasize what you are doing there.

The bass sounds good.

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:49 am

I reckon it's rocking, sounds like a wall of sound, reminds me of listening to Greenday on my shitty earbuds as a teenager.

Rock on.

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:06 pm

Good track, the guitars and bass sound good (although the guitars could have different EQ settings from each other). The snare drum needs a little boost it's too hidden in the mix. Keep up!

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:32 am

sounds gr8, i LOVE the guitar sounds! drums sound a tad small, do you know what the set up was when the guitars were tracked and how did you go about mixing the guitars?

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 12:51 pm

Skinflint to answer your question, I know the guitar setup was Marshall JCM TSL and a Peavey 5150 with an Orange Cab. As far as the mic setup I know it was only one microphone, but I have no idea which mic. All the guitars were doubled though. As far as mixing the guitars, I panned the rhythm guitar tracks hard left and right. The doubled guitars were panned left and right at 50 and the one solo in the song panned center. For the EQ I put a high pass filter mostly around like 125 hz for all the guitar tracks with some slight differences for taste. I didn't add to much of anything to the guitars really besides like a slight db boost for lows, mids, and highs and some sparkle around like 7k. Also I took out some mud around the 450 to like 650 hz range for all the guitars. Compression- I had about 6db of gain reduction on all guitars with a medium fast attack and release. Also a little bit of reverb on all guitars.

The drums were recorded in Florida at Dae Dor studios then sent off to Creep records to have the record mixed. The recording engineer did a poor job at recording the drums because he knew all the drums were going to be sound replaced, not by me though. I wanted to keep it all natural to have the nasty gritty hardcore punk sound. I'm just doing this for fun to better myself. The real mix though was handled at Creep Records by Arik Viktor and mastered at West Westside by Kim Dumas, but now is going to be remixed and remastered in Chicago. I don't know who is going to be taking over the remixing and re-mastering duties.

Also if you have any tips to make the drums sound bigger that would be awesome. Thank you to everyone that replied to this and if you have anymore constructive criticism throw it my way, so I can try and make this mix better. I will post a new mix probably sometime at the end of this weekend.

You can check out the real mix here that was mixed at Creep Records and mastered at West Westside

[urlhttp://www.myspace.com/protagonist[/url][/quote]

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 9:36 am

It's rocking, I buy into the scene, I like the sounds.

Who pays for it all? Do you gig for cash or are you being sponsored?

Making Creeps and Westsiders do work for you costs dollars doesn't it?

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 3:22 pm

To Greener,

This is not my band. It is my friends band though. I was just mixing the songs for fun. Also they have paid for all the recording mixing and mastering. Now they have found a label and the label wants the entire album remixed and remastered. The label will be taking care of the costs this time around.

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 4:15 pm

The kick sounds a bit muted to me. The snare doesn't quite sound right to me either. Don't be afraid to let some of that ring out. Snares ring. That's the way they sound. You can try an dampen them but in the end there's gonna be some ring there. There's no snap in the snare either. My guess is either there were some issues recording it or you over processed it. The drums are a definite problem though.

The bass is audible but it sounds a bit dead. No real life.

But these are the observations of a genuine hack so, take it with a grain of salt.

The song itself rocks.

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 4:21 pm

Regarding the "real" mix. It really is night and day compared to this BUT there are some things I think you could do better with real drum sounds and I hate the vocal effect on that mix. But, again I'm just a hack so.....

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:05 pm

Hueseph, I definitely know its night and day between the two mixes, but as far as drums is their any advice you could give me to make them better.

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:49 pm

I really don't think I'm so much qualified to give advice regarding this. I usually play by feel so to speak. If it were me though, my basic rules of thumb would be:
-don't compress unless it's absolutely necessary.(which it rarely is)
-don't eq other than low or hi pass filter as necessary unless there is a blatant problem or there is a sound you want to emulate(That is, you have a good idea of the sound you're looking for).

One minor idea, not so much of a tip.

I'm assuming this is in the box. Try using a distortion plugin or tape emulator on the snare, kick, toms. Give it a bit of saturation. It doesn't have to be noticeable or prominent but sometimes it can sound cool if it is.

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 2:58 pm

I know you don't want to sound replace the kit. But if you want the drums to stand out more then I would 100% (infact 10000000%) replace at least the kick drum. You will find that it brings the drums out a whole bunch more and the song will pump more and people will nod their heads more. The snare sounds abit weak as well. I would possibly try exciting the mids. You could try doubling the track and pitching one of the snares down and blending it in to give the snare more crack and power.

"don't eq other than low or hi pass filter as necessary unless there is a blatant problem or there is a sound you want to emulate" I would dissagree. For this style of music when you have so much going on you want to get rid of stuff that is not needed so things can shine through. For example cutting abit of 1/2K out of guitars so the vocals can sit in the mix better! Things like that.

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 3:04 pm

Just listened to the mix on their myspace! Pretty muddy in the guitars and it sounds like its been squashed pretty hard. There is audible distortion on the left guitar at times, that could be due to mp3 / myspace player though.
Could also be that they chose a very bad mp3 conversion on similar as the high end is severely compromised!

If you listen to the kick and the snare in this mix you can hear that they are much more pronounced and are much more upfront!

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 3:04 pm

Doomith wrote:

"don't eq other than low or hi pass filter as necessary unless there is a blatant problem or there is a sound you want to emulate" I would dissagree. For this style of music when you have so much going on you want to get rid of stuff that is not needed so things can shine through. For example cutting abit of 1/2K out of guitars so the vocals can sit in the mix better! Things like that.

I was speaking specifically of drums. But again, it was only my opinion. I hated the kick on the "real" mix. Sounds like that tin can 'tallica kick.

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