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Hello everyone

This is my first post, I hope you can give me a hand with a song I am mixing. I want to create a space similar to those Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks in which the singer is almost rapping on top of the drums, carrying the song with the voice. I am mixing this song with this in mind: Let the voice be the carrier, the main thing, I want it hot and up-front.

I have been trying different things and came up with this

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5MOMY350

This is with a duplicated track. One of them is heavily compressed for body and weight, and the other has some EQ around 100 and over 5000 for dynamics and sparkle.

There is another 2 tracks slightly panned for background vocals.

And then the drums. I have my doubts about the kick drum. Again it is a duplicated track, one of them trying to get the high end edge, and the other one giving it the bassy part. All of it routed to a bus with an ultramaximizer to even out the kicks (not the greatest drummer on earth). I had to use similar techniques to get something out of the snare, as his snare is not yet powerful. Here you have a link to the same track without voice

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PLVMFVMN

Any advice on this track will be greately appreciated. This is the first time I do the whole production of a rock band on my own and I want to give it my best, so thanks in advance.

Jon

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Comments

anonymous Tue, 10/03/2006 - 13:41

hi!

I think you'd better try to get a more powerful center vocal image. That's a key for a strong vocal track.

About drums, you could try to use more stereo (Overhead mics). that will for sure make you mono vocal track sit in your mix.
By the way, you should change the reverb on drums. Try to use a shorter program to create a more realistic ambience. Begin with only the overhead tracks. then add each track to make the elements closer to the listener.

Try to listen carefully a red hot chili peppers track.

Hope this could help

Fred from paris

anonymous Wed, 10/04/2006 - 09:20

fred83 wrote: hi!

I think you'd better try to get a more powerful center vocal image. That's a key for a strong vocal track.

Ok, I´ll keep trying. Any tips? I have done my best so far.

fred83 wrote: About drums, you could try to use more stereo (Overhead mics). that will for sure make you mono vocal track sit in your mix.

Will do, for sure. I´ll use more of them, but as you will read below, I wasn´t careful enough and lost one of the OH during recording. One of the connections failed for a few seconds during recording and... oh, my, I had to drop the entire take.

fred83 wrote: By the way, you should change the reverb on drums. Try to use a shorter program to create a more realistic ambience. Begin with only the overhead tracks. then add each track to make the elements closer to the listener.

I didn´t use any reverb yet, only a little on the snare. Unfortunately I lost one of the OH due to a fail during recording. I will better the doubling and expand the stereo image of that.

fred83 wrote:

Try to listen carefully a red hot chili peppers track.

Hope this could help

Fred from paris

I know where to go about drums thanks to your advice, but a little more advice with voice would be great.

Thanks!