DonnyThompson, post: 417457, member: 46114 wrote: Okay, so here's a version stripped down to no added processing or effects, whatsoever.

There was some gain reduction used on the front end while recording things like kick, snare, vocals, etc., to tame transients on the way in.

Any effect heard is because it was printed that way, as in the case of guitars where I did use some FX, because this was the sound I ultimately wanted, and I thought it better to just record it that way, as opposed to taxing the CPU and RAM with VST's after the fact during the mix.

There are also some effects on synth and B3... these effects - reverb and delay mostly, were an inherent part of the original patch used. I didn't add anything.

This isn't a "mix".

There may be some things louder/quieter than others... I simply removed ALL processing from each track, as well as from buses, and the Master 2-Bus as well, so it can be determined if the source tracks are up to par and are of a caliber sufficent enough in fidelity to export for the "Great UAD/No UAD Mix-Off Battle Of The Century" between Chris and Josh.

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Hey Donny, I just listen to your premix.
The bass drum is way better in the mix but the rest of the drum seem to have a short reverb with a too long predelay.. Are you saying it's the sound of the room ?? Serious, you didn't mix any of the drums ??
If it's the cleanest you've got.. I don't know what to say man. The sound of the snare may be ok, the cymbals seems squasht (missing shine) and the toms.. was the drum in a bathroom ? ;) Oh, did you have a room mic.. put the room mic down Donny !
Other than that the vocal tracks are fine, guitars too. bass is very good and harmonies too..

Get back to me with details about the drums !

I agree with Smashh, a giant leap forward, and a toms sound out of place. Otherwise, very nicely done Donny - you're back on track.

Sometimes the trickiest part is knowing when you're done, right?

Good job!

here's how I recorded the drums, and this might explain why and what you guys are all hearing...

I tracked the drums in what I call an "isolative -overdub" method... all the various parts of the kit were played and recorded separately (separate takes/performances) to avoid bleed from one to the other.
I was intentionally experimenting.

► I recorded the kick track with a direct mic on the kick (RE20).

► I then recorded the snare, using a direct mic on the snare (57) as well as a 414 room mic in Omni, because I didn't want a stereo reflection, I wanted it in mono. I then blended the direct and the room mic together.

► I tracked the HH using a 414, about 14" above

► I tracked the toms using two 414's in an X-Y, about 4' above

► I then tracked ride cymbal with a 414, about 2' above

► Crash Cymbals were tracked using two 414's in an X-Y, about 4' above

All of this sounded very good to my ears at the time. I was happy with the drum mix. The problem(s) came into play when I started doing alternate mixes along the way, and throughout this process, several instruments and tracks were stereo/mono rendered, to the point where I had so many different versions, I lost track of what I had originally.

I also began to "create" drum fills, using all the various parts of the kit to edit and create new fills that weren't originally played. I would cut up orginal tom and snare fills and using cut/copy/paste and slip, make new drum parts. This may have been where things started to head south, I don't know.

Throughout this, when incorporating other new tracks, like vocals, bass, guitars, keys, I began to burn out. Vocals gave me the most grief I've ever encountered, primarily with "thin" sounds and sibilance. It was like pulling teeth to get rid of it. I tried everything from side-chained EQ/Compression to actual De-essers to Volume Envelope drawing of those parts. I even re-amped his lead vocal through a tube pre (borrowed) to try to warm it up and hopefully smooth over the sibilance a bit, and returned the output of the pre back to a track. I didn't end up using it.

Various ( many) mixes were eventually rendered (a few of which you all heard).

At which point, I stripped down all added processing from all the tracks and buses, and that's what I posted yesterday. All the negative comments seem to center around the snare and toms... so maybe I need to re-track these using different methods... but truthfully, the thought of doing that has me wanting to jump off a cliff. I'm so fried on this thing, I just want to get it done and put it away.

I wrote the song for my good friend Terry, who is working on what may be his last musical project, as he is suffering from MS. You can hear the weakness in his voice on vocal takes... what I have is, very likely, what I will be forced to use. It takes quite a bit out of him to sing these days. I'm bummed out because I feel as if I'm letting him down on this song. We've done other songs previous to this one that worked out very well. It's just this one that hasn't.

d/

OK so thats probably why the toms arent right for me.
There is no bleed that helps give it big sound and if they were played
on their own take, then the natural cadence of your arms ,hands ,stick is not
following through from the previous hits on the hat/snare etc.

Id like to hear where you go with it Donny , I just wanted to hear slight ambience around it
and it would be there for me. :)

@Donny ; the snare isn't so bad, I'd just lower the room mic's volume and I think it's gonna be ok. But the cymbals and toms mics are too far. I think what most don't like without being clear about it is the room sound. If you get every mic closer, it'll do the trick.. then if you want a room sound; fake it with a reverb. Just my thoughts ;)

There's absolutely no doubt as to what you say being true, Smash. I agree with you 1000%.

It's not only the "kit -all at once" sound that's missing, it also most certainly effects the overall playing style on my part as a drummer.

There are subtle nuances that eventually add up... example: there is no slight rattle from the snare when the kick is struck, nor is there the same reflection on all of the kit pieces, no natural bleed, no overall cohesiveness to the kit and performance. It's too isolated. And in the end, this isolation method of recording the drums absolutely affects the way that the actual performance sounds - it was very accurate on your part to mention things like "follow-through" on the sticking, along with cadence, bleed, etc. - and all of these things eventually add up, and come into play, and as a result of that "isolative" style of playing each instrument separately, it absolutely does effects the overall sound as well.

In short, you were right on the money. ;)

I stepped away from my normal way of doing things on this one - I experimented on this project - and in the end, it bit me....and the experimentation failed.

I'll have to make do with what I have, and somehow manage to salvage a listenable mix.

I just can't bear the prospect of going all the way back to square one and tracking it all over again. I just don't have it in me, pal. :(

d/

I agree with the fact that bleeding and natural playing has been broken and something is missing.. This might be 20% of the answer, remember Love is in the air ? I happen to have done some show with Martin Steven and he said they were the first to use that technic. Ok I Know, love is in the air's drum arent very flamboyant. But many disco band did it like that in the years that follow. My main concern is that the drum sounds far away because of the natural reverb of the room and if only you would have use some close mics as well, you could play with the balance with the 4' away mics

Anyway, what are you gonna do Donny? Play/record it again ? drum replacement ?

We've had a couple of clients do the exact same thing. You do get the benefits of a cleaner drum track especially if you have a 'lively' kit, at the expense of some rigidity.
I will say that your playing of individual parts turned out a little better than my clients did.
However, the raw mix has the drums upfront so of course these flaws are more noticeable. Once you mix it back to where it needs to be and put the focus on the vocal, things should gel together better.

EASY solution.... SERIOUSLY...

Set up the kit. Take an omni room mic and set it in front of the kick, maybe start about 24" on a 20" kick... and put it about midway between the toms.... and this is a big maybe... a mono OH in fig 8. (depends on your room) fig 8 to L&R, then down the center of the kit. Pick which one either enhances the tonality of the kit or eliminates some unwanted woobiness)

Play the song down in full takes.

Mute all the other drum tracks and start with the mono kit, and bring them up under the mono track and align em' to the natural performance... done. (ok, maybe this step ain't easy... but done, none the less.)

Madmax, if he's gonna play the song again, he better record everything at once. Close mic everything and put the overhead at 2-3' instead of 4' and yes a room mic at 4' can be blend to taste. Everything will be more focused and far more natural.

I'm sorry... but just how damned stoopid do you really think I am?

Maybe understanding that Donny's not quite in the position to drop another $400-$500/day into retracking the kit is something you missed.

Rather than having to go to another facility and spend money, if Donny's generally happy with the tone of the tracks he already has, they're plenty usable... just not in their current formulation.

Getting just one or two (even mediocre) tracks of a natural performance will be more than enough to align the existing tracks to...

It's been done this way for years... albeit typically in somewhat different order in the early days of 4 track.

It used to be that the songwriter put a click/beat down. Then the song. That went to a two track for everyone to rehearse to.
From there, you tracked drums on a mono track, bass and two guitars.
Bounce that to a stereo, and you go back and lay down vox and bgv's... bounce that out as a mono.
Now you go back and add your percussion... tom hits, cymbals, snare, etc... bounce that to a mono
Now you mix 1 stereo and 2 mono's to a single stereo.

But I've done many a session where I've come in to play kit behind an existing song. So, it's not like we're charting new scientific boundaries in the space-time continuum.

It's really just sample placement for enhancement of the drum tone on the performance track.

Otherwise... yes... finish micing the kit and track it...

Getting just one or two (even mediocre) tracks of a natural performance will be more than enough to align the existing tracks to...

It's been done this way for years... albeit typically in somewhat different order in the early days of 4 track.

I got to agree with Max hands down. Less is more BY A LONG SHOT! Clean mono or 1 stereo track kicks ass compared to 8 poor of anything. Slim it down and it will be an eye opener.
Its also way over mixed.

Playing to an existing drum track and trying to exactly duplicate it is a whole lot tougher than it looks, guys. :confused:

And that's coming from a guy who has made a considerable part of his living being a live/session drummer for the last 30-odd years or so... (and oh my yes, they were most certainly odd years, indeed... LOL)

"...Getting just one or two (even mediocre) tracks of a natural performance will be more than enough to align the existing tracks to..."

We'll see, Max. You've obviously had far better success at it than I have in the past, at getting new drum tracks to lock to existing tracks - but, I'll have a bash at it.

It's the last resort before I go back to square one and record everything all over again from the ground up.

And to PC and Max.... relax guys... ;) it's only a drum track. I doubt the world will stop turning if I end up winning the highly un-coveted Grammy award for worst drum sound of the year. ;)

"...Its also way over mixed..."

I think we've determined that to be the case... several times. LOL. I know, I know, the mix sucks. That's why I originally torqued up my courage to post it - to find out from guys I respect just how bad it sucked.
I think it's safe to say that everyone is in common agreement that it's pretty bad. LOL..

On that note...I'm not sure you guys truly know how hard it can actually be for a veteran engineer to open up his closet of crap and show his peers a piece of work that is sub-standard. :unsure:

Most guys who get the occasional bad mix just dump it and move on... they generally don't lay it out on the worl-wide table for every other engineer whom he respects to listen to.
It's a humbling experience, to be sure.

Just sayin'.... ;)

d/

It's really fairly straight forward work.

And yeah... I've been at it for awhile... coming up on playing 51 years, and recording in earnest for almost 20. That's why I recommend recording entire takes... Stopping and starting with punches breaks up your concentration when you're the performer AND the engineer.

Set up playlists on the drum track(s) and edit them into one final track from the best takes...

With SloStools, elastic audio your new tracks in place... then elastic the existing track(s) into place underneath.

(Elastic is the single best advancement in SloStools I've found, besides Dave Hill's HEAT.)

And I DO commend you for having the courage to be pulling the curtain back. You'll end up hatin' yourself sometimes, but then too... you'll learn a lot from it if you take the critics with a grain of salt.

I'm using Sonar... I know that there's a way to work with playlists, but I never really understood what they were or what they were used for...

I'm assuming that the AudioSnap feature in Sonar is probably similar to PT's Elastic function.

I'm gonna have a go at this, although I may wait a week or so, when I can finally afford to get the Focusrite Pre I've been looking at.

To the world.

At the expense of excellence, mass over track drums thinking it will produce a bigger sound. One stereo or even a mono drum performance will sit in a mix and SUPPORT the entire mix yielding pro results everytime compared to 4 or more crappers thru mediocre gear and rooms . Welcome to beautiful :)
For most project recording, I tend to keep overheads, which are really the true performance and blend the snare/kick. 90 percent of the time you'd be amazed at how big it sounds when you keep it simple and the phase is in line with the bleed.. MS.. magic.
Most mixes improve when you remove the extra channels and keep it simple.

Makes overdubbing a breeze.

MadMax, post: 417541, member: 1402 wrote: I'm sorry... but just how damned stoopid do you really think I am?

Maybe understanding that Donny's not quite in the position to drop another $400-$500/day into retracking the kit is something you missed.

QUOTE]

Max : That's exactly it ! I didn't know he was tracking the drum somewhere else.. My mistake !
I never intended to insult anyone. Being a drummer, It's so much simpler to play the song again when I fail at something..[/

I didn't track the drums anywhere else. I tracked them in my living room... I don't know where you guys picked that one up. I was pretty clear all along that I was doing this at home.

I didn't track the drums anywhere else. I tracked them in my living room... I don't know where you guys picked that one up. I was pretty clear all along that I was doing this at home.

I was scratching my head on that too. o_O

Donny, you are being an incredible good sport to say the least, btw. It takes balls to open up a Pandora box like this. I hope others follow your lead here, as I have also been posting my work for years because.... Problem Based Learning (via audio examples) gets more accomplished.

Aren't audio examples more helpful /fun hearing what we are doing over just talking about it?

Kudo's

DonnyThompson, post: 417558, member: 46114 wrote: I didn't track the drums anywhere else. I tracked them in my living room... I don't know where you guys picked that one up. I was pretty clear all along that I was doing this at home.

Ouf I wasn't crasy after all !! :)
But I didn't want a conflict with Madmax..
Maybe max was saying the only other way was to go in a studio..
But I'm pretty sure if you record the whole kit at once with not so far mics, it'll go better!

Americans need to have at least two Crazy Canadians rolling around here eh. :) Between crazy and typos, we keep them wondering eh. And they think we are just stupid :cool:. Its all a plan to sell the plastic of the Tar Sands. Can you smell it? Maybe thats we are always saying sorry. :eek:

Don't forget, I'm a french Canadian :confused: !!! I also skip some language nuances from time to time .. :D

Maybe the French connection to language arts is the key....

I tend to think through a process to completion.;

Donny tracked the tracks at home... and while pleased with the tone of the tracks, it's tracked in his livingroom.
Most everyone's got a bug up their arse that the kit doesn't sound good/right and taking the guy to task... but in the mix I heard, the drums weren't great, but they don't suck ass like some of the comments imply.

He's already put a shit ton of hours in on an experimentation that by all accounts, should work... and does for a lot of guys.

Rather than dumpin' all the drum tracks, spending up a day to get a studio and hopefully get good quality tracks... and rather than pissin' away too many more hours going back and retracking all those drum tracks at home, and trying to fix 200 of "this little thing" and 86 of "those little things"... simply record a mono live track and start bringing other things up underneath for emphasis and clarity.

It usually means not doing as much processing of the "OD" tracks because so much of the sound is already there... just reverse the process a bit, using the live track as your guide for placement where it will sound more natural.

Since the tracks were initially done in your livingroom... just putting up a mono kit mic isn't going to be some drastic foreign sound you have to tweek on for 4 weeks just to get it matching somewhat closely.

Again, I'm with Max 100%
However, before I did that, I would remix this and bet it would turn out really good. You needed to step away from it for a while and I'm all for helping you get back on track. I think you got caught by the "classic" over thinking and listening so damn close to the negatives that you cooked it.

Donny, I haven't followed all that has been said but do you have an OH of the drums?

I agree this is a good option. But Donny said he recorded the snare with 4' away mics and so the toms seperatly with 4' away mics and so the cymbals. I was just trying to say that this was the mistake. If the room doesn't sound good, we should avoid recording it by using closer mic technics.

Anyway it goes I'm curious of how this mix is gonna turn out and what technic Donny will use !
Challenge the ideas and options, this why this forum is so good !! :)

Or... retrack each drum individually and just drop em' in place...

answers to questions in no particular order...

The OH mics I used were in two separate tracking takes... I used two 414's as overheads (XY) on the toms, and I used the same array on cymbals.

I mic'd the snare with a 57 direct, and then had a 414 - set for omni - about 8 ft away out in the room.

Kick was a direct RE20, and between editing and expansion I got a very smooth yet present sounding kick.

I'm going to try to re-record new drum tracks to the current drum tracks, but I'm gonna wait a few days to do that, as I've ordered a new mic pre I/O and I'd like to use the better pres in that I/O than what I have now with the Tascam.

And... I have no problem posting all of this for critique because this latest thread has been generally accepted as a "problem-based learning" exercise, and that's what this forum should be about.

I think, as a side note, that it's also encouraging to the rookies out there. It's my way of saying "See? Even the pro's get it wrong sometimes. Learn from my mistakes... "
And if I can serve that purpose, then I have no problem showing my flaws to the engineering community.

FWIW

d/

In the meantime, if you get an hour or 2 and you're feeling inspired, I would like to hear an instrumental gtr, bass drums mix where you attempt to match tone to tone, level to level to any 1 of the target mixes that you posted.
I usually add a reference track and output to a separate pair of outputs that I can just A/BV against in the same session.
From this we can see how close it is, and/or how much further it needs to go. It might help you decide how to approach your next step.

I don't mind taking the time... I do mind beating my head against the wall any further with this old Tascam pre I/O I've been using. I will be glad to do further alternate mixes once the new Pre arrives - hopefully on Friday.

I'm not gigging Friday night, either (which is very rare for me this time of year) so I won't have to be interrupted once the unit arrives.

It might be a silly idea , but Ive been sitting near a snare drum here and hear it ringing when i talk.

Have you thought about setting the kit up and playing your close drum tracks through speakers
into the kit and miking the room again with the kit vibrating in sympathy and giving you some
more tone .

just a thought , might be easy and not so time consuming