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Hey all. I was messing around with some new plugins and daw. Since this was done on a tasam 34, 4trk reel to reel, I figured itd be a reasonable place to start. I did it with the built in laptop speakers and a little Bluetooth speaker as an alternative. It’s just the mix, I haven’t run it thru any mastering style stuff, or done any editing to the performance yet.

Latest mix:

Original mix: (I had having trouble embedding the individual song, it was only letting me embed the my old SC page. Sorry.)

https://m.soundcloud.com/gushusound/i-need-some-money

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pcrecord Mon, 06/11/2018 - 07:39

Hi K, thanks for sharing..
I find the mix well balanced but a bit narrow and lo fi sounding. A bit like recorded on tape from the radio.. This could be positive if it's what you were aiming for.
I'd be interested to hear what a bit of mastering work would do to the song..

Love the band, Love the song and the perfo !

kmetal Mon, 06/11/2018 - 10:20

pcrecord, post: 457661, member: 46460 wrote: Hi K, thanks for sharing..
I find the mix well balanced but a bit narrow and lo fi sounding. A bit like recorded on tape from the radio.. This could be positive if it's what you were aiming for.
I'd be interested to hear what a bit of mastering work would do to the song..

Love the band, Love the song and the perfo !

Thanks for takinhe time to listen and reply. We were going for the early black keys style sound, which is lofi, but I’m wondering if perhaps I went to far with it. I used the waves TG12345 on every track I think lol.

Is the entire mix too dull?

Is the snare in particular too dull?

Gtr too pointy?

Also, in the chorus, the drummer slams the kick pretty hard, I’m on the fence to if it’s a little too dynamic, and should be clip gained down, or if it’s ok since there’s not much else going on as far as mix features and instrumentation.

It’s mono drums, bass, and vocals, and a single guitar track. Perhaps I should employ some stereo sends, and some panning automation when I get back to this. I think you just opened the flood gates for some ear candy!

If you were looking at it from a mastering perspective, is it mainly eq that you would do? (Besides getting it to a standard level).

Just FYI this is my old band, i was on bass. I didn’t want people to be nice just cuz I’m on the track.

What if found interesting about this project, is i didn’t use studio monitors. We used the peavy PA speakers we had in the basement when tracking, as reference (along with some commercial tunes), and on the mix for the YouTube, I did it my kitchen, and the laptop / BT speaker combo.

Having been obsessed with large soffit mounted mains since the moment I’ve heard them, I’ve really found small 6” and under speakers to be incredibly useful. Forcing you to cut the crap, and fill it only with useful stuff, since the sonic canvas is tiny. Like a thumbnail cartoon.

I’ll probably mess w some mastering plugs on this mix, then do a ‘final’ mix and master.

pcrecord Mon, 06/11/2018 - 12:41

kmetal, post: 457666, member: 37533 wrote: I used the waves TG12345 on every track I think lol.

The thing with those vintage emulations is that when you hear it, it's allready too much if you want it to give it's natural color. But pushing it over the natural isn't a bad thing if it works for you...

kmetal, post: 457666, member: 37533 wrote: If you were looking at it from a mastering perspective, is it mainly eq that you would do? (Besides getting it to a standard level).

For this I should listen to it at my studio.. I'll try to find time in the next few days..

kmetal, post: 457666, member: 37533 wrote: What if found interesting about this project, is i didn’t use studio monitors. We used the peavy PA speakers we had in the basement when tracking, as reference (along with some commercial tunes), and on the mix for the YouTube, I did it my kitchen, and the laptop / BT speaker combo.

I had a Sh..t box on my desk for years. I use to refere to it specially to check if the vocal was sitting nicely in the mix... At that time I had Yorkville YSM1 monitors.
When I switched to Yamaha HS8, they were so much more reveilling that I didn't feel the need for cheap reverance speakers..

kmetal, post: 457666, member: 37533 wrote: I’ll probably mess w some mastering plugs on this mix, then do a ‘final’ mix and master.

Like I said, everything seems in place, but I'd like it more if it sounded bigger...
I'll let you know what I think from my studio ;)

kmetal Mon, 06/11/2018 - 14:50

Thanks Marco, I appreciate it. I welcome any input you have, if you get a chance to listen to in your studio. I’ll be brainstorming on how to make it sound bigger.

pcrecord, post: 457667, member: 46460 wrote: The thing with those vintage emulations is that when you hear it, it's allready too much if you want it to give it's natural color. But pushing it over the natural isn't a bad thing if it works for you...

This is an excellent point. What I’ve been finding generally is the vintage emulations (ozone pultec, tape emulations) add a nice subtle richness to my clean sounding studio recordings (all genres), while for some of the tougher ones, and ones tracked to tape, the Fabfilter and other more transparent stuff, lends a nice presence to things.

Lol this one was an experiment with black on black, so to speak.

Thanks again.

pcrecord Thu, 06/14/2018 - 16:17

Hi K,

I finally had time to listen to your song at my studio.. As suspected, it sounds a bit mono-ish and radio like.. but again, we hear everything which is nice..
As for frequencies your mix misses some low end and have some peaks around 2K and 12K that makes it, I guess, kind of unbalanced for many listening devices.
I think I'd have some trouble to make it full and wide at mastering givin the actual source.
But I'm not in any case judging you or the results which is perfectly fine considering how you made it.
Here's what the spectrum analyser tells us (if it make sens to you) ;)

kmetal Thu, 06/14/2018 - 16:26

pcrecord, post: 457711, member: 46460 wrote: Hi K,

I finally had time to listen to your song at my studio.. As suspected, it sounds a bit mono-ish and radio like.. but again, we hear everything which is nice..
As for frequencies your mix misses some low end and have some peaks around 2K and 12K that makes it, I guess, kind of unbalanced for many listening devices.
I think I'd have some trouble to make it full and wide at mastering givin the actual source.
But I'm not in any case judging you or the results which is perfectly fine considering how you made it.
Here's what the spectrum analyser tells us (if it make sens to you) ;)

Thank you so much Marco! You confirmed some of my suspicions, about the spikes, and low end roll off.

When I do the actual real re-mix, I’m going to lay off the vintage processing some, and add some stereo activity, and I’ll probably not bother with mastering this one, based on your observations. I very much appreciate your time and effort.

Crappy mix aside, I’m glad that I can at least get the songs point across in a vague way, on pretty much the worst case scenario.

Now onto brainstorming how to make a mono drum track stereoized!!! Cheers bud. Thanks again.