| Good stuff. I realize you're using it for creative effect, but the excessive distortion on the vocals and some of the other things are getting kind of distracting, and it's effecting the mix.
I would look at finding some other methods of achieving creative/effective distortions that can work a little better within the context of a mix. I would instantly ditch any digital-modeled distortions (this means all plugins or modelers of any sort).
Given the types of things you track and the style of music, you really don't have a lot of requirements. It sounds like everything is either electronic, or it's something you can close-mic, so I don't know if room acoustics will ever be as huge factor for tracking ... but it's all very important for the monitoring environment. I realize your stuff has a pretty cool low-fi-ish vibe to it, but it could stand some better mixing technique -- something that I think could be much more easily achieved in an ideal mixing environment with some careful room setup, bass traps, and a bitchin' set of monitors.
Other than that, I can hear a lot of elements besides bass that could be DI'd, so a sansamp might be pretty cool to have around (it might be the kind of thing where, for inspiration, you might one day decide, "hey, let's try this through the bass driver and see what happens").
As far as mics go, for your style I would be looking at some more interesting old-school stuff. You're not tracking Biance or Justin Timberlake, so a slick-sounding LDC is just taking up valuable mic stand space. I'm thinking a Placid Audio Copperphone ... Electrovoice RE16 or 666 ... and definitely some ribbon mics. I might also get on ebay and be on the lookout for some old spring reverb units (maybe one of the Orban units). I'd also look for some old outboard compressors -- Valley People Dynamite, DBX118, or the Toggle-switch Symetrix 501s. Basically some cool, older vibey stuff. A bunch of plugins, even good ones, will never do justice to the kind of vibe your music gives off. |