About me?
Profeskinal producer & oddio engineer. This IS my day gig! More of a lifestyle then a 'job' really but that's why I dig it so much...
Started doing this about 10-odd years ago as an assistent at
Showplace Studios which had a SLEW of kick-ass producer/engineer types passing through the doors & making records...I could name drop but it's easier to look at their site. Gleaned a WHOLE lotta 'tricks' and
real knowledge from my years there...
I've also mixed FOH; monitors; broadcast & other forms of 'live' audio for a bunch of people both well known & unknown...North Miss. All-Stars, Derek Trucks, New Monsoon, Living Colour, Leftover Salmon, John Hammond, Bernie Worell, blah blah blee blee...
But really this shits all on my website...check it out if 'ya want to.
'Bout the mix
This is NOT an easy style of music to mix...really...it's WAY easier to make just about any other kind of 'rock' stuff sound "right" without too much work...but for metal/hardcore/punk/etc getting all the instruments & tones to work with each is NOT an easy task since EVERYTHING wants to be the loudest thing in the mix and it's ALL gotta sound bigger then life & be 'in-yo-face' the whole time.
Lots of carving & processing going on. I mix out of a DAW running SX3 with 32 channels of Motu DA heading to a modified Trident 65. Almost all the DAW faders are set to '0' or in the case of overheads, hats & ride, some vocals etc. submixed in the DAW to a single or stereo pair.
No guitars were reamped & I used the drum sounds that were tracked & supplied. No beat detective, Otto Tune or any of that jazz was used in the mixes. I always make a
real effort to try & use whatever was tracked and supplied on tape before replacing or 'fixing' stuff...I always figure if the artist wants it like that they'll probably have done it WAY before it hits the mixers hands.
Overall...I'd say the hardest thing I had to stuggle with was ALL of it!
Nah really...the tracking was pretty good with a couple three odd points.
It seemed like the vocals weren't sorted out all that well but after listening to 'em for a while there was some inkling of an 'order' to the parts that made sense in my mind.
The guitars were kinda' wonky. Sly...what the hell happened? Did you record one pass through one amp & then reamp the rest of tracks without offsetting the samples to account for the roundtrip? ALL of the various amps were
real phasey against each other.
After getting the drums & bass roughed in & going through all the tones it seemed like the 5150/SM57 tracks were the most 'usable' without going to extreme EQ so they made up the 'core' tones and were filled in with a bit of whatever else complimented those tracks. I think one of the Engl tracks for each guy but I'd have to double check. Those JCM800 tracks are pretty wonky...either you set it for low-gain on purpose or the amp has a REAL problem...I found 'em
too clean to be useful. Too bad...I liked the midrange 'tude of 'em but I could hear clean guitar 'chunks' popping through and THAT sucked.
Really, I tossed out at least 4 or 5 of the guitar tracks before I got too far into it. I'd rather have 2-3 tracks that are KICKASS then 6 or 7 that aren't really what anyone wants to hear & need all kinds of massaging...
I didn't use all of the tracks supplied...my bass was made of the 421 & POD, each going through EQ's and healthy amounts of compression. The core of the kick drum sound was the Beta 91...the other track seemed unnessacary...didn't really add a lot. I wished there was a seperate 'trigger' track though...it's always HELL getting stuff in this sort of genre to be clean &
exactly what the drummer played without missing hits or having false triggers from toms or snare. The ambiance track didn't make it either. The room sounded a little boxy, really dry & there wasn't anything all that cool about it IMO.
I also couldn't get the ride to have the tone or 'presence' I wanted...seemed like there wasn't much 'ride' in the 'ride track' as compared to what happens when I hang a mic...usually jamming a cardiod or hyper cardiod mic "under" the cymbal & close to the middle of it (I usually aim for the bell, about 2-3" down & 6" away)with the rear aimed at the floor/kick/loudest object to be rejected works pretty well. This sounded like the mic was a few inches over the top of the cymbal...lots of wash from the kit.
All in all...
32 of 44 inputs filled on the Trident
12 buss outs feeding multiple mults & FX including a RAT pedal.
4 Aux sends feeding two verbs, flangers & some crusty old 12-bit delays
15 analog compressors
31 channels of analog EQ
About 8-10 plug-ins...mostly dynamics like gates on the toms
I layed down one version to tape; Studer A80MkII 1/4" at 15ips & didn't like it
at all. The bottom end filled & rounded out but the transient smear was too great & overall impact was lost so I went with the Mytek at 44.1/24.
I'm submitting TWO mixes as 'final' for a couple three reasons...
a) I think Sly's main 'beef' with Mix #1 was that the guitars didn't have enough low mids to them...a GOOD mastering engineer can dig in with mid/side processing and add that without touching the center elements like the kick & bass.
b) It's nice to have at least one or two other versions around to pick from.
c) I REALLY dig the first mix I did & I'm not sure the revision is "better"
d) To get back to what I said before about everything wanting to be louder then everything else...when I got here & made the last couple three small changes that Sly requested, simple stuff like pushing the overheads up a couple dB...that over the course of making revisions the channel faders were creeping up & the master fader kept coming
down to compensate so I didn't clip the hell out of the Mytek. Must've come down by a GOOD 4-5dB over the course of the revisions between mix "01" and the last one I ran a little while ago.
I mean...I
kinda knew what was going on because I had tweaked the 2-buss comp a few times when it was grabbing harder then I had intended...
So anywhooo...
For whatever reasons I can't link to
anything I put on our server so I've gotta go with the 160k MP3's hosted here on GS...gotta call Mr. Jeff at MMedia about that when I awake...
Sly ~ Check your PM's! Normally Mr Jeff sets up a folder & password & all that for everyone...I don't have that power. Both 24/44 files are on the server and I'm sending (sent?!) MY user name & password along so you can grab them.
Without further ado...
Fadeout_Mix_01_Moose - The original mix
And #2 is attached here;