Can I have some feedback on my mixes? Please??

[te-problematique]

Hey Guys,

These are some demos I did for my band. They're all ITB on SONAR. I work for a PA company where I live (as a uni job, full time student mainly) so I did it there cos the uilding we inhabit actually has some cool spaces and it was theonly place with plentiful mics. Originally I was going to be able to multi track it properly, however a last minute hiccup mean't I had to use my own system with only 4 ins (I have an M-Audio delta 66 Omni Studio). I did with drums and bass sub mixed through an allen and heath mixwiz 14:4:2 (all the good desks were on jobs, we have a couple of nice ex-recording ones which, alas, wern't there) (senn 421 on toms and bot snare, beta 91 on kick, sony condenser on hat, akg c300b overheads, beta 57 top snare, bass through bss di) I put a lexicon pcm 81 in with thismix on some of the snare, kick and toms too. I recorded the gats with just SM57's on axis infront of the amps, and vox were done with the two c3000b's. All the instruments were done in one take on each track, with the vox layered over again in one take (including setup and pack down, we did 4 songs in one night:S never again!). I but vintage warmer over the drums in a couple, and just used RVox and a bit of RVerb (waves) on the drums and vox.

Any comments from people such as yourselves would be greatly appreciated.

here they are MySpace.com - Emergency+Phone - Dunedin, NZ - Psychedelic / Progressive / Pop - www.myspace.com/emergencyplusphone

Oh and i "mastered" them (Waves SSL COmp - reverb - L2 or vintage warmer) mainly just so they'd soud loud enough, I really should spend a LOT more time on them.

Thanks in advance!

[u b k]

what i hear first is that the vocals just sit on top of the music, there's zero connection. the vox are also too clean for the music. in fact, i'd dirty everything up, a lot.

i need more drums, more distortions, more urgency. stop thinking, turn off the lights, smoke whatever's handy, turn it up loud, and make it kill.


gregoire
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ubk
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[te-problematique]

Thanks for the comment man, yeah I see what you mean, it does need more...more! I didn't really have much time to spend on it because i had to do two parallel mixes (one in Pro Tools for a technology paper here at music school, the other the real one on my comp, done in SONAR with plugins that aren't those shitty digirack ones). Just to clarify, you basically think it's too clean for the type of music it is?

Thanks man,
Chris

[u b k]

that's my take: too clean, too unbalanced, too distant.

it's not about time spent or the plugs used, those read like excuses and you don't need to make excuses for where you're at. it's simply about the choices you're making, primarily the balances; your choices will become stronger as you gain experience. when you've got 309 mixes under your belt you'll be able to do a 10 minute rough that puts this mix to shame.

meantime, just do your best and keep moving forward.


gregoire
del
ubk
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[loudmusic25]

It might help if you can align the vocalist with the music. His timing is so off it's hard to focus on the mix.

[melodic_disaster]

sounds like decent material, honestly not a too bad for an on the fly recording and mix 4 songs in 1 night.

I don't necessarily think the vocal chain is too clean for the music - not if you're going for something like the violent femmes. however, there may be something about how cleans he sings that is sounding too sterile - so yes you may need to rough it up in the mix. personally if you like the sound i'd go back and re-do the vox to look for a more raw performance - i.e. produce him. no getting laid for at least a week before recording. the combo of his voice and that chain might need some more mids as it sounds a tad scooped.

Drum submix balances aren't quite there - I don't know how isolated your CR was where you tracked, but you live and die with the balances. I couldn't do it all in one pass without true isolation. that's a big difference between live and studio - the naturally compressed room sound is already being heard but not necessarily recorded. there's a little too much close hat on this for my taste, and I like a little more room sound (personal preference). Sure distressors and other outboard would be nice, but for this type of music you could get away with just good mixing.

I'd also like to hear guitars fitting better a little more in your face.

Again some of this is preference so overall drum balance and vox re-dub or saturation and a little ballsier guitar sound.

[Capstan Cappy]

either bring drums +guitars forward or less vocals , distance is too great imo thing i'm wondering about that wasnt very clear to me is did you mix on the fly and thats it or did you have time to mix it without the band playing ...