on site live recording 500 per hour !

[truthnlife13]

Just kidding but hoped it would make you look. Actually only 25 per hour hope someone will take a listen to this and give me some opinions. Here is the scenario. Recorded entire band in one pass, all in the same room, no overdubs. No great room just a typical practice room in a basement with sheetrock walls. Gear used ... Onyx 1640 firewire into digital performer on a G5 dual power mac. kick - D112, snare - audix i5, rack toms - sm57's, floor tom- d112( although ended up cutting the track out), OH's - rode nt5's, guitars - audix I5's, bass DI into ONYX, vocals - md421. Mixed ITB on IMAC G5 running DP 5 , monitored with beyer DT770 cans since eveyone is asleep. I am sure I will be horrified tomorrow when I listen through the Blue sky's, but what the hell here it is. Have at it. Song and production idea comments are welcome as well.

[James Krumhansl]

Man those onyx pres slay, sounds good man at least through my laptop speakers, what kind of guitar amps?

[truthnlife13]

One amp is a B-52 at100 with an Ibanez tube screamer, and DBX 1066 for slight comp and gate thrua Marshall 1960a cab with 75's. The other is a crate blue voodoo with a pedal board u could sink a ship with thru a carvin cab

[Saudade]

nice song, nice playing

ok some stuff you might wanna look into:

- panning guitar parts wide apart (i just replied to another thread with exactly the same situation).

- kick's too "heavy". I guess your D112 captured a lot of that "basketball sound" but not enough of the beater "slap" (for lack of a better word ). Try eqing in some freqs in the lo-mids area

- bass is way too skinny. But I dig that DI sound though, lots of growl and definition. But the "filling" is totally missing. Try reamping through a bass amp if not run it through an amp sim, blend it with this DI track.

Good luck! (I "mix" on Bluesky Mediadesks )

[truthnlife13]

Originally Posted by Saudade

nice song, nice playing

ok some stuff you might wanna look into:

- panning guitar parts wide apart (i just replied to another thread with exactly the same situation).

- kick's too "heavy". I guess your D112 captured a lot of that "basketball sound" but not enough of the beater "slap" (for lack of a better word ). Try eqing in some freqs in the lo-mids area

- bass is way too skinny. But I dig that DI sound though, lots of growl and definition. But the "filling" is totally missing. Try reamping through a bass amp if not run it through an amp sim, blend it with this DI track.

Good luck! (I "mix" on Bluesky Mediadesks )

for the helpful criticism. This is what i Have been hoping for. Are you saying I should pan the guitar parts hard. I ask only because I did except I panned a slight reverb from each guitar to the opposite side so maybe that's killing the effect of the hard pan. The kick... You described it perfectly it's a basketball I have been trying to eq it every way I can imagine. I can't get it. I am thinking this is a symptom of the kick tuning and poor mic placement on my part what do you think ? Bass i am gonna try your suggestion because I hear the same thing. I think maybe I put to much effort in making it distinct from the kick that I made it distinctly crappy ! I am fighting with myself over the toms as well. There is a tuning issue there that should have been addressed before saying go. I have edited out all the non tom sections to try to clean it up but I think the snare bleed into the tom mics actually improved the snare sound. In another mix I didn't edit the toms and the snare had more life. Thankfully this is really all just for practice it's not going to a client or anything in fact it's my band at rehearsal. I have a real hard time being both performer and engineer. I think I am going to suggest some vocal harmonies in the opening section to give it more of an acapella feel. I think the contrast would be cool ? Honestly I would just prefer to be the engineer but it sure is fun to turn up and jam with the guys.Thanks again for the kind words and helpful criticism. Also I have 2 other tracks posted in other threads that were recorded in the traditional sense ie. overdubs and layers and what have you. Although with much worse equipment if you have a moment I love for you to give a listen. The posts are http://www.gearslutz.com/board/work-...-work-bad.html and http://www.gearslutz.com/board/work-...-me-apart.html

[Saudade]

nooo noo...kill all the reverb. Reverbs are evil (for this type of song). For depth try using more room mics (those that are far enough if any) for drums and very subtle delays for vocals.

The kick should be eq'able. To start with, do a simple HPF at 40Hz. Move it up to 50 - 70 until you get that "cardboard-ish" sound. Then take the original kick sound and try blending just a little bit with this processed version. Perhaps your bleed from the other mics could have captured the "ambient" part of the kick. Tap that bleed signal, mono-fy it, maybe eq out the irrelevant frequencies (cymbals?) and blend in some (check for phase cancellation). Go listen to bonham's kick sounds, it's raw, old school resonant but still punchy and impactful. Much of that kick sound I believe, is actually a result of miking the drums as ONE instrument, all the components' volume is balanced by the player's skill and good miking.

But of course the kick and the bass have to be spoken in the context of each other. This is really hard to help out, you gotta keep trial and error until this two plays nice with each other. Read up and try out on the usual techniques: gating, ducking(with snare), transient shaping, parallel compression. When the kick and bass are not playing nice, it doesn't always have to be because they have overlapping frequencies.

Think along this analogy: the kick and bass is like a right and left hand. If you try clapping with both hands hitting each other with the same strength and speed, it's counterproductive. It's always easier to get a louder sound with one hand taking the dominance and slapping the other. Create this low end synergy by make the combination of the kick and bass many times bigger than just putting them together.

Guitars, it doesn't have to be hard L and R. It all depends on the rhythmic phrasing, the tone and whether both guitars are playing throughout the song. IF there are other elements in the arrangement to balance out, you could try panning them in an unbalanced way (e.g. guitar1 L40, guitar 2 hard R etc) while compensating for the volume (depending on the panning law) to create what I call "asymmetry" in the mix. Somehow having stuff hard L and R sounds so cliche and boring to me I like my mixes to be quirky

[truthnlife13]

I tried some parallel compression. Killed all reverb except for a small amount of plate on snare. Also used some sonnox demo plugs this time around. Some things I already know. Bass is slightly out of tune. Vocals are flat in some spots. I think this mix the kick has to much beater. Anyway I think it's better. Don't want to use room mics in this room. Don't like the sound of the room. It is onsite recording so I have to live with the room I get. There is no editing or overdubs it is 5 piece band at full volume in a room with 6'8" ceilings and a triangular shape with the long wall being 12'. It is a basement with sheetrocked walls and carpet on the concrete floor