my first recording. done last night. is it a train wreck?

[thisguy]

basically i dont know what im doing at this point. this forum has helped though. i dont really have anyone around to give me guidance on how to go about the process of tracking and mixing and the few books i have can only help so much. im feeling a little intimidated with this thinking its hard to do this stuff correctly without schooling or a good mentor(of which i have neither) but regardless im going to stay in this for the long haul. its what i want to do. in a couple of months i have 2 bands lined up to record so im trying to learn as much as possible before then to not blow it.

i figured a good way to start would be to try to emulate a recording i like. so thats what i tried to do. its a band called silent drive.

i recorded this twice last night. after the first time i was searching and reading this forum for hours and realized i did too many things wrong during tracking and mixing (like having most of my faders way above 0db including the master fader) and my snare sound was terrible so i decided to try it again. this version came out better. any advice on whats wrong with this and where i should turn to get better? id like to know what people think of the original recording also. i think some audiophiles might not like it. i looked at the files in pro tools and they are sqaushed blocks. maybe everything is like that? it sounds nice and big to me. im new, you tell me.


ill give you an idea of what the session looks like. compressor ii and eq iii on all drum and bass channel inserts. lots of gain on the compressors. not sure if thats a good thing. overhead is completely sqaushed with a limiter. guitars have boosted mids. recorded two guitar tracks. left them down the middle. copied them, moved them back a few milliseconds and panned one all the way left and the other all the way right so 4 guitar tracks total. a little sans amp on the bass. a little d-verb on the snare.

this was "mastered" by me to match the approxamate level of the silent drive recording. "mastered" meaning i threw the t-racks mastering suite on the master fader and played with knobs.

i did this with gretch drums, audix mics (i5 on snare, d-6 on bd, at 3035 for overhead) and an audix i5 on vht 4-12 with a 5150 head. everything going into a mackie 800r into a digi002.

by the way the mackie is set as the word clock and is going in the digi optical in to bypass the digi convertors. does that sound like the correct way to set that up?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[RobR]

I'm too sick to think right now. Thusiblyforth; I'm not going to waste your time
with my babbling. Regardless, as this is your first recording, I'll throw a comment in
hitherhere, to keep up with a process we knowith asith

BUMP

[Tone Laborer]

Not bad drum sounds for a first time. They smashed, but for that style, it could be right. I would have tried to get them to breath more by using less comp overall.

But your balances are all off. Snare too loud. Drums too loud. Midrange isn't full. No body to the midrange .

Not bad sounds, just not blended effectively. A/B your mix with some other similiar styles.

[roxxon]

Not bad at all!
Good drummer.
Snare volume down.
Kick volume up.
On their own the drums don't sound great, but within the context of the music they almost fit perfectly.
The snare could use a little bottom and some more strainer.
Overall...That's not a bad first attempt at drum tracks.
The drums sound like they are tuned pretty high though.



Work it a bit.
In think you can make it sound a lot better with some tweaking.