Modern Rock (Christian Worship)

[dcpianoman]

I put this up in the MARSH also but these sites tend to attract two different crowds (I spend way too much time both places ) so hope you guys can help me out here...

Marvelous Light

This is the first project I've done that will be sent to a professional mastering shop (many thanks to Brad Blackwood!) and I'm trying to do the absolute best job I can. It's a worship band that I play in (I play guitar). This song, as most songs we recorded are, is a cover.

I did all the producing/engineering/mixing, but almost all performance/arrangement creative decisions were a band effort. We did everything ourselves, recorded drums at a local church / everything else in my apartment, all using very cheap microphones (58s, a few Chinese condensors, some Chinese ribbons) into a Presonus Firepod and tracked/edited/mixed using Samplitude and a bunch of freeware plugins.

I would love your feedback on how the mix can be improved. Seeing as I'm limited by my speakers/room, bass is very hard to judge...and I'm still wrestling with ambience decisions (too little? too much? wrong type?) particularly on drums/vox.

Anyone willing to take 5min and give it a listen?

David

[TheRigaletto]

Hey bud! +1 on the Charlie Hall track, but im not entirely sure what the purpose of this track is for? Will you be putting this onto a cd? If so I feel like there is not much difference from this one than the original (song structure wise and style wise). If the purpose is just to practice recording then great!

The drums need some serious help. The snare is just really lacking in any "umph". I would honestly consider redoing the drums and work in a more acoustically appealing space. Take the most time on mic placement and pre and comp settings.

The acoustic is also pretty sterile. It sounds like you ran it directly into the system. Am I off?

Im sorry I dont mean to rip it that much. It sounds like you are working with a great band and good singer but I would like to hear a different take on the song rather than how well you can play the orignal.

Please take this as only constructive critisism, good luck!

[dcpianoman]

Riga, thanks for your comments. The track is indeed meant for our CD. Most of the creative decisions (including this song & its arrangement) were made 6+ months ago; I got outvoted (same point you make - I wanted more original songs) but there's nothing to be done about that at this point. It won't be the most creative, artistic track but it could be worse. (And we're not a professional band either...we don't stand to lose much money!)

As far as drums - no chance to retrack them (or anything) at this point. They were recorded at a live show (hence the slight timing problems but also I think some of the energy), usual suspects (57 top, SDC bottom snare...Beta52 kick...clip-ons for toms...) I took my time with the placements, the end result sounded pretty similar to that kit in that room to my ears so I'm not sure the real fault lies in tracking. No comps, EQs or nice pres to drive on the front end. All those tracks are EQ'd, bussed together, parallel comped and then limited. The whole bus is sent to a room reverb (<1s decay) and the snare/toms are sent to a short plate (1.5s decay).

Do you have anything specific you think I could work on/change? What do you want to hear differently from the snare?

Edit: FYI for others reading/listening - I changed the original slightly - brighter snare, less kick, more vocals. New file is located at the same link above.

[TheRigaletto]

Thanks for more detail. I think you could use way less headroom on the snare. The tone of it almost sounds like it has "garage ambience" Maybe try taking out some of the highs around 6 or 7k.

So was the acoustic ran direct?

I did forget to compliment you on the electric guitar tone. Sounds really nice and clean! good job!

Anyone else wanna help out on this one??

[dcpianoman]

Riga...thanks again. The acoustic isn't direct, it's a large diaphragm condensor 6" from the soundhole of a Taylor 314ce. I've never really been sure where I wanted to go with that sound, and the result reflects that...

I hear what you're saying about the snare. The current version has it mixed too hot, not sure why that happened, but I can't change it at the moment. The tone of the snare does sound pretty close to the actual drum, besides the ambience.

I could always trigger...but I didn't really want to go that route.

[TheRigaletto]

Yea putting a large condenser too close to the sound hole is going to give you way more boominess then you want. I love tracking Taylor guitars because there are so many options. Check this link out:

http://taylorguitars.com/see-hear/

Click on acoustic guitar recording

[strings]

I won't be able to help you out much with the technical stuff, but to me the song and you guys sound great! Especially for a live recording. Who wrote that song?

Oh, and thanks for the link to the taylor guitar recording tips.

[dcpianoman]

Originally Posted by strings

I won't be able to help you out much with the technical stuff, but to me the song and you guys sound great! Especially for a live recording. Who wrote that song?

Oh, and thanks for the link to the taylor guitar recording tips.

Strings, thanks for the compliment! It's actually not live (well...mostly not live. the drums were recorded at a live show, everything else was retracked later).

As far as I know, the song was written by Charlie Hall and appears on at least one of the Passion CDs.

[SRS]

Interesting that the drums were tracked during a live show. Nice move actually. I do not have any real beefs with the drums at all. Sounds natural to me. And tracking in a church... can't get much better environment than that for drums usually. With the equip list you gave, I think you pulled off a stellar sound for the tune. Nice job. I can hear the room sound on the snare. I like it.