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Joined: Dec 25, 2007 Posts: 736 Location: Back home in Nashville.
nearly done producing/mixing a metal full-length with some friends of mine, just wanted to get some opinions on the mix as we're getting ready to track vocals and add some final parts.
here it is so far, first two tracks of the record together:
just a really rough master using the tc x5 plugin, so ignore the clipping and weird sounding high end, i am shit at mastering so it will be done by a 3rd party eventually.
guitar is an orange rockerverb 100 with the quad tracks done with an old block letter 5150. everything was mixed with the standard protools plugins plus some smack/bombfactory on the drums. there are two different samples on the snare, compressed hard and mixed in just a wee bit. kick is all sampled.
Joined: Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 5794 Location: At the bottom of the garden, amongst the birds and the bees
It's hard to be really critical, as most of the issues I have with it could be put down to the home-brew mastering - so a lot of this might not actually be relevant in context. With that in mind:
- The sub-drops all clip (probably to much compression/limiting)
- The whole thing pumps like a mother-fucker on the snare hits (again, too much compression)
- There's some weird volume drops too - like the pumping, but I have no idea what's triggering them.
Again, it could be a mastering thing, but the snare is really quiet in a couple places (especially the chugging at the start), and I swear it sounds like it's panned slightly to the left on some hits. I'm not keen on the tone, it sounds a bit limp and it should be punching me in the face. I prefer more thump in the kick too, but they're both taste things really. The lead part towards end gets a bit lost.
All the other things that stand out to me aren't down to the recording, it's down to the music. A minute into the song, the feedback has lost it's charm and I nearly stopped listening. A minute and a half in and I'm getting bored of atonal chugging too.
The guitar tone is rank - it's a blend of two good amps, beautifully made to sound like an HM2 or something. Part of that is down to the tuning though. It sounds like the strings aren't heavy enough for it, so they're really flubby. It almost goes out of tune on the open notes too - you get that horrible "beow" sound.
I realise that all sounds kinda harsh, but honestly it sounds pretty solid - like I said, a lot of it will be down to hack-job mastering, and the guitar/snare/kick tone things are the same issues I have with almost every recording in this genre.
The only real mixing things I would really change are:
- Some of the cuts on the guitar sound a bit too clean, especially single notes in the chugging bits. They die out so quickly it sounds a bit artificial.
- When it cuts to one guitar, I personally would never leave the other channel silent. If you've got quad-tracked guitars, I'm assuming you've got a quieter double on the other side, so leave a tiny bit of that in. Having one channel drop to complete silence is really disorientating, especially through headphones, and it's a really unnatural effect.
Hope that actually sounds constructive and not just like whinging!
I'm no expert on drums and mixing but as you know, guitars are my thing.
The edits are a bit harsh and at points flick out of time with the kick/snare patterns. I bet those guitar tones sounded awesome in the room but they've not been recorded to mix. For a start i'd ditch the quad tracking, go to double tracks, record the first one on the bridge pick-up and the second on the neck pick up, it'll give you the same resonance but a different texture with less attack. The core tones sound like they may be a bit stiff, what cab/mics were you using? What sort of volume were the guitars recorded at?
I'd also advise recording two tracks of just ambient noise, literally just record the amp with the guitars volume control all the way down, it'll make the guitar tracks sound real and much less editted.
You've got the techical aspect of the band shining through though, thats a good thing, but i think you can get more vibe into the guitars and make them sound a bit more like real instruments.
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