a mix for my band(and shit) -HALP PLUXZ

[updog]

TH1, Podfarm, Superior. 4 tracks of guitar, bass and I played the drums on my electric kit.

I'm working on my bands demo as I've been doing for the past months, but progress has been slow with recording and stuff.

Today, I felt pissed off and I completely redid my guitar sound. The guitars are quadtracked, and my tone was previously pretty much fizz city comparing to this new one IMO, and I want to believe I've gained some meat on them tracks.

I've used TH1 as before, but only on 2 of the tracks and with completely different settings, and Podfarm on the other two. As much as I've disliked it before, I found an useable amp even from the small Podfarm.

The guitars aren't as tight as they could be, I'll look into that. Let me know if they sound way TOO sloppy. Vocals are on their way as soon as I learn how to process them at all and synths are done too, but I didn't add them to that clip yet. There's going to be shitload of synth, so I'm probably going to crap my pants when I'm trying to fit guitars and some of those synths in a mix together.

I think the tone is pretty ok by now, but what more could I do to add some definition in there? Should I try EQing some more, or try multiband-compression? Or is my tone completely shit?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2314572/elake.mp3

Throw in any sorts of critique, it's welcome. I'm not happy with the snare sound, I'm going to stick some Slate in there, but otherwise I'm out of ideas for now.

EDIT: Updated mix with double-tracked guitars instead of quad-tracked: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2314572/elake3.mp3

EDIT2: full song and new version of the mix: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2314572/elake ver7.mp3

EDIT3: newest with vox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2314572/elake ver10.1.mp3

 

[Mago]

hey!
how are the quadtracked guitars panned? seems as some of them are too centered. try something like -100/100 and -80/80
is the bass distorted? could also be that one. but its too loud anyway
the snare misses some punch, but i like the sound, its just not loud enough i guess.
and you have to play tighter for quadtracking or edit the shit out of it...
the music itself sounds nice!
cheers!

 

[updog]

Hey man, you have no idea how much you just helped me. I always panned the guitars evenly, like -100 and -50, 50 and 100. I thought it was the way to do it. I'm going to try that right now, thanks a lot!

You're right about the bass, it's too loud. I'm not too sure what to do with the snare but I'll give it a try today. Thanks again!

 

[Mago]

no prob dude.

but i didnt get one thing:
theres 2 guitar sounds right? but 4 times played?
usally quadtracking is the same sound 4 times played.
if you want to mix 2 guitarsounds you should do that with the DI, you know what i mean?

 

[Nuno Filipe]

the big problem of your mix it´s the overgained guitars and sloppiness.

 

[updog]

no prob dude.

but i didnt get one thing:
theres 2 guitar sounds right? but 4 times played?
usally quadtracking is the same sound 4 times played.
if you want to mix 2 guitarsounds you should do that with the DI, you know what i mean?

Um, not sure. How do I do it with the DI? But yes, there's a total of 4 tracks of guitar, two each side, two representing each guitarist. I'm not sure if that's doubletracking or quadtracking, but that's what we did.

nuno filipe: overgained?? man, didn't see that one coming... Just before I posted the mix I was like "I think these are a bit undergained so I'll give it just a tad more gain"... I'll look into it, thanks! And I'll get the guys to re-record some parts, when I think my tone got better, it got a bit more clearer too, revealing some pretty obvious mistakes in there.

edit. Actually, I think I know what you mean by overgained. I guess I added a bit too much

Thanks!

 

[muckypup1]

Hey dude, are the drums real or made with a midi pattern?

 

[updog]

Hey dude, are the drums real or made with a midi pattern?

They're midi, but played by me. I have a Roland TD-6KV electric kit that I used to record them. Of course, there's some quantization here and there, but I played it... Wouldn't have felt right to just program them, me being the drummer of my band and all

 

[updog]

Made a new version, this time I think I got the panning right, added some low end to the guitars, and now the snare doesn't disappear at times. What do you guys think?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2314572/elake2.mp3

I also have a question... What do you guys use for widening guitar tracks? Does everyone use them? Is that wide enough, or what?

Haha, I just posted that to our vocalist, and he said "needs more fizz" I ain't going to square one!

 

[Mago]

a lot better with that panning.
personally i never use anything to widen the guitars.

dualtracking is the same thing played one time on both sides, best with the same sound (or only minor tweakings but the same basicly)
quadtracking is the same thing played 4 times, 2 times each side, the thing you guys did. but i only do that one also with the same sound.
and as you said you used 2 different sounds on that one. if you want to mix 2 sounds its better to use the dry guitar track on 2 plugins seperatly.
so, you record the riff-> put the guitar plugin on that track.
make new track, copy the dry guitar waveform and put the other sound over that one.
=same thing played with 2 mixed sounds....is it clear, at least a bit?

but i wouldnt quadtrack with that method, would be too complicated for me.

also only ONE guitarplayer should record the rhythm guitars (at least the same riffs...like one playes the verse, the other does the chorus....).
if 2 guys play 4 tracks its not surprising that it gets sloppy
so if your guys cant play tighter its better to just let one guy dualtrack...clear somehow?

 

[updog]

Oooh, yeah now I get it. Well, I wanted to kind of make a stack with the tones, while doing two different settings for the 2 tracks on each side. Kind of trying to make 2 of them sound like one guitar, but they've obviously been played a little differently since it's not the same take, and they use different setting because i thought I was getting better results by doing that. But I might try what you said, sounds interesting.

Yeah, I think I'm going to use just one guy to re-record some takes. Thanks for the tips!

 

[Djabthrash]

Sounds really good, but as said already the thing to be improved here first is the guitars tightness.

If it was me i'd go with dualtracking only.

Also nice song, and those drums are killer !

 

[updog]

Sounds really good, but as said already the thing to be improved here first is the guitars tightness.

If it was me i'd go with dualtracking only.

Also nice song, and those drums are killer !

Thank you!

Well, I've been thinking about it... Would the song get the power it needs from just two tracks of guitar? We have 5 other songs, but they don't really get more brutal than this. Would it really be best to only use 2 tracks of guitar, or would the song lose some of its power?

I got us quadtracking because I thought it was a pretty normal thing to do when tracking metal. But I'm open to anything, as long as I'll be able to make our music sound as good as possible.

What do you guys normally do, and what do you think? Could I make the song sound as powerful WITHOUT 4 tracks of guitar??

 

[updog]

Holy crap - it doesn't sound that much weaker to have only 2 tracks of guitar, and it could save my ass! I'm not sure what to do...

If I'm going to tell my bandmates tomorrow that we quadtracked for nothing I'm probably going to get my ass kicked oh well, at least we'll have more than enough spare takes...

 

[Djabthrash]

Thank you!

Well, I've been thinking about it... Would the song get the power it needs from just two tracks of guitar? We have 5 other songs, but they don't really get more brutal than this. Would it really be best to only use 2 tracks of guitar, or would the song lose some of its power?

I got us quadtracking because I thought it was a pretty normal thing to do when tracking metal. But I'm open to anything, as long as I'll be able to make our music sound as good as possible.

What do you guys normally do, and what do you think? Could I make the song sound as powerful WITHOUT 4 tracks of guitar??

There are a shitload of metal bands that use dualtracking and sound killer. Quadtracking is a way to sound big but you gotta extremely tight esp. for fast tricky death metal, and even with that you gotta consider you lose some tightness/clarity/live feel for fatness...

It's just a matter of taste + conveniency.

I'm a dualtracking kind of guy, and most of my favourite records are dual tracked. I'd go quad-track for some "wall of sound" kind of music, like let's say Rammstein or something, but for fast/technical/brutal death metal i'd go dual-tracked.

Just my 2 cents.

There's been a shitload of threads about the dualtracking vs quadtracking on that forum, try to find them you'll find your answers.

 

[updog]

Okay, thanks. I'll try and find them. Google didn't help much, but I'll give the internal search a shot.

Might be we should lose the quads, it does sound good on certain parts, but it definitely comes with an expense of tightness... For us, at least, the guys are pretty inexperienced at recording. I'll keep looking to it.

 

[Djabthrash]

If you quad-tracked already then do some quad-tracked vs dual-tracked shootouts (don't forget to adjust the guitar volumes in between both clips though).

At least now you know how it can sound vs dual-tracking, and how much of a hassle it can be

 

[updog]

yeah, I guess it's good to have it learnt the hard way we quad-tracked all 6 songs for the demo!

I'm doing comparisons right now, and frankly, it doesn't seem like there's TOO much point in having 4 tracks of guitar. AND we're going to have shitloads of synths, which will also take space in the mix...

 

[vaiman]

Hey
Ive just been playing with a song tonight, testing the 2 or 4 guitar track issue.
I found my song had a more powerful sound with only 2 tracks. I recorded 1 take left and 1 right.
I then doubled them up, added different cabs, panning, levels etc. But the clarity of the 2 guitars just drove the song more.

It also depends on the song. I would also get one guy to dualtrack for your song as mentioned previously. My last band we took it in turns, so one guy dont feel left out
More is not always better. One good singer can sound more powerful than 4 lame singers.

I also save 2 or 3 versions. Sleep on it.
Listen the next day with fresh ears and decide then what sounds better. It will sound different.

Good luck

 

[updog]

Yeah, I think I'm gonna try doubling two existing tracks, I'm thinking more and more that this quad-tracking thing isn't going to work for us.

I searched the forum a bit, and it seems it's pretty much waste of time to do unless your guitarists are very tight. Which our guitarists aren't at the moment