Blast from my past

[PhilR]

I recently dug out a DVD backup of some songs recorded by my old band prior to us breaking it up and decided to have a play around with the mix to amuse myself. I'm kinda surprised at the quality of the sounds considering some of the gear we had back then. Mind you, we also had some damn nice gear out on "try before buy" loan, including an SE Electronics ISIS & Gemini, a Universal Audio preamp and another high-end stereo pre I can't remember the name of.

The drums were miked with the SE mics arranged as a mid-side pair. I don't recall what was used for toms but it seemed to work. Our bass drum mic at the time was a crappy t.Bone mic from Thomann, but we tried to compensate for it's lack of highs by micing the beater side using a JoeMeek pencil condensor. Snare was top-miked using an SM57.

Bass was DI'd, firstly through a Sansamp Bass Driver pedal, and also direct via a JoeMeek Meequalizer box. Guitar amp was a Marshall JMP-1 Preamp through a Marshall stereo tube power amp. The cab was a 4x12" miked with the SE Icis and a Thomann ribbon mic.

All in all I'm surprised at the results we got from what we had. The overall sound falls pretty much in the Albini/Neurosis type sound, which we wern't really aiming for at all at the time. Heres the remixed track, remember that it was mixed on my bog standard home stereo should you want to tear it apart.

http://www.flatnet.net/files/Anaemic - Post Instrumental.mp3

 

[Seizure.]

Sounds a bit fluffy sometimes.. guitars dominantly.. maybe it's the guitars?
How did you like the UA preamp btw? which was it? the 610 or the 110?

 

[PhilR]

Sounds a bit fluffy sometimes.. guitars dominantly.. maybe it's the guitars?
How did you like the UA preamp btw? which was it? the 610 or the 110?

I don't remember which pre it was to be honest, It's discontinued now in any case. It was sweet though, I think we were using it on Kick & Snare.

Fluffyness is inevitable really, my bedroom speakers arn't great for mixing on.

 

[lilhermiejobo]

listening to your track right now. I'm not sure what sound you were going for overall or what your old band sounded like, if like you had a specific sound and what it was etc... Aside from some minor "breathing" I think I've read it refered as, 1 thing that stands out mostly is how your drums are really bright and crisp sounding leaving the instruments sounding muffled. These little speakers aren't great for listening to anything really so I'm most likely not anyone's ears you'd rely on. I wish I could have got my old bands drums to come out that clear...

 

[PhilR]

If we were aiming for any particular sound back in the day then I really don't remember what it was. This was recorded before we started the studio and all we really had experience with was recording ourselves and some friends bands. We were never very happy with the guitar sound we achieved at the time. And the original mixes were never anything special as we were mixing on Wharfedale Diamonds which don't really hold a candle to our current Adam P11's. The tracks were covered in all kinds of plugins as well when I opened the old Cubase files.

But all in all, it could have been far worse. Just a shame the band never worked out, we had (in my opinion) some good material going for us. The tracks are back in the studio now, so we might have another go at mixing.

 

[lilhermiejobo]

man I have no idea what wharfdale diamonds OR adam11's are. I'm totally not pro with mixing or any of that stuff anything I've ever done has been through a home theatre receiver and some regular shelf-system speakers, philip magnavox actually. until we got a 4 channel headphone amp. I'd have to agree with you though, the song you put up was pretty cool whether it was pro-level mixed or not. I've been hoping to get some believable drum samples and re-record some old material myself. I'll look up those wharfedale diamonds and the adam11's on google so I can have an idea of what you're talking about.