challenging/impossible Mix

[aviel]

Hwy Fells,
first post here, glad to join this forum
after a while of browsing, i decided to upload my first major concern those days. an horrible mix.

This is a project i had to do at the end of my studies. we had to record a song, live, meaning all players are in the same room and playing together, with a limit of 8 tracks.

the sources are somewhere between awful to decent.

now its been a while i tried to throw my head against a wall and just trying to mix this stuff.

Basicly i have 8 channels:
1. Guitar, 2 tracks, sm57 in front of my beloved ENGL amp, 2 takes, one for each side.

2. Bass - 2 Channels, DI, and miced cab, just some too old marshall amp with a not too great cab.

3. Drums - here the nightmare begins. we had shitty drums, the Kick sounded somewhat middy, lacked of punch and low end. snare was ok, and cymbals were horrible.

I have 3 drums track:
* Base drum - just replaces it with triggers.
*snare drum - same story - triggers.
*Overheads - 2 channels (or a stereo channel) when the mics were placed with some distance. because we had no way to get the ambience of the room. the OH just sounds bad, i hear the Kick and the snare there louder then the hats and cymbals. doesnt matter if i EQ. so basiccly even if i change the kick to a trigger, once i turn on the OH track, i just get back the awful kick drum, same with snare.

4. Vocals, didnt even bother to try and fix them. because the drummer okayed so loud, the SM58 got the snare and base drum louder then the actual singer, again, impossible to use the track, i will just re-record the vocals at my home studio.

I was wondering if someone can give me some advices on fixing up this mess, i need to make the best of it, since its my final project, want it to sound good, at least somehow...

Here is a link for the mp3. i can also upload some raw tracks if you guys want to listen to them and can give me some advices then


link:
http://soundcloud.com/firstva/sharona-1/s-Hyqx6

 

[Mm1066]

Welcome to the forum However you have posted into the wrong sub forum. You'll want to ask for advice on this sort of thing on the 'Rate my mix/tone' thread.

 

[aviel]

Oh sorry,
will ask for it to be moved.

 

[Nimvi]

Welcome!

Eventough I hear the problems you describe, I must say that the rawness of the track is kind of appealing ^^ But since that doesn't help at all, I'll just throw in some ideas I had while listening to the track.

-Like you said, the kick lacks low end. You could ofcourse just trigger it, but that would take away from the live-vibe of the track. Don't know if that's something you want to preserve or get away from. If you want to preserve it, you could add a sinewave-generator with a low bass frequency (for example 60hz) on a separate track that constantly plays. Then add a gate after it and sidechain it's input from the real kicktrack, so that the gate only opens whenever the kick hits. Play with the attack, release and hold until it sounds natural. Now you can add in as little or much punch to the kick as you desire.
-Snare is probably best triggered and blended with the original. The snap of the original fits quite well imo, so I would add a triggered sample with some body to thicken it up a bit.
-The overheads are pretty dreadful, and there usually isn't much you can do about that. I did read about a technique here a while ago though that sounded promissing. I haven't tried it, but who knows. I'm quoting SigmundFreud33 from this forum here so credit goes to him:
"notch EQ is your BEST friend.
dupe the OH tracks and LP/HP and compress them 1176 style and from there send them full on to a room type reverb, get a real nice authentic room sound going, BIG room..... like abbey road big. .. put an EQ after reverb with a sweet sounding high end to bring some highs up on this pseudo ROOM track.... THEN crush the result with something like The Rocket by Stillwell...... see how much high-shelf you can get away with by pushing it into the EQ....
NOW.... blend that in with your OH tracks that are nice and notched....
it'll help mask and glue very sterile or bad sounding OH tracks...
you may be able to even get away with a litle high shelf on the OH track after blending the two..."
-About the lack of room ambience, you COULD still play the drumtrack through your monitors and make a room-ambience recording of that. It might even mask the harshness of the cymbals a bit. Also try a ribbonmic if you have one, they tend to warm up and smoothen things a bit.
-You could try to compress the attack of the kicks and snares in the overhead track to make them less dominant. This can be done with a sidechain again. Put a compressor on the overheadtrack, that gets activated by the kick/snare track. Put a fast attack and fast/medium release on it so it only reduces the kick/snare peaks. This does mean that the overheads lose their attack a bit whenever the kick/snare hits, but it might be better than the alternative.
-The guitar and bass don't sound that bad to me, considering the circumstances they were recorded in. They have a nice live-vibe. I would probably put the bass a bit lower volume-wise, but that's a personal choice. I'm not sure about this, since I'm listening in an untreated room at the moment, but I think the subbass of the bassguitar is a bit rumbly so you might try to highpass it a bit higher (not sure if you highpassed it at all?). Also, once you triggered/added the sinewave to the kickdrum, cut out a nice hole for the bassguitar to sit in, and vice versa. For example, a narrow cut on the bass at 60hz, and a narrow cut on the kickdrum at 80hz (just making these numbers up). Either that, or sidechain compress the bass whenever the kick hits, so they get out of eachothers way. I don't usually like this on fast music, but on a beat like this one, it might sound nice.

That's all I can think of for now, hope there's something useful in it for you

 

[aviel]

Welcome!

Eventough I hear the problems you describe, I must say that the rawness of the track is kind of appealing ^^ But since that doesn't help at all, I'll just throw in some ideas I had while listening to the track.

-Like you said, the kick lacks low end. You could ofcourse just trigger it, but that would take away from the live-vibe of the track. Don't know if that's something you want to preserve or get away from. If you want to preserve it, you could add a sinewave-generator with a low bass frequency (for example 60hz) on a separate track that constantly plays. Then add a gate after it and sidechain it's input from the real kicktrack, so that the gate only opens whenever the kick hits. Play with the attack, release and hold until it sounds natural. Now you can add in as little or much punch to the kick as you desire.
-Snare is probably best triggered and blended with the original. The snap of the original fits quite well imo, so I would add a triggered sample with some body to thicken it up a bit.
-The overheads are pretty dreadful, and there usually isn't much you can do about that. I did read about a technique here a while ago though that sounded promissing. I haven't tried it, but who knows. I'm quoting SigmundFreud33 from this forum here so credit goes to him:
"notch EQ is your BEST friend.
dupe the OH tracks and LP/HP and compress them 1176 style and from there send them full on to a room type reverb, get a real nice authentic room sound going, BIG room..... like abbey road big. .. put an EQ after reverb with a sweet sounding high end to bring some highs up on this pseudo ROOM track.... THEN crush the result with something like The Rocket by Stillwell...... see how much high-shelf you can get away with by pushing it into the EQ....
NOW.... blend that in with your OH tracks that are nice and notched....
it'll help mask and glue very sterile or bad sounding OH tracks...
you may be able to even get away with a litle high shelf on the OH track after blending the two..."
-About the lack of room ambience, you COULD still play the drumtrack through your monitors and make a room-ambience recording of that. It might even mask the harshness of the cymbals a bit. Also try a ribbonmic if you have one, they tend to warm up and smoothen things a bit.
-You could try to compress the attack of the kicks and snares in the overhead track to make them less dominant. This can be done with a sidechain again. Put a compressor on the overheadtrack, that gets activated by the kick/snare track. Put a fast attack and fast/medium release on it so it only reduces the kick/snare peaks. This does mean that the overheads lose their attack a bit whenever the kick/snare hits, but it might be better than the alternative.
-The guitar and bass don't sound that bad to me, considering the circumstances they were recorded in. They have a nice live-vibe. I would probably put the bass a bit lower volume-wise, but that's a personal choice. I'm not sure about this, since I'm listening in an untreated room at the moment, but I think the subbass of the bassguitar is a bit rumbly so you might try to highpass it a bit higher (not sure if you highpassed it at all?). Also, once you triggered/added the sinewave to the kickdrum, cut out a nice hole for the bassguitar to sit in, and vice versa. For example, a narrow cut on the bass at 60hz, and a narrow cut on the kickdrum at 80hz (just making these numbers up). Either that, or sidechain compress the bass whenever the kick hits, so they get out of eachothers way. I don't usually like this on fast music, but on a beat like this one, it might sound nice.

That's all I can think of for now, hope there's something useful in it for you

Thanks a lot, a lot of good things to try!.
the first thing i tried was the overheads. just no luck.. i really think of throwing away those tracks, i mean, they just sound awful. maybe i still try some stuff. but i doubt it will work. what do you think?

 

[Nimvi]

Yea man, I'd almost consider to just rewrite the cymbalparts with midi and replace them with fake cymbals..and that says a lot You can try all kinds of things but in the end the truth is that if the source is bad, the outcome can't possibly become great.

I guess the best tip I can give you is to not drive yourself crazy over this track. It won't be the last thing you mix nor will it make or break your carreer, so just try to get a reasonable outcome and get on with it!
I used to mix stuff for a friend's ambient soloproject for practice and a lot of his older tracks were far from stellar quality-wise. I tried to wreck the harshness out of them for hours on end, and the only difference was that the track now sounded dead as well... it really made me want to quit audio altogether.
Then I received some newer tracks that were a decent, and they practically mixed themselves. I actually had -dare I say it- fun mixing them!

So give it the best you can, but don't go nuts over it. Better tracks will come