"Children of Ashes" DSBM Song - Need Help (Podfarm, AmpegSVX, SD2, Gog)

[NicholasDWolfwood]

Hey guys, need some advice here.

I'm working on this guy's black metal project, in the vein of Bethlehem/Silencer/Shining - depressive/suicidal-type bm with some drone influences thrown in. Right now he's doing guitars/vocals/drum programming, and I'm doing bass/half-assed mixing and some drum programming as well.

This is the first track that we worked on.

Now the problem is this: for one, the guitar tracks are pretty tight, but they were bounced with Podfarm running and I'm trying to salvage that take without him having to track it over. I need some EQ tips to try and patch that track up (right now it's one take panned 80 L and duplicated for 80 R.)

GTR L has TSS (0-10-10) on it. It also has ReaEQ on it with: hi-pass @ 150hz, 0.0dB (bandwidth @ 2oct) - band @ 277hz, raised 4.5dB (2oct) - band @ 403hz, lowered 2.3dB (2oct) - lo-pass @ 2892.5hz, 0.0dB (2oct).

GTR R has TSS (0-10-10), keFIR (s-preshigh), ReaEQ with hi-pass @ 150hz, 0.0dB (bandwidth @ 2oct) - band @ 277hz, raised 4.5dB (2oct) - band @ 403hz, lowered 2.3dB (2oct) - lo-pass @ 2392.2hz, 0.0dB (2oct).

I need some big help with those tracks, trying to patch them up and sound half-way decent. This is the raw guitar track.

Bass track is two tracks. First has TSS (10-0-10) going into AmpegSVX with my own custom preset modeled after Alex Webster's Ampeg SVT4-Pro tone (no cab), going through two instances of keFIR. One keFIR has A8x10_57_A107.wav, other keFIR is A8x10_4033_A107.wav.

Second bass track is ReaEQ with a low-pass @ 5000hz (2oct) into TSS (10-0-10) into AmpegSVX with the "Direct SVT-CL" preset (with the cab turned off), going into the same two instances of keFIR.

Drums are SD2's NY kit, with a gog on the kick (Morbid Angel 'kick drum 1.wav' ) and a gog on the snare (Heavy Snares 'Pearl-1.wav'). I made sure that every other track has the kick/snare bleed off but the room track is still slightly bleeding through. I half-ass programmed the drums (in Guitar Pro mind you) and this is really apparent during the tom and snare rolls, as I never played with the velocities on the notes to make it less "machine gun-ish."

I actually need some tips on this as I have SD2 set to I believe 92 for the "hard" velocity on the snare, but the rolls still sound robotic. Would going into the midi map and changing the velocities by hand (maybe changing each one by +/- 10) fix this?

Vocal track is one normal, with L2 (VoiceSlammer preset)/RDeEsser (Male DeEss Split) on it, and a second one panned 20% R (-0.5dB) with ReaDelay (6.9ms)/RDeEsser (Male DeEss Split)/TrueVerb (Vocal Spread preset)//L2 (Voice Slammer).

Thanks for any of the help you guys can give.

 

[NicholasDWolfwood]

anyone who can help me with this? even some basic eq/compression tips would suffice

 

[Nuno Filipe]

Raise the mids in the guitars! Try different equalizations in each guitar and send them to a stereo group to apply a main equalization. The drums sounds too artificial and the hit hat is very loud. You have to balance the drums. And the voice it too loud compared to instrumental.

 

[NicholasDWolfwood]

This is a new mix I made last night, applying some different EQ settings as well as a cabinet enhancer plugin.

GTR L now has TSS -> AcmeBarGig Cab Enhancer (Default Settings) -> ReaEQ with hipass @ 200hz (bw = 1.35), 208.2hz -3.4dB (bw = 2.02), 403hz -2.3dB (bw = 2.0), 900hz -2.2dB (bw = 2.0), 3285.8hz +0.3dB, 8000hz -2.2DB, lowpass @ 11740.4 (bw = 2.0).

GTR R now has TSS -> AcmeBarGig Cab Enhancer (Default Settings) -> ReaEQ with hipass @ 200hz (bw = 1.35), 208.2hz -3.4dB (bw = 2.02), 403hz -2.3dB, 900hz -2.2dB, 2395.2hz -1.6dB (bw = 2.0), 5944.2hz -1.7dB (bw = 2.0), 8000hz -2.2dB (bw = 2.0), lowpass @ 11740.4 (bw = 2.27)

I got rid of the gog on the kick, as it was mistriggering a lot of the double bass parts. I had to raise the room mic a bit as well as EQ some highs back in because otherwise, the ride gets lost during the blast. Hi-hat was lowered a bit, I believe around -2dB.

Bass gtr is primarily using hi-mids and highs, so I'm trying to keep the bass cutting through where it needs to while also keeping the guitars relatively open and audible.

Personally I think this mix sounds a lot better than the first one did, as there's less fighting for frequencies.

 

[JohnnyMcFly]

Very interesting dude...

Try this...with the Can Enhancer..make sure the res is at 3:00-4:00, This will give EAR a little more room to work and make sure that you are not driving it...Driving it causes it to try and emulate speaker distortion. When EAR goes into this mode it stopps all of its dynamics abilities except for on the LFE 2 setting..

Thanks for checking it out man..

KM