Enter Sandman

[rabies]

Dream theatre is definately not a 'listen once and love em' kind of band. Linkin Park is like that for me. The stuff they do is so complex/musical that it takes several listens to really appreciate.

The more i listen to them, the more I love em.

Yea..the Sandman track is a great karaoke...you gonna sing over top of it and finish it off?

 

[Mr. Hyde]

I don't know if I'll sing on Sandman or not yet. If I can get some growl in my voice I might try but if I sound like Donny O sings Metallica I think that would be more than I can bear!

 

[Mr. Hyde]

I'd like more input on this mix if anyone else wants to check it out I'll email you the info.

On my speakers the guitars sound too bright and maybe a little too loud. Over headphones everything sounds ok. Anyone else want to hear it?

 

[rabies]

Oh..I thought you wanted comments on your guitar playing. Not the mix. I don't remember the guitars sounding too bright. In fact, i remember them sounding a bit muddy to me.

i'll listen to it again and focus more on the overall mix this time.

 

[rabies]

Ok.

I don't think the guitars are too bright at all. They may be too loud...but I don't think that is it either.

Overall, the mix lacks that bottom end punch. I think the bass line could afford to be boosted. More importantly, is there any way you can boost the bottom end on the drums? If I remember correctly, the stand-alone drum track was very trebly...anything you can do to punch up the low end would help. Maybe that is why you think your guits sound 'bright'...there is no low end there to back em up.

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Thanks again Rabies. You are dead on right about the drums. I tried everything to get the cymbals down and the snare and kick up but I couldn't get it how I wanted. If I boost more of the lows it seems like I loose what little bit of crack that there is in the snare and it almost starts to sound like a tom.
I like the bass sound a lot for this song. Ec's track was perfect. I didn't have to do anything at all to it but It did start to bury the drums when I boosted it more. It was a compromise.

I appreciate you taking the time to give me feedback. You were right about me wanting input on my playing first. I did, but then I started nit-picking my mix. I've been expirimenting with some alternate mixes but I lacked direction for them and needed some more ideas on what the original lacked.

Thanks again.

 

[Eddies cellmate]

Originally posted by Mr. Hyde
I'd like more input on this mix if anyone else wants to check it out I'll email you the info.

On my speakers the guitars sound too bright and maybe a little too loud. Over headphones everything sounds ok. Anyone else want to hear it?

I'll check it out Mr. H!

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Thanks Ec. I sent you the log in already through the board's email did you get it?

 

[rabies]

Feedback is what this is all about Hyde. I know I hate it when I post something and I don't hear squat for a while. So I try to give immediate feedback...when it is still fresh on your mind.

I am surprised you double tracked both guitars. I certainly did not pick that up. If you ever find out how to get that HUGE guitar sound (like Metallica, or some of these modern day bands like Linkin Park) let me know.

 

[Eddies cellmate]

Originally posted by Mr. Hyde
Thanks Ec. I sent you the log in already through the board's email did you get it?

I'll go look for it now, thanks!

I'd tried a couple of times before, but I couldn't log in with the info you had already posted.

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Rabies: That huge guitar sound is exactly what I've been trying to figure out. No luck at all.
I did double track everything on the original. I played everything twice for the left guitar track and twice for the right, but still no fat sound.
There are actually 4 rythm guitar's going throughout.

If you check out the parts where the fills are during the chorus you can hear where the two tracks play the separate parts. One stays on E the other does the fill thingy. On the other parts they are blended pretty well. I had to manually edit the level of the second tracks to get those fills to come up enough that they were audible. I messed up on one of the edits near the end and you can hear the volume cut quickly back down. Oops! It sounds like a punch in but it's from the bad edit.

 

[Eddies cellmate]

For the "wall of guitars" sound, try tracking three seperate guitars like this:

Guitar 1 - "Bright sound", "Panned far left"

Guitar 2 - "Fat, mid-range sound", "Panned mid-left"

Guitar 3 - "Low, crunchy + punchy", "Panned just left of center".

Same for the Right side, then use a "Tape saturation" effect to "melt" them together.

Use more reverb on the tracks that are farthest from center, and almost none on the ones closest to center.

It should come close to the "wall of guitars" sound, though it does require a lot of very tight rhythm guitar tracks.

Now, I should mention that I haven't really tried this exactly yet, but I think it would come close. (This idea came to me when mixing Sandman, but there aren't enough tracks to try it) The main thing is that you'd have to begin the process with an understanding that this is what you're shooting for, and then record the guitar tracks with this in mind. It's something we might want to experiment with.

 

[rabies]

Can you define for me a 'bright' sound?

Does this mean trebly? Does this mean reverby? Does it just mean 'clean' sounding...not muddy?
I've always had a problem with what people mean by 'bright'. My own stupidity. Crunchy I get, Mid-range I get..and punchy I get..but not sure what to go for with 'bright'. Maybe an example?

I would like to experiment with this. Maybe I'll bust out the sandman tracks and try an experiment. Thanks EC.

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Thanks Ec. Even though I've used that technique for vox I never tried it with guitar. I tried it last night and the sound definitely became massive. Unfortunately the sound was too massive and I couldn't get the guitars to blend with the rest of instruments.

Rabies I usually define muddy when referring to guitar as too much boost in the low end of the guitar around 220 - 400 hz., lower mid's around 600 - 800 as boxy, regular mid's between 900 - 2k, 2k+ - 4k high mids and 4k and above highs.

When I say bright sounding it's usually because of too much in the 5k - 6k area. I think everyone describes it differently.

What say you Ec?

 

[Eddies cellmate]

Well, just like everything else regarding sound, there really are different meanings to the word "bright".

When I use the word, I mean it to mean that the sound should have a high end boost to make it "cut" more than the other sounds, or more than usual.

Now, what sort of "high end boost" really is up to the individual, based upon the instrument being used, and the mix it's being placed in. There are certain instances where a bit of chorus will do the trick to bring out some high end harmonics. Other cases will require more drastic means, such as high end distortion/overdrive, some heavy EQing, or even a change of instruments/strings/pickups, etc (to one with a more natural bright sound).


As for controlling the level when trying the idea I mentioned, that really I think would be the trick of it. I'd suggest trying to go through the EQ spectrum of each guitar track and experiment with totally eliminating frequencies that may not be needed for that track's purpose. You'd be surprised how much you can cool a signal off just by whacking out some unneeded frequencies. The BBE Sonic Maximizer works in this way, which is why it's one of the more popular rack effects going. No good soundman would be without one these days!

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Do you use outboard gear to process your mixes? If so, how do you have it set up?

So far I've only had limited success getting an outboard processor to work properly with my Soundblaster. Mainly I've tried to use my rack compressor to tame some peaks but too much noise creeps in to the signal making it useless.



Also Ec, have you listened to Sandman yet? Comments?



A brief note about Eq, it's usually better to cut than to boost. If an instrument is having trouble cutting through it can often be fixed by cutting a frequency on one instrument to give another some area in the sound spectrum to work within. For instance, the low end of the snare in the 200 - 400hz range is also where the low end of the guitar is. Too much guitar in this range can bury the low end of the snare. I think that might be why some of the newer bands with the really heavy guitars and distorted bass have a snare drum that sounds like they are beating on a garbage can. They really tighten up on the snare heads to get it to punch through.

 

[rabies]

Wow.

I have only ever boosted in EQ. I never thought about it that way.

I've a lot to learn about mixing. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Eddies cellmate]

Originally posted by Mr. Hyde
Do you use outboard gear to process your mixes? If so, how do you have it set up?

So far I've only had limited success getting an outboard processor to work properly with my Soundblaster. Mainly I've tried to use my rack compressor to tame some peaks but too much noise creeps in to the signal making it useless.



Also Ec, have you listened to Sandman yet? Comments?



A brief note about Eq, it's usually better to cut than to boost. If an instrument is having trouble cutting through it can often be fixed by cutting a frequency on one instrument to give another some area in the sound spectrum to work within. For instance, the low end of the snare in the 200 - 400hz range is also where the low end of the guitar is. Too much guitar in this range can bury the low end of the snare. I think that might be why some of the newer bands with the really heavy guitars and distorted bass have a snare drum that sounds like they are beating on a garbage can. They really tighten up on the snare heads to get it to punch through.

1. I occasionally try some outboard effects, but I mostly use the cpu plug-in effects for mixing. I've always thought that if a particular instrument track requires heavy/wet effects, then that should be done before it makes it to tape/hard drive.

2. I have listened to your Sandman mix Mr H, and I liked it, but I've only had limited time to really critque it so far, and I haven't wanted to comment before giving it a full listening. I'll post more detailed comments soon, though that'll be hard as well because I've yet to do a final mix on that myself (just a "rough" one so far), so I really am not sure what I'd think of for that song just yet.

3. You're absolutely correct about the EQing. It's always better when possible to cut frequencies form a mix than it is to boost others. Many people don't realize it, but cutting a frequency from a mix is exactly the same, if not cleaner than boosting it's counterpart. In general terms, cutting the low end will always boost the high end, etc. That's very general though because when mixing tracks, you must take into consideration the entire spectrum, not just general terms like "low end" or "high end".

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Ec I think you are right about how to get that wall of guitar sound.
I did another mix of sandman and I think if my tracks had sounded better initially (and see below ) I would have been able to get closer to that Metallica sound.

I think it's as good as I can make it. I did a lot of editing on the drums and I was able to get the cymbals down and kick and snare up in the mix. So that part of this last mix is better. I was going to post to myplay but instead I think I'd rather email it to you if you would like to hear it. Email is a pain and I have to break the file up into manageable bits but at least I only have to email it once.


The thing that screwed me on my version was that I used an effect on my guitar when I recorded my basic tracks. I knew better but I did it anyway and all four guitars are out of phase with each other and won't mesh in the final mix.

 

[Eddies cellmate]

Looking forward to hearing it Mr Hyde, and glad it seemed to work. There are probably better ways, but we'll experiment with that over time.

Yea, I think that to really make that sort of process work, the tracks must be recorded from the start with the process in mind. That way, each track can be engineered to fill a specific role within the overall mix.

Oh, and I have a suggestion for you. Maybe you can download Morpheus and use it to transfer files? Might be easier than e-mail. That way, you could just place your mix in your "shared" Morpheus folder and give it a specific name. Post the name here and anyone can search for it using Morpheus and download it right from your cpu whenever you're online. I thinkn we all ought to do this. Then we can create our own little online network where we'll all have access to each other's songs whenever we're online. Something to think about anyway.