I need some help and opinions from you all.

[Donkey Fly]

OK. For my Music A2 course, one of the projects we have to undertake is the recording of a song with live instruments. We are marked on how it's recorded and I guess how good it sounds.

When it comes to recording I have some expereince but when it comes to production and mixing...I'm not so good.

I would like to know what you guys think I need to do to this track. I have posted up the whole band track and also just the drum track.

I'm hoping you can give me ideas on how I should go about EQ'ing the mix etc and also want tips on how I can make my drums sound much more professional/studio like.

I have various software such as Sound Forge but no matter what I do there is never any real improvements to my ears.

Well Thought Out Twinkles - Rough and WTOT Drum Track

http://profile.ultimate-guitar.com/Donkey+Fly/

BOTH TRACKS START AROUND 14 SECONDS AT MOMENT.
Thanks...

 

[-Noodles-]

Have you high-passed the cymbals?

the drum tracks don't sit too well in the full mix because you've got a lot of midrange focus... so drop the level of the vocals and take some of the mids out of the guitars..

Maybe compress the bass a little more and bring it up.

You've got a decent starting point for what you've went for, just needs a second look at the way you've EQed the instruments.

It doesn't feel as cohesive as it could be.

 

[Donkey Fly]

Would would High Pass Filtering the Cymbals do and how much would you recommend I do it.

I can't find it in Sound Forge either. Only in audacity - which sucks really.

I shall try cutting some of the mids out of the guitar now.

 

[Ben Johnson]

There is not likely a "high pass filter" command in Sound Forge.

"High pass" implies the removal of low frequencies. A good place to start for overheads is to remove everything below 500Hz.

 

[Donkey Fly]

It says Roll Off, Filter Quality for 6DB Rolloff and Cutoff Frequency.

I assume I'd put 500 for Cutoff. What would I do with the roll off?

 

[-Noodles-]

Sorry, I've got no experience of Sound Forge - so I can't help in a technical manner for the software..

But the roll off will clear up the low end, and ensure that your recorded kick track will keep it's integrity - and it will also take out some of the bass frequencies which may have been recorded (spill from guitars and bass).

If you look up roll off, it'll do you more good than me explaining it - but the 6dB figure gives you how steep or shallow the cutoff will be below your chosen frequency.

 

[Trevoire520]

First lesson you should learn from this, the fact that you say nothing you do in soundforge makes an improvement shows the absolute paramount importance of getting the source to sound great. A great source with no eq/compression etc will ALWAYS sound better than a ok sound with any amount of tweaking in a mix. This goes for guitars (guitar-amp-cab-mic placement) drums (quality of the kit, the room its in and more importantly how well its tuned) and vocals (the quality of the vocal performance should be considered the most important part of the whole session, do whatever you have to to get the best possible take from the singer)

Though that all being said i dont think the mix is too bad really,

The kick sounds like you've boosted alot of lows in it, maybe back that off a bit and add some more beater smack (between 4KHz-7Khz, depends on the kick) Drums seem to be lacking attack. Was the room you recorded the drums in is carpeted? (could be completely wrong here! lol) Try adding some attack to the snare around 5KHz to brighten it up, though rolling off the overheads might actually make the kit seem brighter. Some parallell compression might help the kit sound a bit more aggressive.

The vocals are a bit loud and seem to have a bit too much going on in the lows/lower mids. try rolling off 12db/octave at around 120Hz, and maybe pulling a little low mids out around 250Hz-ish (might be higher or lower, depends) Maybe back off the amount of reverb you have on them aswell. There's a few bits of the vocal performance where the singer seems to miss words/be out of time, retrack these if you can. Seems like the recording of the vocals was a bit rushed to be honest.

Guitar wise it sounds like they were tracked through a fairly cheap amp. there's not alot that can be done unless you've recorded a clean DI and can re-amp through something better. Try pulling some midrange out around 800Hz-ish to make it a bit less boxy. Could maybe do with a bit of a boost around the lower-mid/bass region. Be careful though its easy to overdo it and make it muddy. And make sure to high pass it at about 60-80Hz to give the bass guitar room to breathe.

Bass guitar is hardly there, bring it up, maybe add a little distortion the give it some growl and help it sit with the guitars and add the power they seem to be missing.

All in though its not as bad as you think man, try some of the stuff that people have suggested and I think you might be surprised how good it turns out. Just remember that you dont need to go crazy with the eq-ing, boosting as little as 1dB can make a difference.

 

[Donkey Fly]

Thnaks for all that.

I'll have a mess around with some of the suggested things and see what happens.

I shall be back!

 

[-Noodles-]

boosting as little as 1dB can make a difference.

Yeah,.. most mastering I've done recently (for uni) has consisted of cuts / boosts less than 3dB.

Great post!