I recorded a song with my sister. Chick rock

brianhood

brianhood

No Care Ever
Jul 12, 2008
1,543
16
38
Nashville, TN
www.facebook.com\456recordings
My sister came in and recorded a song as my birthday present to her. We spent about 3 days when everything was said and done. I did all the music, my sis wrote the (general) guitar part and lyrics, as well as recorded the vocals.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/536384/Christi Hood/Shine/Mix 2/Shine.mp3

All guitars are Orange Rockerverb 100 through a mesa cab, bass is fender jazz through sansamp. Vocals are an AT4040 through my API A2d. Drums are completely different than my normal setup. The only slate i use were on the toms. Everything else are samples i made myself. I tracked with triggers, then used drumagog to replace the triggers with the samples.


Let me know how the overall sound is. My biggest problem in the past has been my rock stuff sounding "too metal". I tried to completely change the way i approached everything so it would better fit this genre. This isn't exactly my comfort zone when it comes to mixing

Edit:More bass, less bright mix(i took the harmonic exciter and high shelf off completely), took some crack out of the snare, and the kick is less clicky because of the lack of high end on the master bus. I also toned down the de esser on the vox a good bit. Vocals up 1.3db as well
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/536384/Christi Hood/Shine/Mix 4/Shine.mp3
 
This sounds very good. The kick is a little loud and a bit metal, but it's not too noticeable.
Also there could be a little more presence in the vocals during the chorus or whatever when there's multiple layers of vocals or whatever is happening there.
Bass is usually a little louder on this kind of music, but I think it sounds fine where it is.
Other than that, great.
I'm really digging the snare
 
Not bad, but what I immediately noticed was guitars taking up space where vocals should be and so her voice isn't as clear as I would want.

Not a fan of the snare, I would personally go for something drier and not as metal-ish.
 
Honestly, eeeesh, there was a fair amount of stuff in this I didn't like.
So many elements of it just contributed to it just sound harsh and I mean HARSH.
There isn't a single pop rock/pop punk reference album I own that sounds as bright as this (and I'm talking David Bendeth/CLA mixes here, not just any pop punk/pop rock/alt rock stuff)
The highs are just out of control here.
The guitars are just hitting me all sorts of harsh upper mids and treble (around 6.5-7KHz).
Cymbals are just hurting my ears.

It would sound great if you were 45 years old and had hearing damage from loud noise exposure, but from the perspective of a 21 year old like myself who takes care of his hearing, it's way too bright sounding man.
The brightness is also making it harder for the guitars to really slot into the mix. It makes them feel detached at points, as well as the cymbals.
Vocals are okay I guess and aren't something I know much about, so I wont comment too much there, but the guitars definitely need work.
The core tone of the guitars themselves aren't bad, but cutting of the harsh upper mids and highs will be necessary.

The actual song itself was pretty good and well written though
 
Alextwokay said:
Not bad, but what I immediately noticed was guitars taking up space where vocals should be and so her voice isn't as clear as I would want.

Not a fan of the snare, I would personally go for something drier and not as metal-ish.
Click to expand...

I hate dry snares haha. Different strokes i guess.

I actually turned the vox down about 1.5db right at the last second to compensate for the fact that 90% of the time i mix vocals too loud on my first mix. Also, i was comparing the vocal level to a Paramore song, and it seems to be on par with that
 
What I'm hearing:

-Vocals lack body and have the top end boosted too much, ends up kind of hissing on the top of everything. Too much de-essing has made them sound a bit lispy as well.
-Kick is way too metal, snare has too much crack/pop, drums could use a lot more body from the room/oh mics.
-Bass needs to come up/sound warmer/fuller, guitars are too high endy and brittle.
-"Shine" vocals sound suuuper robotic, could be the intension
-Badum badum part would be awesome with some third-harmonies left/right! She hits the B's pretty hard, might consider fading into them
-'hey!' yell seems a bit out of place

It's not bad but it's obvious to me that a metalhead mixed this :lol:. Overall, too bright and hi-fi.
 
After more A/B with reference mixes, I agree with Jeff that the snare is definitely a little too toppy, and the kick is a bit odd in the context.

BTW, were where the guitars low passed at?
 
Harry Hughes said:
After more A/B with reference mixes, I agree with Jeff that the snare is definitely a little too toppy, and the kick is a bit odd in the context.

BTW, were where the guitars low passed at?
Click to expand...

Right around 12k



CatharsisStudios said:
i don't wana be this guy but the vocals what seems like it has static. on it :(
Click to expand...

dude....i dont want even to get into that:(
We tracked vocals in one night, and around 2am when we were finished, i noticed i made a huge noob mistake. I was recording in 48khz, but my A2D was set to 44khz. fml:cry: It wasnt enough for me to notice while tracking stuff(i was pretty tired), but as soon as i started editing and soloing vox, i was like FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
We were both too tired to redo all the vox, especially since this was a free recording. Lets just say its a lesson learned the hard way...although it would have been way worse if it was a paying band and more than one song.
 
the song is great playing is great. but hey man lesson learned hahah. i'd love to hear this song in the future though!
 
Bass is too twangy in the wrong places. The snare needs to be fatter. The toms stick out the wrong way. I think you ought to remix from scratch. The song has a great basis, but the mix isn't suiting at all.
 
I think its worth re-tracking these vocals. The song is really great, but the vocals are killing me even more on the remix. It just sounds like theres a disgusting amount of ambient noise behind them and the reverb is only making things worse.

The new mix is definitely a lot better minus the vocals.

If you haven't, try soloing the kick sample (or two) that sound best. The kick still isn't punching like a good top 20 production. The biggest thing is getting the low to high end balance. This could even use more click and less thud. Thwack is a better onomatopoeia for the sound it should be making. Then again, you have a lot more experience than I do mixing.

Take the toms down a notch and change that snare sample; this mix really needs something fatter.
 
Remix is much easier to listen to. Doesn't hurt my ears anymore.
But i think the vocals are sitting a tad too high over the mix. Turn them down just a tiny bit I reckon
 
It's not that the vocals are too loud, it's that they lack body/the top end is weird so they pop out on top way too much.

If you ever get a chance to rerecord vocals, I would highly recommend it, since this song is pretty damn cool your sister sounds like a solid singer.
 
lolzgreg said:
I think its worth re-tracking these vocals. The song is really great, but the vocals are killing me even more on the remix. It just sounds like theres a disgusting amount of ambient noise behind them and the reverb is only making things worse.
Click to expand...



JeffTD said:
It's not that the vocals are too loud, it's that they lack body/the top end is weird so they pop out on top way too much.

If you ever get a chance to rerecord vocals, I would highly recommend it, since this song is pretty damn cool your sister sounds like a solid singer.
Click to expand...

unfortunately this is not an option for now. I am too busy to commit more time to this
 
Really good second mix man, really dig the song as well.

Shame about not being able to retrack vocals
 
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