Importance of playing? Feel free to mix the shit out of this

KlotziDotCom

New Metal Member
Dec 23, 2008
27
0
1
Hey guys,

I was discussing with our other guitarist over the importance of playing for a good mix / recording.

Furthermore, I opt for the idea that a "polished" mix can get a LOT out of your music.

The question is the following:

How much does the mix affect the quality of the song?

Taking into account that you have a really awesome sounding tune (good arrangement, guitars, drums) and put that with a shitty recording / mix, does a "mediocre" arrangement / tune sound awesome with a highly polished mix?

I had people mix stuff here just for the fun of it, we needed a recording for a sampler. Mago did an awesome job, but what I was mixing in that mix was the "polished" or "round" feeling that everything fits together.

Right now, i'm trying to find out WHAT would contribute in order to get this polished / round sound.

I've put together a short riffage from one of our songs together with a midi drumtrack.

2x Guitar A
2x Guitar B
1x Bass
1x Midi

Speed is 94BPM (our other guitarist programmed the drumtrack, therefore the weird speed - originally it should be something at 190 - humanized the first 1 1/2 minutes as much as i could)

I'm not a bass player, so don't bash the bass track, furthermore, i've thrown in the guitar tracks rather quickly.

Everything was recorded with a Tascam US-122 (works for my experiments at home).

I'm not asking for anything, I'm just offering you to show me how much one can get out of this stuff.

Feel free to reamp, VST, SD, SSD and whatever pleases you. Tell me what we can do better - I just want to improve.

A lush sounding example of the outcome is here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2654365/godforsaken.mp3

Thats what our guitarist did at home. I've already edited the midi in a way that we don't have cymbals where we have tom rolls and that the cymbals are not played in 8ths as long as we're not blasting.

Without further ado, here are the tracks:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2654365/godforsaken_descendthesky.rar

Take your time, have fun (or not) and show me what you got ;)

Cheers and Beers,

~ Klotzi
 
Err, yeah, actually, there was a OD808 in front, totally forgot that.

Should I retrack?

@ Charles: Nice one :D

~ Klotzi
 
Hey Daniel!

I think what you may were missing in the track I did for you were stuff like editing for tightness, humanizing the drums on a deeper level and real guitars instead of ampsims...because of the very short deadline we had I didn't have enough time to do much of these things...also the budged wasn't adjusted to that too ;)

When we worked on that one song for the sampler I also felt like I didn't really have enough time to understand 100% what you guys wanted it to sound...still I think we both were quite happy in the end,
considering the amount of time we had :lol:

still I always felt like it could have turned out a bit better if we had more time for it^^
Funny stuff: Last week or so I took a look at the project again and tried some other stuff to see what I can do with it.
I ment to send it to you when I did another revision of it, but I dunno when I'll have time for that so if it's not a prob for you I can also post it here

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3961577/Mixes/Mago_DTS-A-Fallen-Angel-ReMix1.mp3
I think it sounds a bit more "round" if you want, didn't really do much of the polishing part though
So at least you have another version to see how much the mix effects the song ;)
also I think I fucked around with the drumtrack a bit, sry for that^^

I think I told you some of the stuff back when we were chatting, but just to be sure I can write it again here...so things that I think would improove the input and therefore the output quality:
-the di's were quite noisy, so getting a better interface/preamp would be an idea
-focus a bit more on constant playing/picking, maybe work on you tracking methods. I dunno how you guys tracked the guitars, but maybe do some more punch ins to make sure every part is spot on would allready help.
as far as I remember that was one of the things I thought...the performance was a bit weaker on some parts then others (NOT in general), so if you make sure to always be spot on and maybe focus on smaller parts rather then the entire song it helps. Consistency is the keyword for that one.
-mute the higher strings when tracking to avoid them to ring on rythm parts (helps to make stuff sound more clear)
-if you do quadtracking focus on getting the tracks a bit tighter..always works better then editing them afterwards (and it's cheaper too haha).
When you do quadtracking it has to be really tight to sound good

I know it sounds like little things, but they make a huge difference in the end

keep in mind that I haven't taken a look at the files you uploaded today though (will do tomorrow), so this is the state of when somewhen last year for me ;)

cheers!