Improving basic skills

[LeSedna]

Hello

I'm trying to return to the basics of mixing. So I recorded a song you know, fuel of metallica, with some basic riffing. I recorded guitars and bass, and exported the basic tracks from S2.0 (normal kit) ,working on the wav and using no remplacement, not to make it too simple using a metal kit or drumagog with slate samples etc. Also I did not edited the tracks, I prefered to record them one-shot each of them (guitar 1 / 2 and bass).

So basically here is my first quick try of about 20mn of mixing, I have to go so now so I can't improve it right now, but I post it anyway. Also, I have reinstalled my XP so currently it's re-synchronizing my dropbox, so maybe my mp3 will not be up until some time. So if it says error 404, just check later.

Know there is no mastering yet, only the pure mix.

I feel the kick is difficult to mix trough the bass. What do you think ?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/881054/Sneap/training/lesedna - fuel metallica.mp3

 

[Metaltastic]

Hey Mat, first off, I gotta say the guitars are incredibly middy and muffled; what'd you use? Time to go back to square one I'd say, this isn't a tone that I think could be saved no matter how much eq'ing you do :/ Drums are too low IMO, but the kick sounds pretty good, though hard to tell at the volume it's at. The snare has a really annoying ring on it, though I've found playing with the envelope adjustment in S2.0 helps that, as well as compressing the ring of the snare decently hard (I assume you're multi-outputting S2.0 to Reaper, and if not, you should be ); the way I've been doing it is bussing the Snare top, snare 1176, and snare bottom to one snare track, then eq'ing/compressing that; to use compression to subdue that awful ringing, you'll wanna set the attack time to be long enough that it lets the initial attack through, and then only starts the gain reduction after; set this by solo'ing the track, bringing the threshold way down and the ratio way up, play it back, and gradually increase the attack time until the hit of the snare is fully coming through before the gain reduction kicks in; then, a medium release (200-300 ms), just make sure it's back to zero before the next hits come in. As for gain reduction, around 5 dB works for me usually, not too much.

Mainly though, I think it's best to concentrate on getting all the levels right first, then worry about fine-tuning!

 

[LeSedna]

Hello,

Actually I did this quite quick yes, I put X30 + some recabinet impulse on my DIs, doubled with 6560 I think. I wanted to leave the usual s-prehigh sort of tone to a more middy one (I love more heavy tones) but it seems too muffled yes. I'll manage something more decent.

EDIT : I got it, I had mixed it before reinstalling XP, I reinstalled everything but the impulse were not loaded properly, so it wasn't loading my impulse. I should have listened carefully to it at least once But anyway, my sound should be still too middy even with the good impulses, remembering how it was.

Strange you mention the kick to be quite good, I had a lot of trouble to make it cut the bass sound (I wanted it without parallel compression). Yes, it's S2.0, and yes it's routed in Reaper. It's even rendered, I technically worked on the wav tracks.

I have a serious problem about the ringing snare. It's actually interesting because it doesn't happen a lot, and never when using samples of course I didn't know how to tame it... I removed some of the worst frequency, but it's also the frequency I would have boosted to give it more crack and fullness... I actually used compression the way you explain, but I should try to be more radical and bus the 3 tracks as you mentionned. I think using the 3 (+other 3 for the kick) different tracks for the snare complicated my work.

I'll give it a second shot soon. Thanks marcus

 

[Metaltastic]

No problem dude - and I don't hear much kick/bass fighting, I just hear that the kick needs to come up!

 

[Harry Hughes]

Don't really know about drums, but ouch, blanket over the guitars there

 

[LeSedna]

fixed missing impulses (and finally using s-prehigh again), and better compression and volumes on drums :

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/881054/Sneap/training/lesedna - fuel metallica 2.mp3

 

[digitalmikey]

Guitars are still WAY too muffled and that snare is hideous. Try a different snare and bringing it down a bit.