Mix I'm doing for a friend, help out ! (Rock/Metal)

[Harry Hughes]

Okie dokie, a friend of mine is getting me to produce, mix and well, master I suppose, a demo thing for him. This isn't really finished but I want to establish some sort of template I can use for the rest of the songs he has lined up

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1663306/The Journey rough.mp3

Right now, I'm just dabbling around with a guitar tone.
My 2 main references for this guitar tone are "Fences" by Paramore and "Runaway" by Linkin Park" because they are in the same key signature as the song I'm mixing at the moment (laugh if you will at the bands and songs, but they are monstrous tones that really serve the mix extremely well). Actually I kinda aimed to get a bass sound in that ballpark too.
It doesn't sound exactly like either, but I aimed to get at least some qualities of both like a nice grinding, bright and present upper mid range and hopefully a somewhat smoothed off treble (7KHz region) without sounding muffled, so basically a very modern rock/metal tone (although erring more towards rock).
I've managed to finally achieve what I think is a bass tone that somewhat blends reasonably well with guitars, but bass guitar is still an extremely weak point of mine.

There is meant to be vocals in this, but I figured since I based my guitar sound off those 2 songs I should have enough space for the vocals.
Right now I'm more interested in what you guys think of the drum sounds.
Also, I'm hoping for guys with better monitoring than me to give me some input on where the bass guitar and kick are sitting in terms of their sub bass frequencies, because my monitors make sub bass complete guess work

Guitars and bass were POD Farm btw. Any thoughts? Sound okay? Shit? Need to roll off my 7KHz?
Fire away guys

Ignore that sloppy bit of guitar playing at the start, that was my friend's playing. The rest of the playing is otherwise not bad I guess

 

[Rex Rocker]

My biggest issue is the drums sound too programmed.

I think either the bass is too loud or too bassy, lol. The low-end on the whole track is bit out of whack, IMO.

Guitars sound a tad too POD-ish, IMO... and definitely too gainy for the style of music I think. I'm also afraid you migh've rolled off a bit too much air from the guitars, but that's jut a matter of taste, I guess.

Just my opinion.

 

[Ganks]

The drums completely ruin it for me.
They are so repetitive, and that constant crash for every single bar is really annoying.
Everything sounds like it's at the same velocity.

The drums are small sounding. I think you need different samples with a lot of room ambiance.

The guitars sound okay, but they sound a little muffled to me.

Taking care of the drum problem may help that though.

 

[FloridaRolf]

The clipping is really nasty, seriously don't try to achieve ~-8,5dbs rms, it just hurts.

You should use some other samples for your drums, because they don't sound great and programmed. I recommend you to get something like SSD or Superior 2.0 etc. with some humanized samples / grooves.

The bass is okay to me but a bit too loud
Too many gain on the guitars.

Also try to achieve a more balanced mix, there is a ~12db hole in the 600-2000hz area.

The clipping makes it really difficult to listen to the stuff

 

[allplaydead]

holy clipping batman

The guitars sound somewhat hollow and overgained, possibly because of the clipping.

Also the drums need some work as mentioned.

This is actually not bad at all but with a few tweaks it could sound great.

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, I gotta be honest Harold, it definitely needs some work - that hi-hat is pretty thin and piercing, and the guitars feel not so much muffled as devoid of "air", as was said (and a bit hefty in the low-mids), but more importantly just have that Pod character (as Hugo mentioned) that really makes me The drums themselves probably would be a bit better if they were louder, but man that hi-hat, oog (and ride too) Bass blends well but isn't particularly audible as a distinct entity from the guitars; however, I'm discovering that's sometimes quite a challenge to achieve, so I'd put that pretty low on your priority list (though it does have a bit too much in the upper lows/low-mids, like 125-400 or so, I find I prefer Multi-band compression over eq for taming those frequencies) And the music sounds like a keyboard demo or something (I say this because it's not yours )

 

[AEL89]

Listening on Macbook Pro speakers...

Guitars sound a little overgained for this style. I also agree that they lack a little air - where are you low passing them? Guitars tend to have harsh frequencies around 2k so make a small cut in that region of you want to smooth things out. A small bump between 300-400 will give a similar effect, lots of body/beef/depth around there. That should help with you achieve a smooth top end. Don't worry about 7k either unless you can really hear it sticking out. If you're boosting 15dB with a narrow band then 7k will sound harsh in some cases but that's not a great way to EQ. I'm not saying you've done that... just leave 7k unless it really sticks out to you.

I have very little experience with MIDI drums but I'd say have a mess around with velocities and timings. I find that drummers tend to hit slightly early with their right hands when playing the snare and the hat/ride/any cymbal at the same time so it might help to keep that in mind.

Post again with nothing on the 2-bus. It isn't far from sounding ok though so best of luck, hope some of that helps!

EDIT: I'd probably split the bass into different bands rather than compressing the low mids on one track. I tend to have 3 bass tracks - one for the very low stuff, one for the middle stuff and one for the high stuff. Sounds crude but it works. Compress to absolute hell. Way faster compression on the low stuff will keep the bass fat but tight. Try a 2 dB bump at 60hz or just a low shelf boost before the compressor too! Roll off at 35-45 though! Slower compression on the high stuff!

 

[Harry Hughes]

I think I wont mix stuff when I've been awake for well over 20 hours next time
I'll speak to the dude I'm working with to totally re program the drums, humanize them etc etc. As the name implies, it's quite rough at the moment, heh.
Thanks for the advice anyway guys, I guess I'll get back to this once there is vocals in here and the other guitar parts are added, just wanted to see how the foundation was looking so far.

 

[Harry Hughes]

Okay so I said I wouldn't update it, but fuck it I did anyway.
I'd like to hear opinions on the update. The drum pattern is still meh, but I found out what was causing my snare to sound too small on the first clip, which was because one of the snare samples was set at way at a really low volume by mistake and I raised it up.
Another crash sample was added, with a boost using EQ for more body.
I fucked around with the guitar tone more. I used much less post EQ this time. Ideally it would all be tone from the source, but there are cuts at 1.2Khz, 2Khz and 3KHz using post EQ to give way for the vocals to come (obviously I'll drop the guitar tracks lower in the mix for the vocals when they come in) and also to hopefully give the tone a less digital sound and more of a natural flavor. No more cuts at 7KHz except in POD Farm, and that helped to bring back missing air.
Less lower mids on the guitars, so it doesn't sound quite muddy anymore.
All other EQ is done in POD Farm, and no more 850Hz cutting as I realized that was part of what was putting a hole in a mix.
Marcus if you see this, which hopefully you will, what say you on the guitar sound now?

I noticed despite the fact I actually mastered the update quieter, it sounds louder because I filled out more of the frequencies and balanced it better.

Still not perfect of course and other elements of the drums probably still suck.
Would be good to get an idea how much low end is really in my kick drums. As I said my monitors are pretty so-so and chances are my kick drums are muddy but I can't really hear if it's the case or not.
I've listened to it too many times, and can't tell if the snare is big enough now or still too small, so some feedback on that would be nice too.

Bear in mind with the second clip, it starts where it would be 46 seconds of the first clip, so to be able to do a comparison between the old clip and the update, skip to about 46 seconds of the original, older clip.

Once again, advice is much appreciated.

 

[Mattayus]

What amp/cab combo are you using there? Sounds a touch nasal and dark. If you could get it flatter/clearer then you could get away with having it a lot lower in the mix, at the moment it's dominating, but I can hear why you've done that.

 

[Harry Hughes]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1663306/The Journey rough 3.mp3

Guitar lower in the mix, a little less 850Hz, less 7KHz cutting for more air, a bit better of a low end I hope.
Last revision for now