mixing HORRIBLY recorded material...

[DaveBlack]

There really is a point when no amount of lipstick will make this pig look good and it sucks because I'm at a point now where business is starting to pick up but not enough to turn down the work at all.

At the same time I dont wanna be a dick and say "don't attach my name to this when your promoting it" because I don't wanna offend/lose someone who could potentially give me more business in the future.

Where's the medium?

 

[Ganks]

I'm taking it you're mixing work that was tracked someplace else?
Couple of things you should make sure of:

-Get DIs of guitar and bass
-Make sure the tracking engineer quantized drums
-Make sure they do not touch the vocals on the way in

If they do all those things, it's probably going to be the band's performance/tracking engineers equipment that you're having a problem with.

I'm currently TRYING to get in the business of mixing/mastering other people's work, because I cannot currently track where I live. It's hard, because everyone who is tracking also wants to mix. Haha.

Good luck, man.

 

[ahjteam]

how about just telling them truthfully that you think the supplied tracks aren't sufficient in quality and you can try to salvage as much of it as your skills allow, but warn them that it most likely won't sound stellar no matter what you do?

 

[DaveBlack]

Ganks, this one's hip hop so its basically just vocals. It's def an equipment problem.

ahjteam, see that's the thing. I always feel like I have to walk on eggshells with clients - at least in this stage of my "career" - Plus, I'm sure he knows the quality is weak.

What I'm struggling with the most is that what I mix now is like an advertisment and a horrible mix is gonna reflect negatively on me. It's a shitty situation. I start to mix -> I get pissed -> I procrastinate -> try again and the cycle continues.

 

[ahjteam]

Try the mixing approach I have linked on my sig

 

[professorlamp]

you could do what i did, and just say you 'edited' the guitars but in actuality you the just learnt it and played it for them (assuming we're talking about guitars) but really I don't see any reason (apart from you not being able to play) that stops you from just redoing their tracks.
Redo bass and guitars
programme drums
hope for a good singer
Profit?

Obviously I'd prefer to record someone who can actually play, but when theres a difference of hours of editing them or half an hour for me to learn 3 chords in an ABBA form I know what im gonna choose

 

[if6was9]

There's some bands and projects that you just have to say no to. I'm in a similar place career wise but there's a couple of bands that I just won't work with again if they ask, the end result just won't be good enough for me to potentially have my name on

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

Dave, the overheads of what I'm mixing atm are utterly fucked, one channel drops out and only gets snare in there but distorting the transient as fuck... unusable. Gonna have to use 1 channel of the OH's as mono OH's. Now this is fucked

 

[waltz mastering]

Not wanting to put your name on it probably means it's not worth taken the gig in the first place. If it's beyond repair and not worth the time or money, just pass..2 cents

 

[Paulie!]

If it's just the drums, just program them, that's fairly par for the course in Hip Hop anyways..

-P

 

[greyskull]

sometimes its just not worth the money/effort
But trigger and reamp

 

[DaveBlack]

No offense fellas, but for the second time, it's hip hop. Reamping and triggering wont help lol. Youre right though, sometimes and it's really not worth it. I think I'm just gonna tell him honestly that I can't work with the material.

 

[Sam Bottner]

that's the way to go.

 

[Tim HLAH]

yeah just tell him you cant work with it, and offer to retrack it. i think you said the only thing wrong is the vocals? if the guy has a professional bone in his body im sure he will want to pay a little more for a nice final product.

 

[abigor731]

so the song is basically all synthetic except the vocals which are recorded horribly? did i get this right?

maybe just try to rap a few lines on your own (record them better of course) and see if they sit in the mix, if they do, you're better off re-tracking this guy yourself with better quality, if not you either can't rap at all, or there is a problem with the mix
of course every voice is different and sits different in the mix, but that way you could determine if it really is that guy's crappy recording quality which is making it sound bad

 

[nialldoran]

yeah definatly go for retracking the vocals itll prob end up being alot better, and as was already said if the guy really cares about his music, he wont mind a bit of extra money to pay to make it sound right,

slightly off topic but do have this problem alot with metal bands drives me crazy when i havent tracked it and the tracking is horrible,whats even worse is if they send you DIs and you get a good tone thats sounds very fitting, i send them a sample and the reply is ' this tone is too smooth and clean, dirty it up a bit', happened to me recently with a grindcore act im mixing,
this is just the kind of thing that gets you angry then because you know you can get a better tone, but now you have to put your name to this lesser tone thats no where near as good

 

[Dollarosa]

I get alot of stuff that has been recorded somewhere else, and the recordings are pretty bad (tone, timing), you can only polish something up so much, but at the end of the day if the band is happy with the end product, I am happy. I recently recorded a band who basically wanted a demo. We recorded six songs in 4 days, they were hapy with average perfomances. It was more of a mission to get it sounding good, which was a shame considering the band had some really good songs. As a result I have learnt my lesson and will be explaining to bands that it won't be possible to get a polished sound unless the tracking is done properly. So it really depends on what the bands want from me "demo" or "release" quality