Mixing time, oldschoolish death metal song.

[Ozterkvlt]

Honestly, get rid of your bassist, those bass lines are pretty rubbish (unless they were made up and recorded on spot). Poorly played with some really odd patterns and note choices that don't even fit with the riffs most of the time. Or the bass might be severely out of tune. No offence though. Still, it was a lot of fun to mix and the song is pretty cool too. Here's my attempt, not that happy with it, but whatever:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18694422/SneapForumOldschoolDMbc.mp3

 

[RaNk]

Hey Ozterkvlt, no offence taken. The basslines are different and unusual, but I like that. In your mix I cannot hear you don't like them, cause they're mixed in pretty loud. The mix is quite nice I think. Maybe a bit loud and clicky kicks sometimes (faster parts) and soft vocals, but generally a nice oldschool vibe which I like. Glad you liked mixing it and thanks for the compliment on the song.

 

[mickrich]

Just got a Universal Audio LA-610 pre so I thought I would run it with this track as a tester. Also used a Marshall 8100 head to get the authentic old school Chuck sound. The UA pre gave the guitars a bit more valve squishiness.
Nice
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2133088/RaNk Marshall 8100.mp3

 

[RaNk]

Wow mickrich sounds killer man. Love the high mids so much on this one. Sounds like you pushed the preamp quite a bit, the guitars have great saturation. Or does that come from the amp only? Now only if it had a little less gain, quality DIs with new string, it's kind of the sound I'm looking for probably. Inspires me to do some tweaking myself anyways. Well, next week I'm gonna order a better interface to record my guitars, that's a start.

 

[schwinginbatman]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36797911/Old school Death Metal.wav

Drums are a mix of the drums you put up, and Addictive Drums. Guitars are a mix of Lecto and X30. The kick isn't too high up, and for my mixes the bass is pretty low, I wanted to have a mix of the old school production and modern production.

This was fun to do. I love old school death metal. All it needed was a Kerry King-esque solo at some point.

 

[RaNk]

Sounds like a well balanced mix to me schwinginbatman. Nice how you made the drums sound different, while using the rendered track. As for the solo, it will come at some point, but I'm working on new songs first. However, feel free to make your own solo in the meantime.

 

[schwinginbatman]

Thanks, bro. I'd love to, but I think the song is fine the way it is.

 

[RaNk]

Still I think I should do a solo myself sometimes.

 

[CannibalBarnes]

hi guys , i've tested my new Audio Technica MB2K microphone on this good song!.If your are interested by this affordable mic ,you can hear that here : http://soundcloud.com/sixfeetdischarge/steams-master/s-Mnl2z
Rank , real good old school death song man !!

 

[RaNk]

Thanks for the compliment about the song.

Drums are a bit loud maybe (kick+snare), but the guitars sound kinda cool. Nice oldschool vibe on the mix overall.

 

[UnF]

Hello RaNk!

Took me quite some time to work on a new mix, but here it is

- raw mix: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14886940/RaNk/RaNk_Zmix_UnF_DR11.mp3
- 'mastered' mix: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14886940/RaNk/RaNk_Zmaster_UnF_DR10.mp3
- 'mastered' mix loud: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14886940/RaNk/RaNk_Zmaster_UnF_DR7.mp3

Tell me what you think. I've done some tweaking on guitars and vocals mostly, and I've also tried to improve the overall balance of the track by applying some FX to the master: tape saturation (tried Nebula but still have to make it work, so I've purchased Tone Booster Ferox meanwhile, which is very good), multiband compressor, & limiter.

The result is a brighter mix, without doing too much harm to bass frequencies (at least I hope so, hehe). I still prefer your own mix btw., drums are more realistic and alive, guitars have more mids and are more expressive, and bass is more controlled too. But I'm really enjoying your song and it's a pleasure to try to improve. Cheers man !

 

[RaNk]

Hey man,

Nice mix, sounds more controlled now. The loudest mastered mix is good, it's still not overcompressed/limited at all I think. Good balance on the mix, nice kickdrum sound. The bass still has nice lows, and can be 'followed' clearly. As for the drums, I think it sounds a bit less natural because of the snare. It seems quite compressed because the blast is almost as loud/big as the slower parts (I programmed the blasts to be a softer hit). But still it sounds great as is, the drums sound better (more natural) than before.

The new plugins sound like a good deal to me. I haven't got them (yet) but they seem to have great value. But to be honest I still have to hear a tapesim as good as the Nebula based ones. I got 'NAG Tape' for it recently, it totally rocks on the mastering buss I think. I will post an updated mix of my own soon.

Btw, have you also tried my own impulses I put in the starting post yet? I wonder if they're good enough, I suck at tweaking ampsims but I think I got a nice result with them.

About time to put on another song soon maybe.

*edit*
Own mix updated. After listening on other speakers elsewhere, there was still some low mid buildup (especially kickdrum). I tweaked that a little bit, and some other things.

 

[UnF]

Thank you very much! I agree about the snare, it is way too compressed. I haven't modified the velocities at all, but my multiband/limiter settings are doing some harm to its sound. In fact I must find a way to create more space for the snare in the mix, cause I don't want to change all my master bus settings just because the stronger hits get compressed It's a bit tricky to figure out, but I'll see...

I'll also get some good plugs for Nebula. A bit of searching is necessary, but if I can't find some good free sims, I'll buy the one you recommend: $15 is a no brainer

About your impulses: they are very well balanced, you've found the perfect sweet spot so they really complement each other imo. Very good mic placement. The brighter, centered impulse comes naturally into the darker one so the overall balance of frequencies gets even. But I haven't found the perfect settings to fit my sims in the mix yet I'll keep you informed of course. Lots of work at the moment, damn

 

[RaNk]

Hey UnF, it's a little hard to judge when I can't play with your settings, but maybe if you can manage to give the guitars a little more punch/power, the snare like it is now sounds quite good. So maybe if you make the guitars/vocals a little louder, you can push the master buss a little more without hurting the drumsound too much. I'm not at all for going 'as loud as possible', but I try it nevertheless because when you get loud easily, it sais alot about the quality of the mix I think. I learn alot from making the mixes louder to be honest.

I know it's hard to find free Nebula impulses. Advantage is that they're not really expensive mostly. The NAG Tape is a real keeper, but not only because of it's low price, that's for sure. The R2R from CD Sound Master is more expensive, and there's loads more of tapesims packed within it, but they're not as impressive to me as NAG Tape. Still, I love them on cymbals, but not on full mixes for me. Also, if you have a little more to spare, the MLC from AlexB is 'perfect'. But the free ones that come with Nebula are also very nice, like 4KToHeaven. But still not as impressive as the MLC pack, I use it on drums all the time because it makes them sound more real. Well, I guess it's just about searching and searching more (which I also try) to find some more good ones.

Thanks for liking the impulses I made. They're recorded with the very same setup that I recorded my mix of the song with. About the placement, it's really easy on the ENGL XXL cabinet. It's really forgiving and near impossible to get it sounding fizzy. Still I'm not satisfied with my own sound, I should tweak it more (or try different microphones). On the current mix it just sounds a little too thin I think. Well, trying to get it better is only more fun for me. I also think of reamping through my Marshall cabinet soon, should be nice too maybe.

*edit*

Also updated my mix again because it was getting too squashed, and also too much of tapesim harmonics. Well it's probably not that much of an improvement (if any at all). Hoping for some specific tips on what should be done better, still...

 

[FF666]

Sorry I've been busy.
As promised, the mesa programs from old nebulaprograms web
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/911721/mesa old nebulaprograms.rar

Not too good, but could work. They sound too quiet, turn up the volume.

Let's see if I have time to make another mix of this track.

 

[RaNk]

Hey cool thanks man! Nice Nebula programs. This is the first time I actually tried cab programs based on Nebula. I really like experimenting with them, the highs seem to be better than most normal impulses I played with. To me it seems to give a more natural and realistic effect so far. Still has a bit of the 'impulse sound' (less punch than a real amp), but that sais more about my ampsim tweaking ability I think. On the 'HM-2 clip' you made it sound more like a real amp.

Here's a quick test I did with them (+Lecto), maybe it sounds shit cause I've been tweaking for too long:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19759737/01-TestMix-110819_NebulaImpulseTest2.mp3

*edit*

Also, new mix added with less fizzy guitars using dual mic/cab technique I'm experimenting with.

Also updated the impulse based mix.