"
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland, UK" ? New member ? are you serious ?
Such a warm welcome to the forum, thanks. Yes, I'm serious, as evidenced by my post count (at the time, 1) and my explanation ("I've been a lurker for some time...") above. Presumably, that was the only thing in my post worth going to the effort of commenting on. Thanks anyway.
The mix sounds brutal. What did you use for everything? It sounds too professional!
Thanks so much! I appreciate that! A very brief rundown of the stuff I used (non of which is that exciting I'm afraid):
We recorded the drums out at a small but great sounding studio not far from where I live. The drums you hear are primarily the live drums, samples that we recorded of the kit (especially the snare room sound), and there's also a small blend of the usual sample suspects (Slate, Sneap), that you can hear underneath the snare and kick for some extra sub (in the kick), punch and for reverb (the whole Andy Wallace, use samples to drive verb malarky). Nothing that special on the drums beyond that, just your standard fare of compression plugins (CLA-76, C1, SSL), EQ (Q10, SSL). I did another Andy Wallace concept where I raised each cymbal crash accent by around 5dB.
Guitars were a trial and error mixture of various tones from the band's Axe FX II and my humble version of Peavey Revalver. The amp models we tended to use were 5150/6505, Mesa Dual Rec, and a very nice sounding model on the Axe called 'Buttery' (it's not high gain at all, it's based on a crunchy Budda amp, and it gave a really nice 'realness' and thickness to the bottom of the tone). In the end, I actually ended up just using the raw amp head sound (no cab) from the Axe/Revalver and instead used Recabinet for my cab sounds. Also, I have a small collection of match EQ'd tones using Ozone and, while they didn't exactly work for me in this project, I did end up using them as reference material when trying to create my own tone. I'm REASONABLY happy with the guitar tone, but it was a challenge. A little bit of EQ using the suggestions from Colin Richardson's 'EQ on Rhythm Guitars in Mixdown' thread.
Vocals were an SM7B through a Warm Audio WA12. Not much going on here other than some EQ (SSL channel strip), compression (CLA-76), some delay (SuperTap delay) and a mixture of Vocal Rider (I bussed all of my instruments to a group called 'All Music' and used this to sidechain the Vocal Rider) and my own automation. Also, there's a Supertap setting that I discovered called 'Chorused Reflections' or something like that - I have a tiny bit of that, because it has a nice spread/modulation/chorusey/harmonizer/doubler effect to it. I also have a track preset I made recently called 'TLA Reverb'. Basically, I tried to copy the vocal reverb on a favourite Tom Lord-Alge mix of mine as closely as I could (it has a slap-like pre-delay of 128 ms, it's a fairly short Vocal Plate, and the top end EQ is rolled off - when you hear it in solo, it sounds like you're in a live room with the singer, and he's a few metres away behind a baffle). I used that on a Send.
Bass - Ik Multimedia Ampeg for the main tone, some Sansamp plugin distortion (which I, like a dirty cheat, match EQ'd in Ozone to Lamb Of God - The Number Six and then EQ'd further to fit it into my mix). I also doubled the bass with a MIDI track which I put on a pure sine wave, mixed that in just underneath, and sidechained so that it ducks under the bass sub kick sample.
Also, for better or for worse (I've yet to decide) I mixed into the Waves SSL Comp almost from the beginning. This was a risk, because I've never done it before, but I liked the punch it gave my snare from the very beginning, and I sort of feel like it helped me judge my bass mixing better? Anyway, I'm not 100% condoning this method at this stage, but it seemed to work nicely here, imo.
The rest was just days (no, actually, make that weeks) of me working by trial and error, getting feedback from the band and making adjustments. There are probably other things I'm forgetting, so please ask if there's anything specific you want to know. Thanks again!
wow. sounds great dude. I absolutely love the kick sound. only things I would do is sample-augment the toms or eq them differently. I assume they're 100% real so far?
for my linking, the guitars could come down 0.5 - 1 db in the chrous sections (whenever full chords are being played) and the snare 1db up.
Thanks very much, that's exactly the kind of feedback I'm needed! You're right, the toms are all live at the moment. They sound nice by themselves but, as is often the case, that doesn't always translate into a full mix. Also, I'm glad you said that about the guitars because my ears are so tired of this mix now that I do need another perspective on things like that. Thanks for taking the time to give feedback, much appreciated!
Oh, also, the kick is a mixture of the live kick (the drummer's Pearl kick, newly skinned, D6 and e602 placed just inside the hole on the front skin, then later EQ'd) and the usual suspects blended underneath (a touch of Slate and the Sneap sample so that the power in the lows and sub was consistent and tight). Thanks again
