Post-Hardcore Recording/Music Vid

[Signals]

Recorded this for my friends band. Did a music vid at the same time. Completed the recording of the song and music vid in under 8 hours last Sat, due to equipment rental time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9LA3gUQHxZg

Let me know your thoughts, or if you have any questions about how it was recorded. No editing.

Mics:

Drums:

Pearl Vision kit

OHs - C414s
Shells - Sm57
Kick - Beta 52

Guitars:
Telecasters
Left guitar amp - 60's Fender Deluxe Reverb (Blackface chip in silverface chassis)
Right Guitar amp - 60's fender bassman
Mesa OS cabs
Sm57 fredman mic'ing on each cab

Bass
Fender jazz bass w/ pro steels
Mesa 400+ with HM2 pedal blended 50/50 in FX loop
Sm57
Beta 52

Vox mics
Shure Super 55

Rooms for all instruments/vox - mid/side AT4050s

 

[jessman24]

Sounds amazing very natural what processing did you use on the vocals?

 

[IBmixin]

this is awesome! love your work man just went through some of your threads. you get some very unique bands to come through.

 

[Signals]

Sounds amazing very natural what processing did you use on the vocals?

Well, those Super 55 mics have craaaaazy high end presence (we wanted them for the video, and we used them for the recording just for fun) we found out.

So the vocal chain is:
Digital Parametric EQ (ReaEQ)
Tube Tech Cl1b compressor
Renaissance DeEsser (necessary because the 55 mics were pretty grating)
L1 limiter cutting a couple db off the top.

I use pretty much as little processing as possible to get from point A to B, so that's pretty much the theme of this mix: EQ, Comp, Limit.

That's pretty much it. A bit of the sound of the vocals is from the room mics. Their chain is pretty much just EQ and then L1, then mix to taste.

As for keeping things natural, that's at the top of my priority list. What I've found works is replacing the drums with 1 shot samples of the kit itself (I'm adamant about bands having new drum skins and tuning the drums properly), and then I blend in enough room mic that the nuances of the playing return. So you get the consistency of a sampled performance, but the life of the human performance - and you don't have to spend an hour doing a full sampling of the kit.

this is awesome! love your work man just went through some of your threads. you get some very unique bands to come through.

Thanks! Yeah, I do haha! It's probably because I keep rejecting most metalcore bands from my studio because I find the recordings extremely tedious. My coworker scheduled a great metalcore band in a week or so though, I'll post that up when its done!

 

[Roncore]

Love it man, I'm interested in the video work as well. What did you use as far as video equipment and post editing/processing?

 

[Signals]

Love it man, I'm interested in the video work as well. What did you use as far as video equipment and post editing/processing?

Most of it was shot on a Sony EA50 24 p
The slow mo was shot with a Sony FS700 at 240 FPS

It would've made more sense quality wise to shoot the whole thing FS700 but we were in a rush and the EA50 was ready to roll first and I was the "A" camera getting most the shots. Both cameras I think had 18-200 lens, the EA50's was a F3.5 where the FS700 had a F2.8.

I edited it in Final Cut Pro 7 (old school by now!) and couldn't get a proper FCP 7's multicam set up to work (as per usual...), so I edited it all track by track. Wasn't so bad because we did full takes. Used PluralEyes to quickly sync up the timing of the tracks through audio.

I color corrected it all quickly by hand with FCP's 3 way color corrector. Then the only post was basically a 3 way color corrector that moved the blacks towards that stylistic/hipster blueish hue.

 

[Joshua Wickman]

This is sick!

 

[Signals]

This is sick!

Thanks man, love your work at Dreadcore!

 

[LBTM]

that sounds great. what was went on the guitar and snare busses?

 

[AntonioPetrole]

This song is so fucking cool. Super raw and real. Love the mix!

 

[Signals]

that sounds great. what was went on the guitar and snare busses?

The guitars were just the awesome amps --> mesa OS cabs with 2 57's fredman style on each.

The processing was just EQ'ing each mic solo'd, then mixing their volumes till it sounded best. Then I put an L1 clipping about a db off the top each, just to make sure no parts jumped out too much.

Very basic stuff!

This song is so fucking cool. Super raw and real. Love the mix!

That's because it is real hahaha! We're bringin' real back!

 

[JeffTD]

That guitar tone fucking rules and this band is awesome.

So was the song tracked live, or did you guys track each thing separately and then lipsync the music video?

 

[Signals]

That guitar tone fucking rules and this band is awesome.

So was the song tracked live, or did you guys track each thing separately and then lipsync the music video?

Well the original plan was to do it live, but when we discovered we had only 8 hours for the cameras we decided the more logical bet was to track each instrument seperate - we were unsure of how many takes we would have to do to get a perfect performance simultaneously.

To keep the "live" vibe, punch-ins and editing was kept to a minimum. These guys have been playing for years though, so there was only I think 3 punches in the whole project.

Even if we had tracked it live off the floor, the vid would've still had to been done in multiple takes because we only had the 2 cameras.

The reason the guitar tone is sick is because those amps are incredible. You would've had to have heard them. They just sound unreal.

A lot of people have commented on the sound of the kick drum as well - I think a lot of the reason why the kick is appealing to people is because the master is actually sitting around -12 RMS (most music today sits in -7 to -10 RMS range) so that's probably giving the kick a different character than the hyper-compressed ones people are used to.

Thanks Jeff!

 

[jessman24]

love the snare what was your chain on the snare kick and shells like? its very natural

 

[everybody's x]

LOVE IT