Project I recorded free for a friend

[J.L.BeelerMusic]

These particular set of songs were initially supposed to be recorded for a friend, free of charge as a Christmas present. Which later was extended over three months and considered to be a birthday present as well.

No pitch correction was used (which is fairly obvious in certain parts) and all plugins were either "in the box" or completely free except for a few SSD samples added very late in the mixing process. We're set to release the Demo within the next week or two and I figured it might help to get feedback from other listeners first.

The only problem with remixing the songs is that there is not a whole lot more I can do to it because we weren't able to get very good DI's (at the time I didn't fully grasp their importance) and I feel like I mixed everything else to death already.

I used Cubase LE5 to track guitars and drums (a mix of midi e-drums and real) and Protools LE 8.1 to track vocals and mix the songs. The mic'd guitars are through a Blackstar HT-5 boosted with a boss OD. I feel like I should also add the fact that this is the most effort either of us has ever put into a project (the three months spent on it being proof, although much of that was ill managed time).

[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/j-l-beelermusic/sets/directions-ep[/SOUNDCLOUD]

 

[J.L.BeelerMusic]

I figured I would make it easier to listen to the tracks in the set, I realised too late that the link in the first post was difficult to select the individual songs. There are more songs but these four are the main tracks.

 

[WalhallaM]

It may sound rude but this is bad.Mixes are good as far as sound.But guitars playing vocal Tell your friend to practice more everything.

 

[oroinvictus]

Oh boy. Let's start with the guitars. The tone has way too much low-end, not enough mids for body and warmth, too much 2-4khz info (naturally unpleasant frequencies to the human ear) and not nearly enough gain. The guitar playing itself is pretty sloppy, and they sound desperately out of tune. The bass guitar should be carrying the low-end and punch behind the guitars, and I heard snips of a bass track in there with nearly no mids or low-end. The drums sound really, really bland; it's obvious that you cobbled a bunch of samples together - the sound of the kit is not cohesive. The vocals are woeful - you stated that you didn't use pitch correction, and while that's admirable, the vocals are just flat-out bad. They're not in tune, there's not a lot of power or volume in the voice and the screams are horridly amateur. I'm fairly certain it's either fry screams or inhales. The mix as a whole is really quiet, I have to crank my monitors decently high to hear anything, and it's lacking in punch or depth, it sounds like there was no gluing/mastering chain whatsoever. As far as songwriting goes, I'm not really sure what your friend is going for musically - pop punk metalcore something? I don't get the music. The songs just don't make a whole lot of sense altogether, and get fatiguing to listen to, especially with those 'breakdowns'. It sounds like both of you could benefit from more practice.

 

[thefalloftheheretic]

What's going on with those guitars man? Tune between each take.
Drums aren't bad persay but there needs to be more glue.
Vocals are just awful in the first place.

 

[J.L.BeelerMusic]

Oh boy. Let's start with the guitars. The tone has way too much low-end, not enough mids for body and warmth, too much 2-4khz info (naturally unpleasant frequencies to the human ear) and not nearly enough gain. The guitar playing itself is pretty sloppy, and they sound desperately out of tune. The bass guitar should be carrying the low-end and punch behind the guitars, and I heard snips of a bass track in there with nearly no mids or low-end. The drums sound really, really bland; it's obvious that you cobbled a bunch of samples together - the sound of the kit is not cohesive. The vocals are woeful - you stated that you didn't use pitch correction, and while that's admirable, the vocals are just flat-out bad. They're not in tune, there's not a lot of power or volume in the voice and the screams are horridly amateur. I'm fairly certain it's either fry screams or inhales. The mix as a whole is really quiet, I have to crank my monitors decently high to hear anything, and it's lacking in punch or depth, it sounds like there was no gluing/mastering chain whatsoever. As far as songwriting goes, I'm not really sure what your friend is going for musically - pop punk metalcore something? I don't get the music. The songs just don't make a whole lot of sense altogether, and get fatiguing to listen to, especially with those 'breakdowns'. It sounds like both of you could benefit from more practice.

I appreciate the tips, this was my very first time doing anything like this so i'm hoping it didn't come out too bad. I high passed the guitars around 50h, dipped out a few dbs at 500 and a small cut as well at 2k.

Where I think I screwed up was I should have brought the high pass forward a bit more and I had also boosted at 6k way too much because he kept wanting the guitars to stand out more and I wasn't sure how else to do it without throwing off the balance of the mix. The guitars were his own starter level guitars and I had a time trying to get him to tune them (he couldn't tune to a strobe tuner and the intonation was horribly off on the guitars).

The bass guitar was DI and I never could figure out how to get it to sound right so I low passed and cut most of the mids from the main track and then bus'd it to a almost completely hi-passed slightly distorted fader. Never again lol.

You were spot on with the vocals, they were a mixture of fry and inhale... there's not a whole lot more I can say about them without being mean.

I don't have any mastering software so in order to get it as loud as I did I sent everything to an individual Vox bus, Guitar bus...etc. Each bus' signal chain had an eq, comp and limiter, then they all went to a master fader that had another eq and limiter. Thats about all I could do to get it as loud as I did and im fairly surprised it was as loud as it was.

You're totally right about needing more practice, and just to clarify I also believe the song structures were odd. He believes it added more originality to them....

Anyway thanks again for the input.