Okay, this one needs a bit of explaining first, brace yourself...
As some of you may know, I was studying audio production as an exchange student in Minnesota in a music school last fall and I met this ginger guy there who liked metal. We went to see Attack Attack, Pierce The Veil, Of Mice & Men and other bands when I was there, so we kinda clicked. Anyway, even after I left, we kept in touch regularly on Skype and he started to record an EP with his band and he constantly kept asking me advice on how to approach it. They recorded the EP at the school I was at and some third/fourth year student recorded the band. Anyways, then he contacted me about a week or two ago and said that the guys who recorded the EP are super busy this semester with work and school, so they can't mix it and he asked if I could mix it. I said sure. Do note that the school has had Grammy Award winning alumni, but apparently these guys who recorded apparent weren't one of them. I got a Pro Tools HD session from them (nothing wrong with that tho), but after I opened this can of worms I got, I think the guys who recorded just didn't WANT to mix this...
DRUMS
The session had like 16 tracks of drums (I think they were 2 kick, 2 snare, 3 toms, 3 overheads, 4 spot cymbal mics, 3 room mics), but apparently they just slapped the mics "around there somewhere" since most of them sound like shit. If you have ever miced a drumkit, you know the sound difference between an AKG D112 and Audix D6. It's like REALLY massive difference. Well, I have no idea how the fuck they miced the kick, but the D6 sounded EXACTLY like D112. Helluva lot of low end, and the snap was really something not D6-like. Then the naming of the tracks was somewhat inconsistent (left overhead was "L OH.05_06" and overhead right was "OH.01 R.05_06" etc and they weren't even next to each other, also the first kick track was called "Kick" when second one was called "Sub" (and if you fail to see the error, they should've been "Kick In" and "Kick Sub") and non-describing (wtf is "Mid" or "Shot"?) and since everything was panned center I had no clue wtf everything was, so I literally had to spend the first 30 minutes or so just to figure out what the fuck was everything.
GUITARS
Then we go and talk about guitars... I specifically told them to double track ALL performances and record the DI. I got neither
The session had 2 rhythm guitar tracks, 1 lead guitar and 2 solo guitar tracks miced with two mics (SM57 and Royer 122) but I have no idea how they miced them up, because they both sound like they are out of phase. Even by themselves But the weirdest part was that the guitar tracks were not edited, so there was like literally suddenly 104 bars (yes, you read correctly. See that highlighted gap right there? 104 bars. That's roughly 2 minutes and 20 seconds) that didn't have any guitars on them. So the next 30 minutes I had to figure out wtf was going on and find out where was the rest of the files were from other playlists and then figure out the structure of the song and how to arrange the guitar parts. I pretty much guessed half of it, but since the session had some GuitarPro like general midi track made to audio guide track for the drummer, I think the "arrangement" I made seemed correct. Also the location markers were pretty useless to me, as they were just Location 1, Location 2, Location 3, Location 4 and just at some random points. Also if you listen to the playing, you know what else was lacking in the session.
EVERYTHING ELSE
Oh yeah, and NO bass track, no vocals and no keys eventho the song had them. Make magic matafaka!
WHAT DID I DO?
Eventually what I ended up doing was to re-label everything, color them so that they had some consistency that I knew what part was which and then started to even listen to the tracks. Just to keep myself organized. With the drums I ended up having just the kick track, snare top and bottom, toms (that I manually stripped), 2 overheads and 2 room mics. Then because there was no bass, but there was some general midi bass on the guide track, I did some filtering, added Rbass and did some extra processing and now I had a "bass" track too. On the guitars I ended up using just the 57 track and then used only EQ on individual tracks and some bus processing. After struggling a while with the kick, I just decided to fuck it and replace it with samples. Same with snare and toms, bu the snare was blended tho. Not my initial plan, but that's just how it ended. This is how my mixer and track view ended up looking like (also notice the amount of discarded tracks on the left).
CLIPS
And this is how the selected tracks sounded without any processing, just panning and levels. And do note that that was NOT the initial session I received, it sounded even more horrible :zombie: This is how my initial version 0.1 rough mix turned out. (I did ask for the "whole edited session" from them and I hopefully receive it shortly)
CONCLUSION?
So what my point is that assume you might not be the only one working on the session, so if this will be the case for you, here are some pointers:
As some of you may know, I was studying audio production as an exchange student in Minnesota in a music school last fall and I met this ginger guy there who liked metal. We went to see Attack Attack, Pierce The Veil, Of Mice & Men and other bands when I was there, so we kinda clicked. Anyway, even after I left, we kept in touch regularly on Skype and he started to record an EP with his band and he constantly kept asking me advice on how to approach it. They recorded the EP at the school I was at and some third/fourth year student recorded the band. Anyways, then he contacted me about a week or two ago and said that the guys who recorded the EP are super busy this semester with work and school, so they can't mix it and he asked if I could mix it. I said sure. Do note that the school has had Grammy Award winning alumni, but apparently these guys who recorded apparent weren't one of them. I got a Pro Tools HD session from them (nothing wrong with that tho), but after I opened this can of worms I got, I think the guys who recorded just didn't WANT to mix this...
DRUMS
The session had like 16 tracks of drums (I think they were 2 kick, 2 snare, 3 toms, 3 overheads, 4 spot cymbal mics, 3 room mics), but apparently they just slapped the mics "around there somewhere" since most of them sound like shit. If you have ever miced a drumkit, you know the sound difference between an AKG D112 and Audix D6. It's like REALLY massive difference. Well, I have no idea how the fuck they miced the kick, but the D6 sounded EXACTLY like D112. Helluva lot of low end, and the snap was really something not D6-like. Then the naming of the tracks was somewhat inconsistent (left overhead was "L OH.05_06" and overhead right was "OH.01 R.05_06" etc and they weren't even next to each other, also the first kick track was called "Kick" when second one was called "Sub" (and if you fail to see the error, they should've been "Kick In" and "Kick Sub") and non-describing (wtf is "Mid" or "Shot"?) and since everything was panned center I had no clue wtf everything was, so I literally had to spend the first 30 minutes or so just to figure out what the fuck was everything.
GUITARS
Then we go and talk about guitars... I specifically told them to double track ALL performances and record the DI. I got neither
The session had 2 rhythm guitar tracks, 1 lead guitar and 2 solo guitar tracks miced with two mics (SM57 and Royer 122) but I have no idea how they miced them up, because they both sound like they are out of phase. Even by themselves But the weirdest part was that the guitar tracks were not edited, so there was like literally suddenly 104 bars (yes, you read correctly. See that highlighted gap right there? 104 bars. That's roughly 2 minutes and 20 seconds) that didn't have any guitars on them. So the next 30 minutes I had to figure out wtf was going on and find out where was the rest of the files were from other playlists and then figure out the structure of the song and how to arrange the guitar parts. I pretty much guessed half of it, but since the session had some GuitarPro like general midi track made to audio guide track for the drummer, I think the "arrangement" I made seemed correct. Also the location markers were pretty useless to me, as they were just Location 1, Location 2, Location 3, Location 4 and just at some random points. Also if you listen to the playing, you know what else was lacking in the session.EVERYTHING ELSE
Oh yeah, and NO bass track, no vocals and no keys eventho the song had them. Make magic matafaka!
WHAT DID I DO?
Eventually what I ended up doing was to re-label everything, color them so that they had some consistency that I knew what part was which and then started to even listen to the tracks. Just to keep myself organized. With the drums I ended up having just the kick track, snare top and bottom, toms (that I manually stripped), 2 overheads and 2 room mics. Then because there was no bass, but there was some general midi bass on the guide track, I did some filtering, added Rbass and did some extra processing and now I had a "bass" track too. On the guitars I ended up using just the 57 track and then used only EQ on individual tracks and some bus processing. After struggling a while with the kick, I just decided to fuck it and replace it with samples. Same with snare and toms, bu the snare was blended tho. Not my initial plan, but that's just how it ended. This is how my mixer and track view ended up looking like (also notice the amount of discarded tracks on the left).
CLIPS
And this is how the selected tracks sounded without any processing, just panning and levels. And do note that that was NOT the initial session I received, it sounded even more horrible :zombie: This is how my initial version 0.1 rough mix turned out. (I did ask for the "whole edited session" from them and I hopefully receive it shortly)
CONCLUSION?
So what my point is that assume you might not be the only one working on the session, so if this will be the case for you, here are some pointers:
- USE YOUR FUCKING EARS WHEN YOU ARE MICING STUFF. Even tho it takes like ~30 minutes more to actually listen to the tracks and tweak the mic positions, but even if you track drums using all the 24 tracks on your interface but 90% of them sucks cock, they are pretty much fucking useless when it comes to mixing. It literally takes 1 minute to hear if it sounds like ass and if it does, move the mic in front of sound source.
- Keep your session organized (I like colors and describing names) and document every info as well as you can (like put a comment on the GTR L 57 track that says "5150 to Mesa 4x12 cab miced with SM57 1 inches from the cone" or "Audix D6 inside the kick drum pointing at the beater"; It's not really that had, that is enough info someone else needs)
- Make sure you have ALL the elements and tracks, edited and consolidated in place for the mixer guy (because missing the guitar regions + all the bass, vocals AND keys tracks fucking sucks)
- Also do note that EDITING IS NOT PART OF MIXING ENGINEERS JOB, it's the producers or their assistants/engineers job
