Rough mixes of my band on Myspace

N

nwright

Member
Apr 19, 2005
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New Castle, Indiana
www.myspace.com
So, I've been on here asking all sorts of questions and whatnot, and finally have our EP done. You can listen to some rough mixes on our myspace site.

www.myspace.com/judgementband


Keep in mind I'm a total noob when it comes to this stuff, so it's not going to sound as good as most of your stuff on here. These are rough mixes, so the final mix is a little more evened out and whatnot.

For this really being our first time doing anything like this, and for knowing zilch about the Firepod, Cubase and plug ins, I think I did OK. The info I get from this site is invaluable and helped keep this EP from being a complete mess.

Hope it sounds decent enough and thanks to all of you who've taken the time to answer my questions.

Now....Here's to hoping my future recordings sound even better!

I love this forum...:headbang:
 
Are you kiddin'? It sounds way better than average noob stuff, despite the shitty streaming (thanx myspace).
 
Thanks for the kind words. I have users like you to thank for giving me tips, links, ideas, etc. I've always been into recording, but always in analog, and never this involved. I'm loving it, and hope to do better work in the future. But, one step at a time.

Thanks again.
 
The only thing I did after putting these up is I analyzed the audio with the PAZ analyzer and saw some spikes that were bothering me in the ~5200Hz range and in the 12K plus range. I used some Parametric EQ and C4 to smooth those out. I love the PAZ analyzer now that I kinda know how to use it.
 
kaomao said:
Are you kidding? noob? man this mix sounds very good even with the bad myspace compression....
Can you make an mp3? or at least if you don't want your music to be downloaded use www.soundclick.com, you can stream files.

Edit: what amps/gear have you used?

Maurizio
Click to expand...

*deep breath*

Thanks man. We used a Presonus Firepod and the Cubase LE to track. Drumagog to enhance drums, Andy's snare and tom samples. Our drummer uses 4 toms, so I used Andy's tom samples, but tuned them to our drummer's toms to make it more realistic, hopefully it worked. Mixed in Andy's snare with the original. Bass drum is the Thrash kick preset on a DM Pro. I wanted to use some sampled kick's like Andy's, but I kept going back to this DM Pro kick. There are things about it I don't like, but things I do, so I left it in. I re-EQ'd it and added some compression, though.

Guitars were ESP LTD Viper's with EMG 81's into an NS-2 straight into a 6505+ into a Mesa std (oversized) Recto 4x12. I used 2 57's about an inch from the grill cloth, one on axis, one off, kinda like the Fredman technique only a little more off center than straight on the cone, about an inch to the side of the cone. I also tracked these with an e609 on another speaker and blended that tone very low with the 57's. I ran the off axis 57 about 2dB's lower than the on axis, and the 609's were about -16db below the on axis 57...not much 609 in there, but I swear you can tell a difference without it.

Bass was quad tracked with a Tech 21 Landmark 600 and Tech 21 Landmark 300. The 600 fed a Ampeg 8x10 miked with the 609, the 300 fed into my Mesa 4x12 miked with an off axis 57. We also ran the signal into a Bass POD and ran the Tech 21 Landmark 600 direct. So, I had 4 tracks of bass to choose from, and ended up with a blend of them all. I recorded all 4 tracks at once from one signal. The Tech 21 bass amps have all kinds of routing, so I didn't need to use any Y cords or A/B/Y boxes, all from the amp routing/output systems.

Drums were miked with 57's and I used the DM Pro and a Ddrum pro trigger on the kick, no mic signal at all. OH mics were cheapo MXL 990 or 991's can't remember, whichever one is the OH mic from the 990/991 combo pack.

Vocals were all tracked with a cheapo Samson condenser mic. It cost me around 100-120 bucks, but I liked it better than the Shure KSM 32 I had used in the past, and some other condenser our singer had.
 
Sounds excellent! And your band kicks ass! I would say you must know what you're doing to get results like this. I hope to get there some day (I have the same Firepod/Cubase setup). I guess I need to look into drum sampling, I really dig these drum sounds.

We use triggers on bass drums, but everything else is just acoustic. Any recommendations for a econo priced software package for starting out sampling/replacing drum hits? Excuse my ignorance, I'm like a wet baby out here.
 
Our drummer bought the drumagog software off the net. I think it was around 250?
You can get good results with just mics I'd think, but using drumagog was awesome. The biggest benefit to me would be being able to make samples of the actual kit used to enhance and throw into the mix. I used Andy's samples this time, but in the future, I'm for sure going to sample our drummers kit and use that. No bleed from the other drums, just nice clean tones! And, we just used his DM Pro for the bass drum sound, no bass drum mike at all.
 
Coprosatanica said:
Sounds excellent! And your band kicks ass! I would say you must know what you're doing to get results like this. I hope to get there some day (I have the same Firepod/Cubase setup). I guess I need to look into drum sampling, I really dig these drum sounds.

We use triggers on bass drums, but everything else is just acoustic. Any recommendations for a econo priced software package for starting out sampling/replacing drum hits? Excuse my ignorance, I'm like a wet baby out here.
Click to expand...

perhaps buy drumagog and dfhs?
 
Holy crap. THAT is AWESOME. You guys rock! :kickass:

It sounds a LOT like Toxicgrindmachine, which is music posted by another guy from around here. Luckily that guy's music is also fucking brilliant. So we're just got two awesome artists on our hands.
 
The first cut slightly reminds me of a heavier Souls of Black era Testament - and that is always a good thing.

I concur - your singer kicks mucho ass. Great work, homie.
 
nwright said:
Our drummer bought the drumagog software off the net. I think it was around 250?
You can get good results with just mics I'd think, but using drumagog was awesome. The biggest benefit to me would be being able to make samples of the actual kit used to enhance and throw into the mix. I used Andy's samples this time, but in the future, I'm for sure going to sample our drummers kit and use that. No bleed from the other drums, just nice clean tones! And, we just used his DM Pro for the bass drum sound, no bass drum mike at all.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the feedback guys, this gives me a good plan to get started.
 
I am going to agree this sounds great. Few questions

1. Home tracks of guitar do you got going?

2. What are you using on the singer voice. It sounds like its being overdriven. I also have to give you props for the great double tracking. Very cool.
 
chadsxe said:
I am going to agree this sounds great. Few questions

1. Home tracks of guitar do you got going?

2. What are you using on the singer voice. It sounds like its being overdriven. I also have to give you props for the great double tracking. Very cool.
Click to expand...

On those songs, I believe it's 2 tracks of guitars per side, 4 total. Some songs have 2 tracks per side, others just single tracked per side.

For the singer's voice, there is only compression and a hint of reverb. I used the Rvox compressor and Trueverb plug ins for his tracks and nothing more. I think the biggest part of getting that nice OD type sound is the double tracking we did on the vox. I had him go through each song twice at a minimum and blended each take. Usually I'd have him keep the structure the same but vary his screams to add thickness. In some parts of songs, for some extra emphasis, he'd go complete opposites on the tracks - say, one high pitched scream and another really low. Blended together, we dug it.

There is usually another "back up" vocal going as well at different parts but not all the time. I don't think we used them too much on these 2 songs, but here and there you can pick them out. For the backup vocal tracks, I used the Rvox compressor plugin and the Waves pitch shift plug, can't remember the name, I have 2. I used one of those and shifted the vox down about 5%. On 1 or maybe 2 of our songs, I also used an Ozone preset called "bad phone" or something like that. But, that effect is not on either of the Myspace songs.

In all, we did 5 full band tracks and 3 instrumental "mood" pieces to break up the EP and give it cohesiveness. I wrote 2 of the pieces and our bass player wrote a 3rd. Within those, I wrote some orchestral parts and played them on a synth to add some eerie moods - strings, operatic voices and such so all 3 pieces are in the same key and have the same thematic elements. I'm probably most proud of those, lol. I'm not a keyboard player much, so I had to track each "Instrument" from the synth individually as I wrote the "orchestration", but I think they came out great. I need to post one of those. As far as something that pushed my limits, I'd say those pieces were the hardest for me to do aside from the recording. They were just so different from what we do as a band. I'm excited to get this EP out, so far the reaction has been really good.
 
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