Rough mixes of my band on Myspace

[Sinister Mephisto]

Dude, I <3 your band, awesome songs and recording!

Also, are you Opening for AE?

 

[nwright]

sounds good man. i love my firepod they are awesome. I noticed your from castle indiana i live in indianapolis ill hvae to check u guys out sometime.

jordan

Cool! We're playing the Emerson on April 15th...Should be a good show, come out!

 

[nwright]

Dude, I <3 your band, awesome songs and recording!

Also, are you Opening for AE?

Yeah, we are opening for the Jagermeister tour stop in Detroit, Chimaira, Arch Enemy, God Forbid and Hate Eternal.

 

[nwright]

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.

I should correct myself...On those 2 songs, you can hear the pitch shifted backup vox and the "bad phone" effect on the back up vox as well...So, there IS some overdriven type sounds on it with the bad phone effect. Sorry, I've spent so much time on this thing I'm beginning to forget what song has what in it!

 

[chadsxe]

still digging it a few week later......I am telling you we need to get a show together...you are not all that far from me...

 

[cobrahead1030]

kick drum is a bit too clicky for my taste, but it sounds really good!

as a fellow noob, i have hopes and dreams of my stuff sounding like that

very cool stuff as well man...i like!

 

[Where She Wept]

Sounds great, you trampled almost all the local studios around me. and the music kicks ass too

 

[nwright]

Thanks for the nice words, guys. It gives me hope that my future recordings will be even better.

The bass drum to me sounds more clicky on the myspace page than the actual recording due to the streaming, I guess (it seems to wring out some of the fatness of the BD). I did boost around 5Khz though about 1-2dB to bring it out. Before I did that, it wasn't quite defined enough...So, I may have overdid it.

 

[Jackal_Strain]

Damn! Cant wait to get my 6505! This is fucking great man!

 

[Black neon bob]

Stunning!!

All has been said before in thread, but the sound, and the mix are superb... i am amazed that you say you are a newb, because this is a pro mix.

Good luck with the band, keep us updated!

 

[nwright]

Thanks Bob! I started out on a Tascam Porta03 cassette 4 track in '94 and that's been about it. I've ran sound for bands before, but again, it's been limited. My previous experience with doing any recording was live stereo takes of my band for demos. But, I read up on recording all the time, in hopes that someday I would be able to use the knowledge.

I initially went to college for Music Engineering, but never got into actual classes, I was still taking prerequisites when I changed majors to nuclear medicine. After doing research, I found that most of the graduates of the program were working in music stores or interning at studios, and I wanted to make some real money when I got out, not "pay my dues" and have nothing...Plus, I was always a science and medical geek, so I changed to what I do now. In the end, I like it better because I can still make music but pay my bills! And, making it in music production for this style of music I've found is more about your skills than it is a piece of paper, so the route I've taken has worked for me. But who knew it'd be almost 8 years after I get out of school that I finally get to produce my bands demo and gain some experience!