Some ROCK for you (Slate, Soldano, Bogner, ya mum etc.)

Ermz

Ermz

¯\(°_o)/¯
Apr 5, 2002
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Melbourne, Australia
www.myspace.com
Hey guys,

This is one of the first proper mixes I've done since late last year when my hearing went 'buh-bye' and since i've changed around the layout of my mixing environment and borrowed a friend's Rokit 8s.

It'd be nice to get some general feedback from people, as it's been one of the hardest and most frustrating mixes I've ever done. The guitars I tracked for this project were just way too present and nasally, and it's been a continuous battle trying to tame them without sucking all the 'tone' out at the same time.

I'm pushing to get this professionally mastered, as there are some things I just can't do for it and I'm way too close to the project at the moment.

Anyhow, here's the link:

http://www.ermin.com.au/storage/mymachine-rate.mp3

It's only a short clip as the artist hasn't 'released' the CD yet.
 
Drums and vocals sound great. The Bass and guitars are close to perfect for this. The bass seems to have too many subs and not enough body for the style IMO and the guitars have just abit too much of that soldano sizzle that I remember from the recordings we did with Darryl. Appart from that sizzle, they are actually a little bit dull...

Great stuff other wise dude. I hope they get it mastered and released. Yet another one to add to your name.
 
Thanks Dan. I agree about both the bass and guitars, and as you may have guessed there are reasons for both. The guitars are some of the harshest fucking 'tear your head off' tones I have ever worked with. It was so amazingly... like incredibly nearly impossible to tame them without dulling down the overall tone. I've got like 3, 10-band EQs going on with them notching this and that, and boosting other things like 200Hz away from the cut stuff.

With the bass, I'll work with it a bit more. It's been a bit difficult because I initially put way too much bass, but even so I couldn't get it to stand out any way in the mix. The tone that was recorded was way too lumpy and round, like a fusion tone or something, not a fat rock one... that's been a case of totally resculpting everything too.

Anyway thanks for the feedback man, appreciate it. I hope that if I send stems to the mastering place they can sort out some of the finer details.
 
The new positioning is interesting. I have a lot more flutter echo in the room now because the two walls are almost entirely blank and facing each other. The Rokit 8s have taken some getting used to... I don't really like them to be honest, as the midrange is too NS-10ish and I had to boost the lows out my soundcard coz there was nothing on that end. I really want to go and get the ASP8s already, but no word from Factory Sound... I really dont understand that place.

No acoustic treatment either... I've just realized that I won't have the time. Malice mix comes up after I finish another 3 songs in this EP, and after that I need to keep working on Steve Turner's stuff, and after that it's likely that Rick will need some work done on the Demolition album. I'm thinking about paying someone labor to put the acoustic panels together for me, and I just supply them with the 'ingredients'.
 
Damn, no chance of you taking a weekend to do it yourself? I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard.

I'd offer, but unless you can wait another three weeks then I can't really offer much. My weekends are booked pretty solid this month.
 
It'd probably be around 3 weeks before I got any free time as well, so the offer doesn't seem that bad. But anyway yeah let's keep this thread about the mix. I'm curious as to what some of the other folks think. I'm already spotting things I don't really like, and it would be good to add others to that list.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it. I don't think I'll call it finished just yet... it still sounds a bit flat compared to stuff like Nickelback and the like. I'll get it as close as I possibly can before handing it off for mastering, but I tell ya the guitars make it hard.

Some more details, here we go...

Drums

Kick: Kick12Z3 blended 60% with original.

Snare: 12AZ1 (one of my faves) blended 85%

Toms: All natural. Cheapo brand but pinstripes on batter and aquarians of some kind on resonant. A bit worn when recorded. I tried the Slate toms but they're way too resonant, which is my main beef with his sample pack. There's only so much gating and notching can do.

Bass was all kinds of crap. Mainly compression with Rcomp, and then trying to match it to some decent bass tones (well, a chapman stick actually) using CurveEQ, and then a bit of REQ.

The rhythm guitars were Soldano SLO100, and I've yet to be able to get that amp to record properly on its own. The tone is just real harsh and prominent that it takes a lot of cutting up after to sit. I was really trying to turn the guitars into something they're not... namely modern commercial 'wall of sound' guitars. The Soldano is more for tight leads and perhaps overdubs in some sections.

The solos were Bogner Ecstacy, but you don't hear that on this small clip. I assume once the CD is out I may be able to advertise some full songs on here after they're done.

Vox were:

Waves Desser
Rvox
URS Channel Strip Pro
Q4
and let's not forget the almighty autotune running in 'auto' mode just to tighten things up a bit.

I used all sorts of delays and fx for all different things. For the first time I'm really pushing my Core2Duo, and it's at like 60 to 70 percent usage in this session. The verbs are mainly impulses, one for vox and one for drums. I forget which I used for lead guitars. The impulses are from the noisevault PCM90 batch, in the 'room' section, although the vox may be a plate, I can't recall. There's also a bit of Slate's Z4 for the snare to add thickness to the decay.
 
i'd definitely agree that the guitars sound pretty harsh...yet at the same time sort of lifeless...it's like the upper mids are just too much, while the lower end is gone

aside from that, it sounded pretty good. the lead vocal is maybe 1-1.5db louder than i would like it, but that's a matter of taste on that one
 
Thanks guys.

@colonel kurtz: Yeah, that's basically Soldano in a nutshell. My experiences with both the X99 and SLO100 have yielded the same results. Harsh, yet sterile and lifeless. It has its use, but it certainly isn't in what I tried to do with it.

I'm tweaking it up a little bit more and making the drums a bit punchier. I had the dynamic tracking on the kick a bit too high, so I've brought it down for some more consistent punch, and the snare has a tinge more comp and snap.

With the guitars, I really don't know what to do. I'm afraid if I do any more EQing the tone will fall apart altogether. In a perfect world it would be retracked using the guy's new Diezel Herbert.
 
Very good work :headbang:

The second one is noticeably better, as stated it's has less of the nasal sound and I'd add it's generally fuller sounding.

Out of curiousity, did you have a main reference album while you were mixing and if yes which was it?
 
I referenced a ton of things, Shadow Walker. The main two were Nickelback's The Long Road and Breaking Benjamin's Phobia. Towards the end I even had Opeth in there, as well as my own stuff, and then ultimately a track off the latest Nickelback album, which convinced me that there is no way in hell I would get that tone without a recto.

I'm glad you guys are liking the 2nd a bit more. I was worried whilst doing it that it may be worse, because initially I carved the hell out of it and brightened and subbed things up a lot, then realized I may have gone overboard.
 
I prefer mix#2, it seems a little more open and clear. #3 gets a little darker and a little too full on the bottom for this style of music. Take that with a grain of salt however as I'm only able to listen on cans at the moment.

Either way you go everything sounds really killer, though, you made many great improvements over the initial mix. I think the band will be really happy. what was the vox signal chain?
 
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