Test Mix of a band I recorded this weekend. Thoughts?

[chonchball]

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=961322&songID=7686798

The band is called Inspiration Isn't Cheap from 'round here in Detroit-ish.

My ears are fried, but I want to get this to the band by tomorrow. They did two songs. Hoping to use the finished mix of this song as the template for Song 2.

Quick Notes:

Drums, manual reprogram of live parts, SSD3.0 Dry Metal kit w/ tweaks, par.comp and parEQ.

Guitars (L+R), Drop D tuning, Pod Pro on a custom channel, diamonplate w/ some comp and gate, limiting + harmonic exciter + HPF@100hz LPF@8k + widening

Guitar lead, Rivera Knucklehead II head + Holy Grail reverb > Orange 4x12 > SennMD421 > Avalon737sp

Bass, completely MIDI, the bass player in this band is that friend in the band that owns a bass. SansAmp plug and some limiting

Vox on a Cascade condensor > Avalon737sp + Alesis 3630 w/ heavy compression and ITB compression as well

Keys are custom settings on the key players Yamaha somethingerother

Master Buss only has one warming plug on it so far.
Not sure of the RMS yet. I need a program for Mac that will tell me this info.


Definitely like to hear some overall thoughts as well as nit-pick critiques.

Thanks!

 

[Joshua Wickman]

Rhythm guitars seem buried and dark most of the time and it is probably because of that 8k lpf thats pushing them back. The drums sound programed (which they are) and it kills the vibe of this music for me a bit. There is also some clipping going on in this mix. Its really noticeable at about 3:50-4:10. Thats all i got....

 

[chonchball]

thanks so far, normally my drum programming is completely transparent but these are the EXACT hits that this kid plays, he stays off the brass most of the time and plays a lot of half and quarter notes when he is hitting them, also the machinegun on snare15 is pretty awful. i've messaged people @ steven slate about it but they seem to ignore me...

the guitars being buried is where i was most worried. that's what i was hearing too, but i felt like there was nothing important above the 8k that was really adding to the guitar clarity, rather just fighting the vocals and cymbals, but again could have been a result of ear fatigue. i'll loosen up the pass to around 10 or maybe 11 and ease the slope a little more.

i changed out the snare to the slate custom snare and it seems to have a better bite and sit in the song nicer. i'll post another clip in a bit. hopefully you'll have time to listen.

as far as the clipping goes, can you tell what's causing it? what element do you feel comes in and steals the space? everything stays out of the red for the whole song, so i'm curious as to what you're hearing.

thanks!

 

[chonchball]

oh and as a side note, is the 81 in your former name a factory 81 reference? i wonder if we know each other in real life if you were/are involved in the detroit scene from that era!

 

[Joshua Wickman]

I used to be a Factory 81 fan and my very first band played a show with them at the Flint Local right when they got signed. The 81 in my old forum name was for my birth year though which was 1981.

Now about your mix...

Yea it was the guitar clipping and distorting (bad distortion) and this happens a lot when a limiter or like the plugin gclip is driven to hard and the guitar is playing with no other instruments. I compared your mix to one i was just working on and YOUR MIX IS LOUD!! I would pull back a few db and it should solve that problem.

 

[chonchball]

right on. I was actually in 2 bands on that same label and played with them frequently too. Good friends with all those guys. I still see Bill from time to time. Small world!

I'm on Mac, so I'm not using Gclip. I just got a msg back from the Slate peeps that Steven is working on his own plugin for Mac users that should surpass GClip. Looking forward to that!

I'm trying not to really limit this mix at all really. Just about a -1 on the master. I just listened to that solo in solo (that sounded redundant) and found it WAS taking up a lot more low end than it needed to THROUGH the mix buss. Kind of an oversight after 3 13 hour sessions. I pulled back on that with some MB compression and it seems to fit a lot better, and the guitars really improved over here after loosening the LP I was massacring them with (thanks for that!) Fattened up the low end as well on this next mix and changed out the snare sample. I like it a lot better, less CRACKY and open.

I'll post in a few.

 

[chonchball]

Alright, new mix is up, same link, it wouldn't let me upload the other mix cuz it was JUST over 10mb...

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=961322&songID=7686798