The awkward moment when a band sends you a song to be mixed and...

tempe

tempe

Captain Midnight
Sep 22, 2005
1,003
0
36
Perth, Australia
The vocal folder consists of 337 4 second long, unlabeled audio files.

I don't understand, they consolidated ALL the other files :\

Just having a bit of a vent as this is my first "label" release, its just for a small independent but they are on my ass about it having it ready for the first week of the new year, and its taken me forever just to get the files. Looks like I'm having a busy holiday season!

Anyone else have some horror stories about mix jobs?
 
My ones mostly come in the form of hearing the tone of instruments change over the course of the CD. Literally hearing the bass strings age, or how they arbitrarily dialed in different settings from track to track. Vocals are a doozy. With a lot of the core guys it sounds like they were deepthroating the mic for the verse, then over in the next room for the choruses. Then there's the very common labeling of the tracks differently from song to song. In one song the file name could be 'kick', on the next it may be 'track - 1143 - bd'. Then there's hearing rampant editing glitches over the instruments when you take a close listen. That's a common one.

Inconsistency... arbitrary, non-deliberate inconsistency is a huge pet peeve of mine.
 
Yeah, all of those.
I hate when DI tracks and especially vocals come Ina t extremely different levels.
Sometimes even within one song, and you'll have to automate the vocals for days before you can even start mixing.
I had one session where te engineer thought its a good idea to change cymbals, snares and mics between the songs. Sometimes the overheads were limited to fuxk, sometimes there was barely a signal at all...
And often those tracks come from engineers with big studios and I ask myself why the hell anyone is paying the 400$/day they're charging
 
To be fair these guys are from Singapore and tracked with a friend as the studio scene there is a little bleak, I just noticed that the drums are programmed but "humanized" using what I'm assuming is some preset in the midi roll. There's kicks and snares pushing and pulling randomly, and not in a good way. This is only a 1 song job so no inconsistencies between songs!
 
If the tracking is of the highest quality then I completely understand changing things song to song, and even section by section, but most tracks I guess some of us are getting aren't exactly of that world class production and engineering standard. Are the extra files just throwaways that they forgot to clean out after consolidating?
 
amarshism said:
If the tracking is of the highest quality then I completely understand changing things song to song, and even section by section, but most tracks I guess some of us are getting aren't exactly of that world class production and engineering standard. Are the extra files just throwaways that they forgot to clean out after consolidating?
Click to expand...

Yes, if it's supposed to sound different or if the style demands it.
but if it's modern metal and every song supposed to sound the same it's not the smartest idea
 
Ermz said:
Vocals are a doozy. With a lot of the core guys it sounds like they were deepthroating the mic for the verse, then over in the next room for the choruses.
Click to expand...

This. You spend a good amount of time getting the basic vocal sound right, and when you finally feel good about yourself, you move on to the chorus just to discover it sounds like a completely different dude with a completely different mic recorded into something that shouldn't be used for recording at all.
 
tempe said:
The vocal folder consists of 337 4 second long, unlabeled audio files.

I don't understand, they consolidated ALL the other files :

Just having a bit of a vent as this is my first "label" release, its just for a small independent but they are on my ass about it having it ready for the first week of the new year, and its taken me forever just to get the files. Looks like I'm having a busy holiday season!

Anyone else have some horror stories about mix jobs?
Click to expand...

That sounds similar to my last job. A band tracked everything analogue, in what I thought was a pro setting. Asked me to mix it after they found out it was going to take forever doing it analogue. The day they came they handed me a hard drive from a mackie 24hdr unit with 15gb of files about 50 tracks per song and all in about 4 second clips. After 3 weeks of playing tetris with tiny audio clips it was decided that they wanted to rerecord bass, guitar and vocals...

Also my pet peeve is when clients come in with a $200 guitar rig and then hand me a cd of a popular band and tell me to make it sound like it.
 
Ermz said:
My ones mostly come in the form of hearing the tone of instruments change over the course of the CD. Literally hearing the bass strings age, or how they arbitrarily dialed in different settings from track to track. Vocals are a doozy. With a lot of the core guys it sounds like they were deepthroating the mic for the verse, then over in the next room for the choruses. Then there's the very common labeling of the tracks differently from song to song. In one song the file name could be 'kick', on the next it may be 'track - 1143 - bd'. Then there's hearing rampant editing glitches over the instruments when you take a close listen. That's a common one.

Inconsistency... arbitrary, non-deliberate inconsistency is a huge pet peeve of mine.
Click to expand...

I seem to have to coach every singer on how to sing into a mic. One I get alot is guys singing into the mic from too far away for no reason. I tell them to move right up to the pop shield and then 2 takes later they're miles away again and the signal is way less and there's tons of room in the vocal. Urgghhh!! I just don't understand it.
 
if6was9 said:
I seem to have to coach every singer on how to sing into a mic. One I get alot is guys singing into the mic from too far away for no reason. I tell them to move right up to the pop shield and then 2 takes later they're miles away again and the signal is way less and there's tons of room in the vocal. Urgghhh!! I just don't understand it.
Click to expand...

nowadays, they're called musicians.
and they're idiots!
:Smokin:
 
Ah editing bass at the moment, sounds like it was tracked with one month old strings. I asked the band "did you restring?" "Yeah man, I had to use a friends bass as mine is broken and he said he restrung a few days before!" Yeah not so much. It's also horribly out of tune, guess I'm learning how to pitch correct bass. Worst thing is I only own waves tune which doesn't seem to track pitch low enough, shall I demo Antares or Melodyne?
 
If they tracked with loud monitors and the click loud it can bleed into the pickups. Does happen every now and then, surprised they didn't spot it though. Kinda sticks out like a sore thumb when tracking
 
I've had that happen once, when we wanted feedback in the control room. But the monitors were unbelievably cranked and we had the guitar right next to them... they must have been destroying themselves in there!
 
So in light of these issues;

Drums being programmed out of time
Bass DI, badly played and extremely out of tune
Guitar DI's, badly played, scratchy palm mutes, open strings ringing through palm mutes, somehow in tune with themselves but not at concert pitch
Vocals, doubles extremely out of time.
Click bleed in most DI tracks and the lead vocal.

I sent this to the band. (I have not named any names)

>snip<

Matt

Rage.
 
Yeah just got rid of it for that exact reason. They're getting me to retrack everything, which should be fun as I'm not the worlds best guitarist.
 
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