Thrash Song for you guys to mix

[Joel_Fury]

Here are the tracks from the song 'Purgatory' by my band 'Fury'. Included are real drums, guitars, bass, vox. If any of you guys here would like to give the mix a go then that would be great.....there may be possible future paid work for you!

Here are the files:

Drums
http://rapidshare.com/files/149252006/Drums_1_2.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/149259037/Drums_2_2.zip

Guitars/Bass
http://rapidshare.com/files/149242379/Guitars_Bass.zip

Vocals/Solos
http://rapidshare.com/files/149245087/Vocals_Solos.zip


Cheers for your time,
Joel

 

[Ermz]

Thanks man, I'll give it a shot since I've got a few free days.

Rapidshare is a terrible host. Have to wait almost 2 minutes just to start, and then you can't even pull down all the files simultaneously. It's gonna take ages to grab these files.

 

[Joel_Fury]

Thanks man, I'll give it a shot since I've got a few free days.

Rapidshare is a terrible host. Have to wait almost 2 minutes just to start, and then you can't even pull down all the files simultaneously. It's gonna take ages to grab these files.

Cheers man!

Look forward to hearing the mix's!

What is everyones preferred file hosting site?

 

[Youpimatin]

Hey I'll give it a look too !
for hosting files : mediafire, yousendit, Zshare, Megaupload, Dl.free.fr ...

 

[botus99]

I'm sure this is the bands myspace then

http://www.myspace.com/furymetal

 

[Joel_Fury]

Yeah that's the ol' myspace, it's kind of in the process of being re-done so ignore any random looking/unexpected things going on there for the time being!

 

[NickL]

I'm definitely gonna take a swing at this. What sort of equipment was used? Guitars, pickups, amps, mics, drums, drum skins, every little bit helps. If I run across something I end up really liking in the final mix it's good to know what it was.

Holy crap this download is taking forever though

 

[Joel_Fury]

I'm going to try and remember what was used when recording:

Vocals - NT1-A
Bass - DI
- Ashdown (can't remember what model) 15' speaker miked with a D112
Guitars - Engl Powerball miked with a SM57
Kick - D112
Toms - SM57
Snare Top - SM57 (I think)
Snare Bottom - ?
Hats - ?
OH - two small diaphragm condensers I think maybe NT5's

The drum kit was a pearl export (don't know what skins they were), Bass was a 5 string Spector neck-through with emg pickups, guitar was an esp grynch with emg pups and an epiphone les paul with emg pups.

Sorry I can't be of much more help than that. I'll see if I can find some photo's of the Set-ups.

Look forward to hearing the mix's

 

[NickL]

I'm going to try and remember what was used when recording:

Vocals - NT1-A
Bass - DI
- Ashdown (can't remember what model) 15' speaker miked with a D112
Guitars - Engl Powerball miked with a SM57
Kick - D112
Toms - SM57
Snare Top - SM57 (I think)
Snare Bottom - ?
Hats - ?
OH - two small diaphragm condensers I think maybe NT5's

The drum kit was a pearl export (don't know what skins they were), Bass was a 5 string Spector neck-through with emg pickups, guitar was an esp grynch with emg pups and an epiphone les paul with emg pups.

Sorry I can't be of much more help than that. I'll see if I can find some photo's of the Set-ups.

Look forward to hearing the mix's

No, that was enough info. Thanks! I'm dying to hear how the spector sounds but it looks like I'm gonna be downloading for like 4 hours

 

[006]

Heh...I have a $1500 5-string Spector that sounds like fucking shit. Conversely, though, my friend's $200 Squire bass sounds superb.

:zombie:

~006

 

[Machinated]

I have only heard a Spector twice - both times I thought they both sounded pretty good though! That said, my bassist bought a 5 string Schecter that sounds much nicer and played a bit better too.

 

[coneyis]

Downloading now and gonna give a crack at it... ugh it's soooo slow!!!

 

[NickL]

My downloads finally finished haha. Gonna get working now.

 

[iamsancho]

Cheers for these, good to get some practice in on a mix which doesn't feature EZdrummer heh. Anyway, here's my lame attempt at a mix, http://rapidshare.com/files/149600773/Fury_-_Purgatory.mp3

 

[NickL]

yours was pretty good.

I'm still fighting hat bleed in EVERYTHING

 

[Ermz]

Yeah, likewise.

I don't think it's overly possible for me to get a decent mix out of this. There are too many issues with the arrangement, performance and other various technical problems. I have a rough mix at the moment, but to be honest, it's a bit embarrassing! I look forward to hearing other people's submissions and how they overcame it all.

 

[Kazrog]

Yeah, likewise.

I don't think it's overly possible for me to get a decent mix out of this. There are too many issues with the arrangement, performance and other various technical problems. I have a rough mix at the moment, but to be honest, it's a bit embarrassing! I look forward to hearing other people's submissions and how they overcame it all.

Agreed - I feel the exact same way, having given the files a spin.

To the Fury guys:

I want to give you some advice, from the perspective of my experience:

• Record your guitars with a DI box so that prospective mix engineers can reamp your guitars if needed. Your miked amp tracks sound decent, but they need some editing to get the parts locked, and it's basically impossible to do any proper editing on distorted guitar tracks.
• Your singer needs vocal lessons and ear training. I also highly recommend the Zen of Screaming DVD series. He will lose his voice regularly otherwise, and he is not singing in key or in tune. He could even do permanent damage to his vocal cords if he doesn't completely re-evaluate his technique.
• Your drummer needs to focus on his technique - the drums sound solid, but very stiff, lacking groove and dynamics. Probably time to re-examine the placement of the drums in your kit for ergonomics. A great drummer once told me that the biggest improvement he made to his playing was when he took his whole kit apart, sat in his drum throne and played air drums with just his feet hitting the floor and sticks in the air. Then he figured out where he most naturally wanted different pieces of the kit to be based on his air drumming and his body's natural tendencies.
• Record to a click and make sure you stay honest about your timing. You will save a lot of money if you guys all tighten up as a band.

Please understand that I intend all of this constructively and in the utmost respect. I would like to see everyone here succeed and I know that I've learned a lot from the other forum members here, which has helped me to grow and improve both as a musician and producer.

 

[Ermz]

I'll second what Kazrog wrote. It is meant with no ill-intent here either. I was considering whether to write up many of the same things, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it as you hadn't asked for critique outright. Now that the cat is out of the bag, however...

Some extra points from my end:

• Vocals: Technique and potential damage to the vocal chords aside, the singer essentially sounds like he is whispering loudly rather than pitching solid notes. There is no way to seat vocal tracks like these into a mix in a musical way. I second that he needs to re-evaluate his singing technique in a major way.
• Guitars: As much as DI tracks are appreciated by most mixing engineers, I think you can get away with just having more solid tones recorded from the start. It's important to always have your tracks recorded, or edited up to match up to each other prior to mixing. If you listen to some great guitar players like Dimebag, on the Pantera records, you'll hear almost no differentiation between the left and right sides. As far as tone goes, I think it would benefit from being quite a bit less buzzy (there's quite a bit of buzz coming from the higher frequencies, 6 to 10k). 'More meat, less buzz', as seems to have become my motto lately.
• Drums: In terms of recording, there is absolutely too much hi-hat spill. One could circumvent that with sample usage had the hat not been about 4x too loud in the overheads themselves. I think some overhead microphone placement amendment is in order. Try to perhaps obscure the hat by a cymbal in direct line of sight to the left OH mic, use quieter hats, get the drummer to ease off on the hats. They are the element single most prone to destroy any chance of a good drum sound. Different, more solid drum beats would help. Varying up drum beats more frequently would help too.
• As a whole: Some more practice to a metronome and locking into a tempo would certainly help. There are quite a few accents intended to be strong in the track that don't have the desired effect simply because the instruments pop in at different times.
• Arrangement: Given that there is a lot of furious picking going on almost all the time, it gets very hard for the track to breathe at all. I would suggest perhaps looking at some of the guitar parts and adding a bit more groove, and maybe easing off on some of the freqent open chords, as they fight for dominance with the vocal. The guitar parts don't seem written with respect to the whole picture in mind. This may just be my perception (not having been a thrash head for a few yaers now), but I feel strongly about it.

Anyway, I hope that reads constructively and won't offend you or the band in any way. As with Kazrog, I have learned a great many things on this forum, and much of that was thanks to keeping an open mind and accepting people's criticism.

 

[Joel_Fury]

Firstly I would like to thank you guys for your time and feedback....much appreciated, cheers

I'm glad it's not just me struggling to mix this stuff! My input on this whole thing was just the solo's and bass lines, someone else did the rest of the recording. I would like to get booked into somewhere and do the recording properly but it's no good going in somewhere until every problem is solved.....which is quite annoying because I know what needs to be done. It is just getting everyones else on the same mindset as me!

I had click tracks set up prior to the recording, and our drummer wasn't liking playing to a click track which is a fundamental problem in it's self.....amongst others (which I wont go into)!

Yes our singer isn't the best singer in the world, and vocal lessons are expensive...we have looked!

I am not happy with the guitar tone at all, I wanted the gain backed off to get more of the attack from the notes played. It is very easy for 100mph guitar playing to lack definition but he was adamant that more gain was the answer! There was a time when he was adamant on having his gain on 10...and thats on an ENGL...i had to put my foot down!

Thankyou to moonlapse and kazrog for the feedback....it's nice to know i'm not on my own!

Would you recommend scrapping these sessions and starting over? It may be a pain but do you think it will be worth it in the long run?

 

[NickL]

I would scrap it personally. And make your drummer play to a click, he gets way off on fills and whenever he's playing solo. BTW the guitar solo screams but now I see why everyone's ripping on Powerballs all the time. It really does sound like a pod. So big time thumbs up on recording a DI track. ALWAYS record a DI.