Uber noob question

[Damian B]

so.... i am currently recording my band, and this is my first real attempt at doing any kind of real mixing. my problem, of course is that things are clipping. so my noob question is this... do i bring down the volume on individual tracks or the master bus, or should i leave everything near 0 (especially on the master), and compress and limit?

Thanks,
Damian

 

[STINNETT]

Everybody has their own way of doing things, but I would start by pulling all the individual tracks down low enough that you have some headroom to work with. Sometimes I bring everything down 10 or 12db and then start turning things up from there to get the balance I want in my mix.

I like to be able to turn everything up in the end instead of constantly turning things down.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

If you are facing this issue right now, then likely you will have many other Knoobee issues down the line, and it's going to hurt your band's record, and take a lot of time. That's cool if you want to get into the mixing side of things, but, honestly, you should consider posting your recorded tracks and have someone mix it here for free.

 

[006]

Hells yeah, a new mix project is always needed around here.

~e.a

 

[Damian B]

thanks for the input everyone!

the thing about it is that this is a really ghetto rigged recording, it wasn't done at a studio or anything. i triggered all of the drums with homemade radioshack triggers, we used impulses on all of the guitars, and the keys will be midi into collosus vsti. the only thing left is vocals, and i have borrowed some nicer mics to track those (we are going to do that tomorrow actually). so, it's really not something that would be worthwhile posting on here for you all to mix.

here is what we have done though, so far. vocals, keys and lead guitar solos haven't been tracked yet, but it might be worth a listen to see if i have done anything majorly wrong yet... btw there are also some long pauses and tempo change things that will be edited out, so excuse those...

http://www.box.net/shared/t45f3yqwos

let me know what you think!

 

[Damian B]

oh yeah, and i tried in the middle of the song to duplicate a guitar track, instead of tracking again... that didn't work, so the song gets louder at that point... it's be fixed tomorrow.

 

[midget donkeys]

Hey that doesn't sound so bad, I have heard far worse. The guitar tone just needs beefed up. If you recorded the direct signal along with the amped tone I bet some one on here could reamp it and improve it alot.

Keep at it I dig the song.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

You have triggered drums, direct guitars, midi keys, and decent vocals.

Sounds like some fun to me (to mix)!