Youth Gone Wild Cover

ADRSean

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Apr 18, 2008
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Hey guys, don't know if you remember but I've been working with this band lately called Burning The Night Sky. We are almost done with their debut CD, and we just released the B-Side Youth Gone Wild (Skid Row Cover). It's up at www.myspace.com/burningthenightsky. I produced this, mixed it, and mastered it. I worked with really cheap equipment. I used USB Condeser Mics for vocals and guitar, with a Line 6 Spider III 120 Watt combo. We also used really cheap drum mics, with oversampling done with Drumagog and samples I created a long time ago in a nice professional studio. We also used a Stealthplug for DI Bass recording. Also I used Adobe Audition 1.5 is all I had to mix with, so all mixing/mastering was done there. We had no money, but I think it is the best we could do with this.

www.myspace.com/burningthenightsky
 
Can you give me some more info on the vocal chain, what usb mic, what plugs in the box, any tuning? I think the singer did a great job and you did a great job mixing the vocals. The mix itself seems a little stale and it might just be the guitars they seem too low and dark and muddy. And I feel the bass should be more pronounced. But Im also listening on shitty headphones at work :-(
 
Yeah, it was an Audio-Technica USB Condeser, not sure on the make. No tuning, no box, direct USB input. The vocals were not touched, all raw takes just EQ'd and compressed. That's all we could afford. The bass and guitars are mixed/recorded to the best of our equipment, the muddy/dark sound is their tone that their fans like/they like. It's not really that muddy, it might be your headphones :)

The bass is lower because of bad playing from the bass player haha.
 
Hey dude, sorry, forgot about this - kick is WAY too clicky IMO, no body, just "tick tick tick;" snare isn't bad, though very repetitive (just pretty obvious that it's a sample). The guitars don't sound bad for Line 6, but could use a bit more presence and a bit less mids at around 400 Hz; if there's a bass here, I can't hear it! Vocals are good, I can tell the singer has energy and enthusiasm, but sound just a bit too thin and whiny at points (more like an emo singer than Sebastian :lol: ), but overall not bad, and the gang vox sound good. Also, the hi-hat is too loud and piercing IMO. And for using such a cheap vocal mic, the vox sound pretty good recording-wise! You definitely did a lot with a little, kudos for that!
 
The drums were actually oversampled very lightly. I don't have many plugins. I need to get some more for EQing and compression to fix things. We love the guitar tone for doing micing a line 6 with no DI recording. I wish I could reamp them but eh. Kick is really clicky I know. They like the sample because their live kit is like that too.

And btw, in NO way are these guys emo. You want emo i'll give you it. These guys hate emo bands. Picture them as motley crue meets papa roach. That's their style.
 
Hey, do what you're gonna do, but regardless of their music or their genre, I'm saying that in my opinion, that is in no way a desirable kick drum sound, the snare has the exact same "Dunk" every time, and the guitars really do sound quite cloudy and muffled (if you mic'ed it that explains it, it has that cloud that comes from the mic being way too far away from the dustcap). Take it or leave it, but I do think many here would agree that I'm not totally talking out of my ass with these things!
 
Hey, do what you're gonna do, but regardless of their music or their genre, I'm saying that in my opinion, that is in no way a desirable kick drum sound, the snare has the exact same "Dunk" every time, and the guitars really do sound quite cloudy and muffled (if you mic'ed it that explains it, it has that cloud that comes from the mic being way too far away from the dustcap). Take it or leave it, but I do think many here would agree that I'm not totally talking out of my ass with these things!

No manI take your opinion highly. I know what I talk about too, I've done internships in studios, and studied all this in college/know some big name guys. But I guess I should explain my problems.

I really want to change the guitar sound. It is muddy. I never doubted that, it's just I have no idea what to do about it. I EQ'd the crazyness out of it to get that much of a nonmud sound. Also, they refused to record DI with guitars so that's what I have. I can't reamp it. Any suggestions on how to save that tone?


For the drums, yeah the snare sonud doesn't have much life. That was an oversample, and I tried to get it to fluctuate a bit better, have more life to it. But it keeps seeming to try and go against me. Not to mentino I have a band that says it's perfect. I don't want to attach my name to a CD that has overlysampled drums, dark/muddy guitars, with a plastic pringles can kick.

Any advice? Any good free plugins to help with compression?
 
I will have to say the experience you get on these forums beats the heck out of studio internships, college degrees, etc. Because here there is a vast wealth of knowledge..you get negative and positive feedback, qualified people giving you advice this is coming from engineers on these forums that compare to (and sometimes better than) most professional recordings (and most of the time done with minimal gear)...so all in all I have to agree with Marcus and say that he is giving some great advice and that if the drums and guitars were fixed this would be a kick ass cover!
FIY (just test it out) Try to group the guitars together and give an 8k boost.
Good luck and please post if you do fine tune the drums and guitars would love to hear it!
 
Well I don't think anything needs any more compression, really, since there's not too much dynamic fluctuation, but I'd say making a pretty wide cut in the guitars from like 400-600 would help with the cloudiness (though there's only so much you can do, and I'd only cut like 4-5 dB) as well as a boost at around 4k (that's what I consider the presence/bite range, I wouldn't recommend 8k cuz that's more fizziness but try it and see if it works!). As for the kick, I'd just suggest straight up ditching the sample and trying another; I have a collection of a shitload of Kick samples that I've accumulated (and weeded out the crappy ones), PM me if you want it!
 
kinda cool, but I thought it was going to be heavied up a bit, or faster. a super fast youth gone wild would probably get people's boners really going I think. nice though.
 
New mix is coming soon guys! Thanks for all the input.

Does anyone have any sweet snare samples? If I could afford steven slates i would buy them but i'm looking for like a snapping, punk rock/metal type snare. Any help would rock.