Guitar Gear Forum

Been recording this over the past few weeks for some friends. This is my first pass mix. Feel free to critique it, I appreciate any and all input.

https://soundcloud.com/ejendres/when-the-lights-long-gone-120515

The mix sounds fine. Maybe I'd mix the drums a bit more upfront, especially the kick drum, but that's my personal taste.... I think the overall recording is lacking a bit presence and brightness... maybe run it through an exciter.... again my personal taste.

GuitarBilly wrote:The mix sounds fine. Maybe I'd mix the drums a bit more upfront, especially the kick drum, but that's my personal taste.... I think the overall recording is lacking a bit presence and brightness... maybe run it through an exciter.... again my personal taste.

I agree. I did some remixing yesterday. Its closer to good

I'll post the remix tomorrow.

remixed and much better (imo)

https://soundcloud.com/ejendres/when-the-lights-long-gone-120815-2

no love for pop punk?

Not a big fan of the style, but it sound top notch pro to me.. wish I could make recordings like that.

Thanks man! Yeah its not really my thing either.

I'm proud of how it came together though. I'm getting happier with my drum recordings

Sounds good to me. Kick drum is missing a bit of clarity/punch in the low end. But depends on what type of sound you're going for.

Have you sidechain compressed the bass guitar with the kick yet? Could be all it needs to bring some more clarity to the lows/low mids.

nakedzen wrote:Sounds good to me. Kick drum is missing a bit of clarity/punch in the low end. But depends on what type of sound you're going for.

Have you sidechain compressed the bass guitar with the kick yet? Could be all it needs to bring some more clarity to the lows/low mids.

I honestly have never messed around with side chain compression. You're right through, this is probably a good situation to try it

Part of the kick sound is I did a shit job tuning it, tried micing it a new way (that didnt work out great) and the drummer's attack varied a lot. When he hit with force it's punchy but when we backed off it gets muddy.

Things to watch for next time I guess.

You could try making a few samples of the good hits and replacing the kick track with those. Do you have a drum replacement vst? If not Aptrigga is a good cheap one.

nakedzen wrote:You could try making a few samples of the good hits and replacing the kick track with those. Do you have a drum replacement vst? If not Aptrigga is a good cheap one.

Is it velocity sensitive? I was thinking of reenforcing the kick with a ssd4 sample

Yeah it is. It's a pretty good plugin, been using it for years. You can load multiple samples to it and it triggers between those randomly if you want.

If you're going to use it parallel to the original kick track, it makes things a lot more easy. Compress the heck out of the track to get a really consistent volume, much easier to adjust the threshold for the trigger.

nakedzen wrote:Yeah it is. It's a pretty good plugin, been using it for years. You can load multiple samples to it and it triggers between those randomly if you want.

If you're going to use it parallel to the original kick track, it makes things a lot more easy. Compress the heck out of the track to get a really consistent volume, much easier to adjust the threshold for the trigger.

Thanks dude, I'll try it out.

What you using as a compressor for your sidechain

You using Reaper? I just use the Reacomp.

How you do it:
- Make a send from the kick track to the bass track (change the setting from "Audio 1/2-> Audio 1/2" to "Audio 1/2-> Audio 3/4"
- Load Reacomp on the bass track and set the Detector Input to Auxiliary from Reacomp
- Change ratio to 4:1 and tweak the threshold until you get something like -4dB attenuation on the meter

Great info! I'm learning new things at GAB. I did a quick search of side chain compression and came up with this article.
It also lists a free compressor plugin that has side chain compression:
http://samplesfrommars.com/blogs/tips-t ... gh-the-mix


If you're having issues with muddy sounding recordings, try the BBE Sonix Maximizer and Harmonic Maximizer.
http://www.bbesound.com/products/sonic- ... sweet.aspx

2nd mix is much better, nice job!

I think the main thing to look at is the kick, as you've already noted - out of interest how'd you record it? It's definitely better in the second mix but I'd still work a little harder to get it forward in the mix, even if you need to do a bit of clownfuckery by way of sample augmentation. Particularly in the choruses, it's getting a little lost. For this style of music, the kick provides a lot of forward momentum and without that the guitars feel like they're wallowing about a little.

re; side chain compression, if the performance is a bit uneven be careful; the hard hitting kicks are gonna duck the bass more but it's the softer hits which you want to help punch through. And if they do punch through, they're still going to *sound* lime softer hits which may be even more distracting. It can be tough going fixing a performance issue with plugins!

The snare is generally round about the right volume and has a nice pop/crack but it sounds a tad dry for my taste. I wouldn't advocate a big '80s gated reverb or anything, but some short room ambience, early reflections, might help it feel a bit more energetic like it's being slammed in a room rather than just a dry snare with no real context.

The bass is very polite and safe sounding, but I wouldn't want to touch it until the kick was driving the mix a bit more.

The vocals are generally really good, performance and tonality wise and they're sitting nicely in the mix. Maybe the odd bit of sibilance here and there. and I like the guitar sounds and the overall tonal balance of the mix!

Anyway, I'ma fucking nobody hack so take all that with a pinch of salt!

ajaxlepinski wrote:Great info! I'm learning new things at GAB. I did a quick search of side chain compression and came up with this article.
It also lists a free compressor plugin that has side chain compression:
http://samplesfrommars.com/blogs/tips-t ... gh-the-mix


If you're having issues with muddy sounding recordings, try the BBE Sonix Maximizer and Harmonic Maximizer.
http://www.bbesound.com/products/sonic- ... sweet.aspx

Thanks for posting this, I can play decent, but my recording SUX! This helped me out.