New "mike got spiked". opinions before final mix

trackmixstudio

Here is a new track by Mike Got Spiked.
Please have a listen and comment before we settle on the final mix.
We may do a few hours tweaking if needed before it goes to mastering.
I have put a bit of Sonnox Limiter on it (which will be taken off before the mastering engineer gets it) to get an idea of how limiting will affect it.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/8/7/1328148/MGS%20Mix.mp3

The intro piece was supplied by the band (on mp3:eek:)


Thanks
Michael

DamagedTrax

gonna listen now... GO F**CK YOURSELF!!!

:pac::pac::pac:

still stuck in my head :P

PaulBrewer

I'm only listening on my laptop speakers but it sounds great. Great singer isn't he?

I think they should say 'Go FECK yourself' instead then Larry Gogan might play it ...;)

DamagedTrax

sounds cool mick.. smacks as hard is it did one the day! well done.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

I like that alot .

I know those guys -

so - maybe my ears and taste are to the fore here .

1/ I feel the bass could be a touch louder / fuller / drive-ier behind the guiter - in the harder / chorusy sections

2/ the snare maybe thicken up a little ? ( maybe just my tasted )

3/ the overall track sounds a tiny bit unglued - if that makes sense ?
maybe the mastering will glue it - but I feel it sounds like a collection of individual instruments etc instead of a cohesive blend - but again -
it may be my taste.


great track / arrangement / recording though .

fitz

Not sure how much there is you can do about it, but I think the snare sound is nasty.
I think it's the way it's tuned....high, all attack, little body. Needs to be bigger sounding. In fact, on second listen, I'm not huge on the kick sound either. The snare and kick sound seems smaller than the tom sound.

Don't think the intro adds much, if anything to the track either tbh, particularly the sweep panning. Good guitar and vocal sounds though. I'd prefer a different verb on the backing vocals, but that's taste I reckon.

Only my opinion of course.

DamagedTrax

mick will be able to say more but the snare is actually exactly how the drummer wanted it as far as i can remember?

fitz

Yeah, as I said, it sounds like the tuning as opposed to how it's been treated in the mix.
Don't think it's a nice sound at all. Biscuit tin jobby. Sounds weak to me. There's a lovely fill in there just after half way through where the snare just gets lost and the beauty cleverness of the fill is wasted.

The kick sounds like it's an 18inch or something like that. Punchy, but doesn't have the weight or bass that I think the song needs, and as I said, shown up a bit by the toms. I think the drum sound is making the song sound like a lesser production job than it is.

Again, this may be a taste thing, but that's just my opinion.

Welease

Very nicely done.. I liked it, but I also think the snare sound lets the song down a lot (it does sound very biscuit tin). Rest of it sounded superb though..

One other minor (and it's minor) irritation.. on headphones during the intro, the panning of the drums from right to left and back was annoying and they sounded very tinny.. when they went back into the centre they sounded much better and fuller. The drum movement actually focussed your attention to much on that rather than the other instruments which kinda ruins the intro.. for me anyway.. maybe its a particular problem with listening on headphone but a lot of folks use ipods etc...

Anyway.. i liked it
(btw.. this is just the opinion of a hobbyist and music lover, not a professional)

trackmixstudio

Thanks guys.
I will have a look at all of these points.
The drummer LOVES the snare sound. I would agree that it is a bit thin and lacks punch myself.
I will have another look at the kick. Still getting used to the focal twins which sound VERY different to the Yamahas I was using before. Especially in the low mids and lows. It is a maple 22" blended with a sample tuned to the pitch of the actual drum. I may need to push the front of kick mic to give it more air/puch.
I personally like the bass sitting under (frequency wise) the guitars.

Michael

fitz

I'd have expected it to be a smaller birch kick bassed solely on the sound...
It's got that birch punchiness, which is great, and would be great to retain, but with more low end welly.

I agree on the bass, I think the balance between the rest of the kit, the bass, guitars and particularly the vocals is pretty much spot on.

Seziertisch

I can see the charm in the snare. It is kind of reminiscent of hardcore/punk stuff like the Dead Kennedys etc. Interesting how people actively seek a lo-fi/cheaply recorded sound to capture an aesthetic. That said, a tiny bit more body wouldn't go astray.

It you have a hardware compressor, try maybe sending the snare and the kick (and possible the toms) out to it with a fairly high ratio and bring this up under what you have there already. It could do wonders for gluing the drum sound together.

Otherwise, have a look at dropping a sample in under the kick and snare. If your are using Logic use the EXS24's ability to change the envelope of the sample. Cut off the attack of the hits, you don't need any smack on either, just more body.

Otherwise the guitars, bass and such are pretty rocking. Were the guitars done through the A2D?

trackmixstudio

The kick/snare are VERY parallel compressed. As for adding body to the snare, sweeping an eq from low to high showed very little signal until you hit the crack at about 500. The kick is sample layered but the drummer didn't want a snare sample in.
Guitars are Schecter left, LP Standard right,> Tube Screamer>HK Triamp>orange 4x12>mix of 57 and i5 with the ISA828 on the "isa 110" impedance setting. The guitar player has great pick attack so the API was giving a bit too much mid in the sound whereas the ISA worked great.
The 828 is an awesome piece of kit. The different impedance settings make a huge difference. The ISA 110 setting is really full and the medium setting is very like the API. The converter card is superb too. Really a bargain when you consider the options. 8 GREAT pres, The 4 impedance settings sound like 4 different pres, 4 high quality di inputs and 8 channels of top quality converter that you can also line in to and bypass the pres.
I am thinking of getting another one after my next purchase which will be a great river.
Bass is di through a Hartke bass di box into the A2D with moderately driven input gain.

Seziertisch

I would suggest trying a sample for under the snare and see what the drummer thinks.

When I was a kid my mother took me shopping for new shoes. None of them would fit (or so I said). I was quiet attached to my old shoes and thought that getting new shoes meant that I had to hand over my old ones. Not so, as it turns out. Once this little matter had been cleared up it was relatively plain sailing.

It might be something similar with the drummer. Find a decent sample and drop it in there. He is against something on principle. A beefier snare doesn't have to mean sacrificing what he likes about the sound already.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

I know dave lodge and hes always been a fan of this type of snare sound
( i think he comes from a marching drum background )
hes a great drummer so tread easy ;-)

I still think the bass is not "full" enough in the harder sections - it pops out fine in the quieter bits but seems to just a teency bit drop in the hard bits -
so the guitars seem to take over a tad too much but im talking just a hair here

but ! it may be the kick needing abit of body as well / or instead.

ZV Yoda

Sounds great. I think it's a cracking tune, well put together, great performance & well recorded... and that's considering it's not the kind of music I'd normally listen to.

As a drummer, it's not the snare/kick sound I'd choose, but it's personal choice. As for replacing with samples... well, that's up to the band... I wouldn't neccesarily assume the drummer is against samples as a matter of principle (although that may well be the case). Maybe he just likes that sound - so good luck to him!

Those lads are great players. Nice work Michael

120_Minutes

I'm biased, as i'm a longtime friend of the band (was their live engineer for a good while) and i arrived in the studio just after damagedtrax left (sorry i didnt get to meet ya!)

the backing vocals are great now, they were only half done when i was there and i now see the context in which they fit. i'm not gonna comment too much on the mix as i'm listening on laptop speakers. i can see why the snare sound isnt to everyones liking, but dave has always loved that type of sound...not a million miles away from the incubus s.c.i.e.n.c.e snare sound (perhaps mick you could a/b the two and see what you think?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeAkX7PpORA

or for impeccable snare control with the same sound try this:

ogy

i like it. not my kind of music bit a great sounding recording.
if he likes the snare like that go with it i reckon! good to have some different flavours then you would usually expect in that style of music, it sounds almost jungly to me, like a speeded up amen break type snare:)

obviously mike got spiked do fit in to a particular genre or whatever but i always try to think of bands like joy division and the doors and stuff who made (or there producers at least made)very unobvious choices in terms of sounds palettes

fitz

120_Minutes wrote: »

I'm biased, as i'm a longtime friend of the band (was their live engineer for a good while) and i arrived in the studio just after damagedtrax left (sorry i didnt get to meet ya!)

the backing vocals are great now, they were only half done when i was there and i now see the context in which they fit. i'm not gonna comment too much on the mix as i'm listening on laptop speakers. i can see why the snare sound isnt to everyones liking, but dave has always loved that type of sound...not a million miles away from the incubus s.c.i.e.n.c.e snare sound (perhaps mick you could a/b the two and see what you think?)


or for impeccable snare control with the same sound try this:

It's funny, when I listened, I was thinking just that: he's going for an Incubus snare sound, but it's not quite there.

Have a listen to Pardon Me by Incubus. That's a great example of the type of snare sound I reckon would be great in this song. Whether it's possible to get that kind of sound with the tracks that are there, only Mick can answer.

I'll be very interested to hear the final mix...

teamdresch

The Humanity..
The Snare Sound..
It burrrrrns...

120_Minutes

fitz wrote: »

It's funny, when I listened, I was thinking just that: he's going for an Incubus snare sound, but it's not quite there.

dave has always been a big incubus fan, this snare sound is no coincidence!

BobTheBeat

I gotta say I like it, reminds me of that driving faith no more sound. And the snare is definitely on purpose and (to my mind at least) harks back to the early korn days, circa life is peachy.

120_Minutes

bobmeaney wrote: »

reminds me of that driving faith no more sound.

well spotted. singer and guitarist are big patton/fnm fans not so much korn though.

DamagedTrax

very well spotted. we were actually talking about the similarities to mike bordin's sound on the day.

BobTheBeat

Gotta say Im very pleased with that confirmation. No better band in the past two/three decades than FNM.

I wouldnt do a whole lot with the recording as it stands,especially with regards to the guitars and vocals. Im not sure 'beefing' up the drums as a whole would do much to the overall impact. I mean, the majority of the track is snare/kick/hats, so applying 'body' to these is probably quite difficult seeing as the cymbals are pitched and the micing pattern has predefined their dynamism and the snare has been tuned for a particular tone which also gives its own intrinsic response - Can I ask if you used two mics for its capture?

The kick is probably the only changeable item in the drum mix, but even that has been dialled in well relative to the rest of the kit. Altering it would call for a sizeable change in the rest to compensate.

Most importantly, its what the drummer asked for and what the rest of the band agreed on. Actually really looking forward to hearing a completed version.

The best of luck in whatever you choose damagedtrax!

DamagedTrax

bobmeaney wrote: »

The best of luck in whatever you choose damagedtrax!

heh, wasnt me m8. its michael at trackmix. he, very kindly, had me sit in on the session for a few hours.. (although i like to think that my presance alone somehow imparted itself to tape :pac:)

120_Minutes

DamagedTrax wrote: »

(although i like to think that my presance alone somehow imparted itself to tape :pac:)

then by that logic i co produced the latter half of the session!


i kid, i kid.

DamagedTrax

dude, if we're not on the sleeve credited with "vibes" then im kickin off about it!

smog

awww ya legend!

120_Minutes

smog wrote: »

awww ya legend!

here smog, dont you go telling anyone on the gs board about this, its our little secret!

smog

heh nay bother ... but outside of there i may have to let Trev have a likkle listen later ;-) Sounds good guys, excellent work and sound for a non master, just dont let however is doing the mastering limit the **** out of it ;-)

trackmixstudio

Wow
This thread has been busy.
Thanks for all the comments.
Overall I am pretty happy with the mix. I played it in the car while I was out today and I think the bottom end is good. Plenty of low end yet the kick and bass still attack well. Any more low frequencies and I think it will adversely affect the clarity. I may try a transient designer on the kick to stretch the decay a bit. This may work better than pushing any frequencies.
The snare is what it is although I will check out the incubus stuff as suggested.
The band are going to get back to me over the weekend with their own list so we should do the final mix next week some time.
Michael