Tell me what you think of this

Mongo

Hey all,

Take a listen to the track I put on sound cloud. It was part of a project I had to do for college last year. One of my first ever ventures into drum recording and also mixing. I know there is many things wrong with it including the performance and I really wish I could re-do the kick sound but any comments or tips are appreciated.

http://soundcloud.com/mikeyoc/anti-gravity-abbey-river-mix

Thanks
Mongo

Zombienosh

What gear was used to record it?
What way were the drums mic'd? It sounds like just Overheads?

Mongo

The guitar was all done thorugh a Vox combo with a 57. Bass was DI'd with a mediocre DI although it was a good Bass that was used. Good call with the drums. The hats, snare and kick were all mic'ed but not very well and over heads also. It was all a bit of a rush. As I said it was the first time I've recorded drums so it's obviously rough. Any tips on mic'ing kick and snare drums?

krd

I like the bits that sound like early Cardigans

I think your drums sound fine (I'm listening on crappy headphones) Cymbals could be a little brighter.

Some of the hard panning on the guitars is a bit too much - guitars could be a little (or a lot) brighter and louder. That could be my head phones.

And it could be faster. I'm only saying faster because I've been listening to phantom a lot over the last few days and every is either very fast or they're speeding stuff up a lot.

Mongo

krd wrote: »

I like the bits that sound like early Cardigans

I think your drums sound fine (I'm listening on crappy headphones) Cymbals could be a little brighter.

Some of the hard panning on the guitars is a bit too much - guitars could be a little (or a lot) brighter and louder. That could be my head phones.

And it could be faster. I'm only saying faster because I've been listening to phantom a lot over the last few days and every is either very fast or they're speeding stuff up a lot.

What bits sounded like the Cardigans? I'm not too familiar with them. Any tips on panning? Or even good articles about it? I was winging it completely. Thanks for the feedback!

krd

Mongo wrote: »

What bits sounded like the Cardigans? I'm not too familiar with them. Any tips on panning? Or even good articles about it? I was winging it completely. Thanks for the feedback!

The Cardigans were a band from the 90s. They did a kind of jazzy type thing on their album life. You'd need to hear it.

There's lots of things you can do with panning.

Hard panning is when you put something far to the left or right. Like the beatles used to do on their early recordings. People don't do that that much anymore, unless they're going for a specific effect.

It's really up to yourself. Listen to some music you like (headphones is the best way to hear stereo effects) - there may be lots of complicated stereo effects. or there may be just very simple stuff. Something like a rhythm guitar track you could duplicate it, hard pan each track and then slightly tune one of the tracks very slightly out, if you can. That can give your track a much fuller sound. There's lots you can do. Or you don't have to do anything. It's up to yourself. A moving automated panning effect can also make stuff sound more bouncy and lively (you just need to use very little - too much is too much - then again if you want to, go ahead though it can be irritating and dizzying to have the guitars jumping insanely from speaker to speaker)

off.the.walls

Give it more kick drum...guitars are nice.. try make the cymballs sound brighter. Besides that i think its good.

Mongo

off.the.walls wrote: »

Give it more kick drum...guitars are nice.. try make the cymballs sound brighter. Besides that i think its good.

I can't give anymore kick! It's up to the max. I compressed and EQ'ed it to try get it to stand out. Any other tips to get it to stand out more?

off.the.walls

Mongo wrote: »

I can't give anymore kick! It's up to the max. I compressed and EQ'ed it to try get it to stand out. Any other tips to get it to stand out more?

Take the compressor off...might be over compressed also the cymballs sound very swashy in the mix see if ya can clear that up with it.

Mongo

How does one eliminate swashy-ness?

drumdrum

"Swashy-ness" is a strange tern but I presume hes referring to the sustain on the cymbals...
Maybe some light gating could be used to control this, but be careful as if you didnt mic your toms, this will gate your toms aswell.

As for bringing out your kick, have you tried some parallele compression? I find it very useful for bringing out instruments in mixes, but just be careful as its very easy to parallel compress everything to the point of everything sounding squashed....unless thats the sound you want of course!

Anyways, the way I parallel compress is to create an auxiliary bus in your DAW with only one compressor plug-in on it. Leave the attack relatively slow (about 30ms I have mine at) and the release at about 15ms. If you speed up the attack you might lose the attack of the instrument I find. Anyways, adjust the compressor as you like it and send a good chunk of the signal from the kick drum channel to the auxilliary bus. Mix the faders until the sound is brought out more in the mix. I find it better to have the main instrument louder than the parallel compressed channel as its more realistic though again it depends on the desired sound.

Anyways, you might find yourself needing to turn down the original kick drum and the parallel version if its too present in the mix.

One last note about your mix is the there is a bit of a "hole" in the middle so to speak. Usually this is fine if you intend to add vocals at some point, but if not, it can sound a bit empty and ungrounded. Maybe add some light reverbs or something in the middle if its to be an instrumental track?

Anyways just my two cents. I am not a sound engineer by any means, just a big hobbyist!
Sounds good though overall!

Mongo

Thanks for the tips guys some really good stuff there. I did some research into Parallel Compression and have been experimenting with it. I recently recorded drums. 8 mics on the kit. In Pro Tools I sent every one of the tracks on Bus 1 to an Aux track and put a compressor on that. Sounds pretty good to me. That is Parallel Compression yes? I read many different ways to do it so I'm a bit confused.

drumdrum

Mongo wrote: »

Thanks for the tips guys some really good stuff there. I did some research into Parallel Compression and have been experimenting with it. I recently recorded drums. 8 mics on the kit. In Pro Tools I sent every one of the tracks on Bus 1 to an Aux track and put a compressor on that. Sounds pretty good to me. That is Parallel Compression yes? I read many different ways to do it so I'm a bit confused.

Yeah man I think so. Well thats the way I do it and I'm pleased with the results.

What I do is, basically I have my 9 drum channels (Kick, Snare Top, Snare Bottom, Tom1, Tom2, Tom3, HiHats, Overheads, Room) Output to the output bus, and I send mainly the Kick, Snare, Toms and sometimes the OHs to an auxilliary channel with a compressor on it. However this can make reducing the overall sound of the real kit a tad tedious what with having to pull the faders down etc...
An alternative method that I sometimes use is I output the 9 drum channels to an auxilliary bus (essentially a sub-mix of the drums), and call it "Drums" or something obvious! Then add the sends for the || (parallel) compression bus. This allows you an overall output fader for the original drums as well as the || compression sound.

Before you || compress, you should add some EQ to the individual tracks if you need to to add life to the tracks, or to create room and clean up your low and high ends. Also, maybe think about adding individual compression also if thats the sound you want.

HOWEVER, be careful about panning and make sure the drum bus is a stereo bus. I'm not at my own machine now to double check all this, but I'm fairly certain that this should work. I can't remember if this affect the panning of the drums, but in my head at the moment I couldn't see how it would.
Be careful with || compression though, as its easy to get caught up in its apparent "presence" or "loudness" in a mix. Some of the best mix engineers mix to a level of about -6db (NOT 0db). Its the mastering engineers job to bring the loudness and "polish" to the finished track, so do them a favour and nail the mix!
It might sound a little "weak" on your end without loudness...so if you want that loudness, turn up your hardwares loudness, and not from within your DAW!

Anyways, hope this helps!

Mongo

Thanks man that's a big help. Especially about the level on the compessed channel. It's very easy to turn it way up. Ya I EQ'ed the drums I felt that needed it. Even compressed and limited some of them and then set up the other channel. Sounds great to me. Should have the other instruments done soon so I guess we'll see then!