Recording of a new song, production advice needed!

spiderjazz

I've a song I'm recording at the moment, and it's sounding a bit muddy to me. I'm not sure if it's the bass that's causing it or not, there's a part about 1.52 into with the bass on its own. Any other tips/advice to get it sounding better?

http://soundcloud.com/spiderjazz/brockonline

New Version :

http://soundcloud.com/spiderjazz/brockonline2

krd

Yeah, your bass sounds too boomy in places. And the guitar is overlapping some of the same frequencies. Which is ok unless there's too much of the frequency there - you'll just get mud. If you want to cut back on the muddiness you're going to have to decide which to eq. You could probably get away with removing the bits that hurt on the guitar in the lows.

Also the kick - both the bass and the kick should have sweet points (you decide where they are - sweet points is just some music production whatever word). Find the sweet point on the kick - and give it a tiny boost on the eq (just even so you know where it is) and then do not forget - go to the bass and the guitar and put a little dip in for where the kick point is.

If it makes everything clearer - do a low cut on the guitar - but if you lose power put it back.

I think you need to boost the highs to make the guitars louder. And the drums louder. Listen back to it through laptop speakers. If it sounds like there's lots missing it means you haven't boosted the highs enough.

If you've used compression on the bass, I think you've used too much, you might be loosing definition - Listening to it again - I think the rhythm guitar might be boomy in places. Listening to it again - the boominess works in places.

How did you do that tape kill?

spiderjazz

krd wrote: »

Yeah, your bass sounds too boomy in places. And the guitar is overlapping some of the same frequencies. Which is ok unless there's too much of the frequency there - you'll just get mud. If you want to cut back on the muddiness you're going to have to decide which to eq. You could probably get away with removing the bits that hurt on the guitar in the lows.

Also the kick - both the bass and the kick should have sweet points (you decide where they are - sweet points is just some music production whatever word). Find the sweet point on the kick - and give it a tiny boost on the eq (just even so you know where it is) and then do not forget - go to the bass and the guitar and put a little dip in for where the kick point is.

I had a cut in the bass and and a boost in the kick, put only 1-2 db for each, I've made it more pronounced for both of them now.

If it makes everything clearer - do a low cut on the guitar - but if you lose power put it back.

Had the guitars low passed around 90hz, I've put a multiband compressor on the low mids now between 200 - 400 hz ish, taking about 2 db off the palm mutes.

I think you need to boost the highs to make the guitars louder. And the drums louder. Listen back to it through laptop speakers. If it sounds like there's lots missing it means you haven't boosted the highs enough.

I brought the drums up a bit alright, brought the guitars up and highered up the low pass, was at about 8.5k, now at about 11k.

If you've used compression on the bass, I think you've used too much, you might be loosing definition - Listening to it again - I think the rhythm guitar might be boomy in places. Listening to it again - the boominess works in places.

The bass is compressed to all f..k. Did some serious eq cutting on it this time around, put a freq analyser on it and saw some peaks which I cut into with eq.

How did you do that tape kill?

I'm using reaper, and theres an automation function to change the playback rate. I selected the bit I needed to do, slowed it down, speeded it back up, and manually cut out some bits for the glitch effect.

Thanks for the in-depth reply!! Really helpfull feedback.

I have been working on a new version which I'll put up online in a few minutes.

spiderjazz

New Version

http://soundcloud.com/spiderjazz/brockonline2

i57dwun4yb1pt8

did you use a POD for those guitars ?

drumdrum

Sounds pretty good to me man.

My only point, and this is subjective I'll admit, is that the bass is a little low in the mix.

Depending on the metal you listen to, the bass can either drive the song or remain a background addition. However, from most of the metal I listen to, the bass is what gives the tune its heaviness. I find that the LESS distortion you use on the guitars, the more clearer they sound, and the more you can rely on the bass and drums to bring the heavy!
I'm not saying use clean guitars, or anything to that extreme, but I often find that what might work great for live gigs, is often too distorted / washy to be discerned clearly in recordings.

As I said, style subjective. It sounds fine to me. Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't sound exactly like your reference track or your favourite band. I mean, there's a reason those bands go to big studios to get their stuff done, so dont kill yourself trying to emulate their sound and wondering why you aren't getting it on your couple hundred euro interface card! I'm not saying that you do, but I did to myself for a while before realising this point and it would of saved me alot of time and stress!

BTW, do you run your mixes through a mastering plugin (like Ozone 4) or a limiter on the output bus or what? Just curious how you get your loudness...

spiderjazz

DaDumTish wrote: »

did you use a POD for those guitars ?

The chain for the guitars is

Tubescreamer Plug in, Lepou Lecto (free rectifier amp sim), Keffir to load cab impulses, bit of eq. 2 tracks, one left and right

spiderjazz

drumdrum wrote: »

Sounds pretty good to me man.

My only point, and this is subjective I'll admit, is that the bass is a little low in the mix.

Depending on the metal you listen to, the bass can either drive the song or remain a background addition. However, from most of the metal I listen to, the bass is what gives the tune its heaviness. I find that the LESS distortion you use on the guitars, the more clearer they sound, and the more you can rely on the bass and drums to bring the heavy!
I'm not saying use clean guitars, or anything to that extreme, but I often find that what might work great for live gigs, is often too distorted / washy to be discerned clearly in recordings.

As I said, style subjective. It sounds fine to me. Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't sound exactly like your reference track or your favourite band. I mean, there's a reason those bands go to big studios to get their stuff done, so dont kill yourself trying to emulate their sound and wondering why you aren't getting it on your couple hundred euro interface card! I'm not saying that you do, but I did to myself for a while before realising this point and it would of saved me alot of time and stress!

BTW, do you run your mixes through a mastering plugin (like Ozone 4) or a limiter on the output bus or what? Just curious how you get your loudness...

I get what you're saying about the low end, there was too much in the original, and I find it slightly lacking in the new one. It has been recommended to me to use some master buss compression, and then compression in the mastering to glue the bottom end together a bit better and give it more thump, I plan on re-mixing the song next week when I have vocals and I'll see what difference the compression makes on it. Also thinking of upping the multiband compression on the lows on the guitars and giving the bass a bit more oomph, tried that before though and they didn't mesh too well so might need to do a bit more tweaking.

I'm with you on the gain thing, I'm finding its a tight line between being mushy and between being undergained. I'm only double tracking so I don't have any layers of guitar so I'm not sure if I'd go much lower in gain. Personal taste for that though I suppose!

Just started the recording thing for myself at home a few months back, so still learning a lot about it, it's great to hear mixes getting better as they go along though, learn something new everytime that I do a mix. All for personal enjoyment though, I don't plan on recording the next masterpiece and putting Andy Sneap out of business or anything

For volume for this mix, I just used Gclip and w1 limiter (i think its a free version of waves L1) Clipped her a bit too hard though I'd say, it's clipping when the lead guitars kick in. I'm going to re-mix her next week, and try mastering with ozone, going compressor-eq-limiter and see how that turns out.

drumdrum

Fair enough man. Just remember that its very easy to overdo volume etc.

As a famous producer once said, "your mix starts when you place your first mic!"!

Also, what I did on a recent mix without realising it was I over compressed everything to the point where it was loud, but I lost clarity and life in the mix. I re-mixed it, removed most of the parallel compression and restored life to the track!

For the kind of stuff you seem to do, lack of dynamics is ok for the genre, but just make sure you dont ever do the compression.

Heres an idea for your low end....try setting the compression ratio on the bass guitar to something low like 2:1 or 3:1 at a max, and increase the original fader level a little. By your own words, your bass is compressed "to all f***", so its no surprise that you're finding it hard to make smooth. Analyse the kick drum and localise the lowend frequency (say 80Hz for arguments sake). Put a notch filter in the bass guitar at 80Hz at -3db or so or more if you prefer. I tend to go for -6db or so depending on the track. This should bring out the kicks "oomph" a little more. I see you've done this above, but try to cut rather than boost if you can. Tends to give better results.

Try sweeping a high pass filter on the guitar tracks from about 80Hz to 200Hz and find a point where it seems to help clarify your low end without sounding weak (for example: in my last mix I went with 160Hz on my rhythm guitars).

Finally, its an easy habit to solo the parts your working on and loose the effect of your editing on the overall context of your mix. In the end, the listener will listen to the song as a whole and not the individual tracks. So when making changes, try to make them with the rest of the instruments playing unless you are starting from scratch and its your first pass at an instrument. Take breaks regularly also....its amazing how tired ears can ruin a mix!

Your stuff sounds good though man. these are only suggestions.... mind if I ask what sort of interface card and guitar you're using?

- BTW, I dont mean to sound like I'm preaching or anything. These are only "lessons" that I'm sure you probably already know, but I only learned recently enough for myself. Like yourself, I'm not long at this mixing thing, but like yourself I learn stuff with every mix and try to help others not make the same mistakes that I've made!

spiderjazz

drumdrum wrote: »

Fair enough man. Just remember that its very easy to overdo volume etc.

As a famous producer once said, "your mix starts when you place your first mic!"!

Also, what I did on a recent mix without realising it was I over compressed everything to the point where it was loud, but I lost clarity and life in the mix. I re-mixed it, removed most of the parallel compression and restored life to the track!

For the kind of stuff you seem to do, lack of dynamics is ok for the genre, but just make sure you dont ever do the compression.

Heres an idea for your low end....try setting the compression ratio on the bass guitar to something low like 2:1 or 3:1 at a max, and increase the original fader level a little. By your own words, your bass is compressed "to all f***", so its no surprise that you're finding it hard to make smooth. Analyse the kick drum and localise the lowend frequency (say 80Hz for arguments sake). Put a notch filter in the bass guitar at 80Hz at -3db or so or more if you prefer. I tend to go for -6db or so depending on the track. This should bring out the kicks "oomph" a little more. I see you've done this above, but try to cut rather than boost if you can. Tends to give better results.

Try sweeping a high pass filter on the guitar tracks from about 80Hz to 200Hz and find a point where it seems to help clarify your low end without sounding weak (for example: in my last mix I went with 160Hz on my rhythm guitars).

Finally, its an easy habit to solo the parts your working on and loose the effect of your editing on the overall context of your mix. In the end, the listener will listen to the song as a whole and not the individual tracks. So when making changes, try to make them with the rest of the instruments playing unless you are starting from scratch and its your first pass at an instrument. Take breaks regularly also....its amazing how tired ears can ruin a mix!

Your stuff sounds good though man. these are only suggestions.... mind if I ask what sort of interface card and guitar you're using?

- BTW, I dont mean to sound like I'm preaching or anything. These are only "lessons" that I'm sure you probably already know, but I only learned recently enough for myself. Like yourself, I'm not long at this mixing thing, but like yourself I learn stuff with every mix and try to help others not make the same mistakes that I've made!

Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it. I put these up online to get advice/lessons from people so that I can improve so thanks for the time!


For bass guitar, I was following this tutorial, http://www.youtube.com/user/fearedse#p/c/5323002DC14308B9/1/mol6awk_aDo

My understanding, for metal bass at least, is that it's gonna be jumping all over the place volume wise if you don't have it compressed to bits. I'll try it with the lower settings though to see how it sounds though. I'm going to try to gradually compress at each stage this time round rather than slamming it all at the initial settings.

I'll make that cut deeper in the bass guitar for the kick drum. I think I might need to high pass the kick a bit higher as well, I put a frequency analayser on the mix, and there seems to be a lot of lows below 70hz.

I'm gonna have to get into a habit of taking breaks alright, I've worked at some stuff late at night that I listen to the next day thinking "What was I doing with that!":D

Recording gear is decidedly ghetto. I use this preamp http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_au/AudioBuddy.html, plugged into the line in on my laptop. Recording with a japanese les paul with bareknuckles. Bass is a Crafter POS which I got a loan of from a friend. I'd say changing the strings on that could help clearing the bass up a bit as well.

spiderjazz

Final version with a homemade mastering, enjoy!

http://soundcloud.com/spiderjazz/carelesshipster