How can I improve on this?

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:59 pm

I've been trapped in my friends family room and basement for the past week recording 8 songs for his band.

We just started working on vocals today. Here's a rough copy of a song that I took home with me to listen to..

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?id=13928

The vocals are rough, but I'll probably tune them up. Let me know what I could do to improve on this.

Thanks for any input!

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:27 am

Sounds pretty good. Natural drums I assume? They sound great. I'm really digging the cymbals especially.

The guitars could come up a bit, in my opinion. They should be way more in-your-face than they are.

Vocals sound pretty great for rough as well. If it were me I would turn them up a tad and maybe throw in some automated delays and stuff like that, but that's a personal taste thing I guess.

Care to share any info on the recording? mics/pres/mixing/etc?

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:15 am

TUNE up the vocals or TURN them up?

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:13 am

I'm listening on earphones right now so I can't make too many comments.

In the beginning when the distorted guitars/drums kick in it doesn't have impact. I think the overall level needs to come up there, and the guitars sound like they need to come up a bit as well.

This is a really cool song. I'll listen to this when I'm at the studio and try to come up with more for you.

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:29 pm

Clowd wrote:

Sounds pretty good. Natural drums I assume? They sound great. I'm really digging the cymbals especially.

The guitars could come up a bit, in my opinion. They should be way more in-your-face than they are.

Vocals sound pretty great for rough as well. If it were me I would turn them up a tad and maybe throw in some automated delays and stuff like that, but that's a personal taste thing I guess.

Care to share any info on the recording? mics/pres/mixing/etc?

Thanks for the feedback! I actually blended the kick and snare with samples from his kit. I NEVER do this, but I thought I'd give it a try and I think it came out pretty good. I had 8 mics set up on the kit. Kick, Snare Top + Bottom, L and R Overhead, Racktoms, floortom, and a room mic.

I had 57's on the toms and the top of the snare. On the bottom I had an Audix I5, only because that's all I had left, hah. D112 on the kick. AKG C1000 for left overhead and Audio Technica 3035 for the right overhead. I know that's probably unconventional, but once again that's all I have. Last but not least a Rode NT2-A for the room, set on omni. Everything went through an FMR RNP (Kick, Snare, Guitars, Vocals, Bass) with the exception of the toms, overheads and room mic. Toms went through the 002 pres. The room and the bottom of the snare went through firepod pres. (It's all I have! Embarassed

).

Everything else I did was fairly basic. I compressed the room mic a good amount and used parallel compression on the whole kit along with some eq using aux input tracks. Guitars were done with a 5150, believe it or not and a Mesa Stilletto Ace using a Fender thinline tele and a Les Paul studio. Both mic'd up with a 57. I used a room mic on the guitars and wasn't pleased with the sound that I got, so I used a reverb plug. Bass was done with some old Music Man head through an 8x10, mic'd up with a 57. I tried a couple other mics and that one worked the best for the sound we wanted. I used parallel compression on the vocals too for the first time and I really like it. We tracked the drums and guitars in the living room and the rest in the basement.

Oh and I do mean TUNE the vocals. Right I'm using Autotunes auto mode, which isn't as accurate, in my opinion as the graphic mode. So I'd like to polish them up a little bit.

I do agree that the guitars need to be brought up, so thank you for the advice!

I'll post an updated version when I get the chance. Thanks guys

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:11 pm

WindyCityMastering wrote:

I'm listening on earphones right now so I can't make too many comments.

In the beginning when the distorted guitars/drums kick in it doesn't have impact. I think the overall level needs to come up there, and the guitars sound like they need to come up a bit as well.

This is a really cool song. I'll listen to this when I'm at the studio and try to come up with more for you.

Just wondering if you've gotten the chance to listen on the monitors yet. If so, what do you think? Thanks

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