Volitions Advocate on 16/5/2009 at 00:30

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Yep, just give me till tomorrow.
We're playing tonight so things are a little hectic at the moment.

Truth be told everybody feels things should be mixed a certain way. especially adding vocals to the mix ends up creating arguments.
The mix isn't perfect but its good enough for a Demo. There's a local engineer that's going to take a look at it for us once we get him all the source files. He's got a nice Pro Tools setup, we're just using Cubase 5 with an ADAT preamp and we havent even tried mastering anything.. We'll pay somebody else to do that.

I wanted to hear the worst criticism we could get and I knew here was the best place for it. So thanks to those of you who had valid points to help out :thumb:

Enchantermon on 16/5/2009 at 03:58

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Haha. If you want something criticized, CommChat certainly is the right spot. As PigLick said, thank you for not getting defensive; it's much more pleasant to work with someone who can take criticism (especially when they asked for opinions).

Looking forward to hearing the proper mix. :)

Fingernail on 16/5/2009 at 21:02

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The mix of that one song is marginally better, if anything now the vocal is too loud and still pretty dry, and you can't fix the tuning discrepancy between the two guitars.

As for the others, sounds interesting enough. Not really my cup of tea in terms of the sound, it's very goth-rock heavy-metal guitars, and lyrically the songs don't speak much more to me other than about teh payne of it all, but hey, there's a ton of music mining that seam so if that's what you want to say then fair enough. Just a bit hackneyed for my liking.

Volitions Advocate on 17/5/2009 at 01:25

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Yeah i'm sure.
Remember it isn't mastered.
It sounds like crap on my computer speakers and in my car. but on my living room cd player it sounds the way we want it. mostly.

Fingernail on 17/5/2009 at 10:14

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I'm listening on nearfield studio monitors and it's not all that bad, quite honestly, but once again it is the drum sound that gives the impression of a certain deadness - it's all very centered and dull (the drum kit). It seems like the drums have very little stereo image at all and the guitars are panned around them, where usually you'd expect the drums to have at least equal stereo width to the instruments - usually greater.

What mic set up did you use on the drums? If you had two overheads, they should usually just be panned 100% left and right respectively to give a better sense of stereo.

As I know from my own experience, drums are a nightmare, and if you have phase discrepancies they can sound pretty dull - it's actually only recently that I've been able to sort out the drum sound to my satisfaction (on stuff I recorded almost a year ago) by using some delays to compensate for the phase differences of our drum mics, mixing is a long learning process but it is definitely worth picking up since you otherwise end up relying on professionals who, at our end of the market, probably won't care enough about your band's sound. I used to push the guitars way too loud to try and create more punch, but actually it's the drums that need to be out there doing that, and if they have a decent sound, they will.

It's also very subjective, I listen to the mixes of songs I do now and think "yeah, that's a good sound", and then I go and listen to my old mixes and although I hear several faults, I also hear things I still like in them that I haven't quite captured in the new ones (probably because I was trying to capture something completely different).

I do also believe that it essentially comes down to "if it sounds good, keep it", because whilst there are a million manuals that will tell you "a snare should sound like this, here's how to do it", actually listening to your favourite recordings will show you that a snare can sound like pretty much whatever you want it to, in the end that's your choice. But only if it adds up to the overall sound you want.

I remember getting criticised here (among other points) for too much panning of the guitars on one track, too much separation. But that's just a style, it's just a sound - I got it from Ziggy Stardust mainly, a song like Suffragette City where you have Mick Ronson totally on one side and Bowie's acoustic on the other. Take a look at the waveform of it, there's a massive discrepancy all the way through between the right and left channels, and it only becomes worse when they put the backing "hey man" onto the right with the electric guitar in the second half. But actually is it worse? I like that sound.

So basically what I'm saying is, yes, technical mixing/recording ability is essential for helping you get what you want, but that comes with time, gradually, and is something you'll always be learning. What you can't learn or be taught is what you want it to sound like.

So if that's as close as possible to getting at what you want to hear (nothing can ever perfectly realise the sound of your dreams, after all), then that's pretty much all there is to it. If you've really made something beautiful or interesting to listen to, there will be people who want to hear it.

If however, as is too often the case, you've arrived at that sound based on a string of circumstance, poor decisions, and lack of knowledge and experience, then welcome to the real world.

You've probably (as everyone wants to) released this stuff a little too early. It needs to sit a while, be mixed throroughly and slowly, and considered beyond the "cool, we've finally got a demo!!!" headrush. Again, this is something I've learnt. Everything seems very instant in a band, sometimes; you've got to do it NOW or the moment is lost. But really, I could post suff recorded ages ago and beyond me telling everyone, there'd be no clue it wasn't made last week. There's no real rush, it's better to get it right. Wait till it's remixed or mastered?