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Mixing Advice Required - help desperately needed, more like!

Sean

By Sean,
in Recording

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Sean Proficient

Sean

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Well, I've had an interesting day and my journey along the road of mixing has passed another milestone. I spent a couple of hours with the guy that mixed the songs and he went into a lot of detail playing me the isolated drum tracks and comparing them with other isolated drum tracks that he's recorded, some of which were by a drummer I know and used to play with and it was like night and day. He also told me that he'd spent ages cleaning up our drum tracks and using lots of limiting and compression to even out the differential between individual hits; he'd even used samples that were triggered for the kick tracks. He'd done the best he could in the time we paid for and it was evident that there was going to be a huge amount of work to sort out the tracks. In essence this boils down to one of the laws of universe, sh*t in = sh*t out. There was no way on earth we were going to get good drums on the recording.


I came away from there with the stems burned on to a DVD and I've been through them for a few hours this evening and just can't believe how feeble the drums are. The guy asked me how, after so many years of experience, we ended up with such a feeble drummer but that's a long story.

Anyway, we're going to get someone in on drums to re-record the songs with us.

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Dad3353 Grand Master

Dad3353

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[quote name='Sean' timestamp='1398541413' post='2435137']...such a feeble drummer...[/quote]

Go easy on your drumming buddy; 'home' drumming, 'live' drumming and 'studio' drumming are different universes. It's not easy to record drums first time; it's not easy after some experience, either, but it helps. I've not heard the stems, of course, but from your raw version, there's nothing that warrants hanging the guy from the beams. Getting it all 'spot on' takes a fair bit of magic. I certainly hope any replacement bloke hits it off, and we'd love to hear the difference.
Well done for having the spark and patience to sit down and talk things through with your mixing fellow. Keep on learning; only another 40-odd years to go... B)

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moonbass Enthusiast

moonbass

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'...such a feeble drummer...'


Hmm, not sure I'd entirely agree with his assessment. Listening to your link to the unmixed tracks, the drum sounds way better (to me) than whatever he did with them. There's a lot of timing issues, but the individual hits don't sound too uneven, and the kick sounds pretty good. There are some odd reverbs and gates on the 'unmixed' tracks though that would be a pain to work with. Were they recorded when you were tracking? If not it's best to remember to track things as dry as possible; you can add any effects at a later stage, but like salt in your cooking you can't take it out later.
I still think it would be good for you to hear another mixer taking a shot at it.

Edited by moonbass
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Lozz196 Grand Master

Lozz196

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I like the unmixed tracks, aside from a bit of de-cluttering I`d leave them as they were, just sharpen a few things up a bit (probably in technical terms that`s compression and a bit of eq). Think they have a nice organic quality to them that the mixing has removed.

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Sean Proficient

Sean

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I have the stems now. If anyone would like them, I just need to get them loaded up somewhere, there's about 1.5Gb per song as WAV files. Any suggestions?

Let me know if you fancy a go at mixing them.

Edited by Sean
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Dad3353 Grand Master

Dad3353

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[quote name='Sean' timestamp='1398547133' post='2435218']
I have the stems now. If anyone would like them, I just need to get them loaded up somewhere, there's about 1.5Gb per song as WAV files. Any suggestions?

Let me know if you fancy a go at mixing them.
[/quote]

I've a google drive that could be used for sharing these files. If you confirm, I'll send you a link by PM, and anyone interested can PM me for a copy of that link. That's how I do it for our Mixing Challenge; it works well enough...

Edited by Dad3353
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Sean Proficient

Sean

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[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1398552090' post='2435284']


I've a google drive that could be used for sharing these files. If you confirm, I'll send you a link by PM, and anyone interested can PM me for a copy of that link. That's how I do it for our Mixing Challenge; it works well enough...
[/quote]

Yes, that would be great, thanks.

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Dad3353 Grand Master

Dad3353

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Good afternoon, all...

Sean has uploaded all the original stems onto a Google drive; 22 WAV files for a total of 417 Mb. Anyone wishing to download these to 'have a go' at mixing them, or to fully understand how they sounded as recorded, can PM me and I'll reply with the link to the drive. Any 'final mixes' can equally be uploaded to the drive. B)
Over to you...

Edited by Dad3353
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6v6 Community Regular

6v6

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Thanks Dad3353, I've now got a link and will have a crack at a remix later.

Initial impressions of the basic recordings are definitely that the drummer is playing with a very light touch and/or the drum mics were pretty far away from the drums so beefing that up is going to be a bit of a challenge :)

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Dad3353 Grand Master

Dad3353

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[quote name='6v6' timestamp='1398772220' post='2437393']
Thanks Dad3353, I've now got a link and will have a crack at a remix later.

Initial impressions of the basic recordings are definitely that the drummer is playing with a very light touch and/or the drum mics were pretty far away from the drums so beefing that up is going to be a bit of a challenge :)
[/quote]

Indeed; I used the gate in Reaper to trigger MIDI drums (MDrummer, other flavours will work, too...) on the kick and snare, for that very reason. Not perfect, certainly, but got some 'control' back.

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6v6 Community Regular

6v6

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[quote name='Sean' timestamp='1398886509' post='2438731']
Well, that remix has managed to help us get a new drummer! And it's a guy I really wanted to play with again after not seeing him in ages!
[/quote]

Aww, I kinda feel sorry for the guy on the recording now! He did sound like he needed a serious dose of irn-bru though so I hope it works out with the new guy :)

[size=4]Still planning to have a crack at a remix but been busy with work, hopefully have something ready over the weekend. [/size]

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lurksalot Grand Master

lurksalot

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[quote name='RockfordStone' timestamp='1398950192' post='2439314']
wouldn't mind having a go mixing myself if the option is still there. often times you find how good people are when you record them. we replaced our drummer after a recording session, recorded 4 songs with him and got them back to mix them and it was woeful
[/quote]

There is no hiding from the recording , I avoid the studio like the plague :lol: , at least at home I can do it as many times as it takes :blush:

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WinterMute Mentor

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Just a historical note for anyone who gives a monkeys, a "stem" is not a track, a track is a single recorded sound on whatever you're using for a recorder, it can be the output of several mics or DI's or whatever, but it's not able to be split back to it's components. A Stem is a term from film mixing thats found it's way into music production, the usual term is a group. A stem is a group of tracks that have been sub-mixed to make a single channel sub-mix and is usually used to make a large production mix easier to handle.

Imagine a snare drum recorded with 3 mics, a 57 and a U87 on the top and a 414 on the bottom say, each mic would be usually fed to one track, but for mixing the outputs of those three track might be fed to a single mixer input, this then is the snare Stem. You can alter the balance between the mics in the recorder (assuming it's a DAW…) to get the sound right, then you use the single mixer channel to balance that sound into the main mix.

Stem mixing is only useful if you have access to the whole component mix, otherwise you have other people making mix decisions for you before you get hold of the audio.

Always send the component tracks if you can, always get them from the engineer before you leave the studio too, make sure you have a nice big HD to hold them.

Good luck with your mixes BTW, nothing worse than getting a disappointing mix back from an engineer.

Edited by WinterMute
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