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Author Topic: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion  (Read 9689 times)

j.hall

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IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« on: July 24, 2006, 11:55:29 PM »

chat it up fellas
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garret

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2006, 12:37:29 AM »

Alright, lemme try this again.. this time in the right place.

I'd hoped to get a good listen to the tracks tonight, but my brain's just mush after a long day of work... so I'll post comments tomorrow sometime.

Some details on my mix of OTO....

general plan
I heard the song as a classic metal/hard rock number, with a few modern hardcore (atari teenage riot-esque) touches in it. Listening to the raw tracks, I was struck by how much .low rumbly stuff there was, so I started scheming right away to find stuff to drop. I shoved a few tracks aside that I knew weren't core elements of the song (moog, crazy guitar, digital bass, freq gtr, synth drone) and focused on mixing the most important tracks. Eventually, I ended up using everything at least a little bit. Er, except the drum sub track which seems to be a quick drum bus mix... I chucked that entirely.

tools
mixed in the box with Sonar
main reverb: voxengo impulse w/ emt plate impulse
special long reverb: ambience
eq/compression: wavearts trackplug
vocoder: mda vocoder
mangler: multilens
tape-compression emulator: voxengo tapebus

vocal
From the first listen, I loved the chorus part, but thought the verse was a bit unconvincing... The low growl seemed a bit put on... so I tried something new to thicken it up. I took the moog track, and vocoded it with the vocal, so during the verses, you'd hear the gurgle of the moog rumble through the vocals... I used an envelope so it would only kick in during the verses, since i liked the higher singing in the choruses “as is.”

the main vocal track was heavily eq'd to lose the mud and get a very biting, mid-rangy sound... High pass at 200hz, 2.7 octave wide 20db boost at 1khz (!), and 10db shelf at 5khz. No compression on the vocal... it was already mashed enough in the original source.

bass
simple mix here.. about a 50/50 mix of the “bass” and “xxx”, each eq'd to taste and compressed a little bit (maybe 3db gain reduction on the peaks).

guitars
hit gtr and gtr uzzy are panned 100% left and right. I put an envelope on gtr uzzy to drop it out when it lost the plot at times, and made my ears hurt, and to boost it when it hit something really essential. Both of these tracks got a little 2khz boost.

Rm gtr is dead center, lower in the mix, no eq or compression.. .just a little bit of envelope stuff for variety.

DRUMS

kick ball – flipped polarity, high pass at 37hz, boosted 6db at 88hz, and 6db at 4khz for a snappy beater. Without that last boost, I found the rhythmic counter-play between the snare and kick was getting lost in the mix.

snare – high pass at 125hz, really wide (4octave) 4db boost at 1k, compressed to get 6db on the peaks. Gobs of plate reverb.

sm2 overheads – mashed with voxengo tape bus to thicken it up. A bit of a rolloff with a low pass filter at 11khz to calm down the hats. Little bit of plate verb.

... I found the arrangement got a bit repetitive at 2:35, so for variety, I dropped out the drums entirely for a few measures, then brought just the kick back in, then the whole kit at 3:01.

OTHER STUFF

freqgtr – on a whim, I ran this through some presets in multilens and found one I liked a lot... it's kind of a chopper/helicopter counter rhythm.. you can hear it panned right at 1:22 or so. It's too much to have on all the time, so I used an envelope to slide it in whenever the vocal and guitars left a void.

digitalbass – I probably could have used more of this... but I liked it enough as just some extra fuzz in the noisy break at 1:27 or so.

crazy guitar
After getting the core mix grooving, I took another look at the castoff tracks. I listened again to crazy guitar, and though the first 20 seconds or so was a perfect intro to the tune... so I slid it earlier in time so it wouldn't get covered up by everythign else.

snare whitenoise effect
After I had my mix basically done, I found the snare a bit flat, lacking in something... trying out a technique I saw mentioned here on PSW (in whatever works), I tried to set up a trigger for some whitenoise with the snare track. I couldn't figure out how to set up a drum trigger in sonar, so instead I used a white noise sample, another vocoder, and some heavy comp/gating to get a similar result.

As some others have mentioned, I find it best to put a little bit of limiting on mixes when sending em out for review. This mix has 2db of peak limiting on it, complements of buzzmaxi3.

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scott volthause

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2006, 10:57:00 AM »

My OTO mix.

Tools
PARIS daw, mixed ITB

WTF was I thinking...
This song spoke, nay, screamed at me to smash it's head agaist the wall repeatedly while swilling PBR. Reminded me of a sprinking of King Crimson, FuManchu, etc.

I, like garretg, saw the third verse as getting a little long in the tooth as far as repetition goes. I liked the way the drum pattern changed in that part, so I stripped everything out except the drum sub, and two of the noise guitars and the vox. Drum sub was smashed with a PARIS compressor with the attack and release set to zero. It'll do interesting things when pushed most of the time, and I was't dissapointed.

I saw the intro and outro of the song to be largely self indulgent, so I nixed those, and aimed to get to the meat of the song as quickly as possible. I thought the final build needed some vocals, so I borrowed parts of the last chorus to throw in there.

The moog track got tossed because I just didn't find it musical. Actually that's not entirely true. While placing audio out on the grid, I totally overlooked it and mixed the song completely without it. When I was finished I noticed that it was still in the unused audio bin and I froze. Luckily it didn't add anything to the song in my opinion, so out it stayed.
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Fibes

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2006, 01:29:33 PM »

Well guys i took a listen to what was up last night and yes, i missed the deadline. That's what happens when you re-open your room smack in the middle of something like this, saturdays session lasted until 11:55 last night at which time I ran the (country) client off with the mixes of OTO. I sure am pissed that i never got a shot at Garrett's song but life (and a pile o' bills) got in the way.

I'm glad to see some of you "got" what the XXX track was for by treating the bass with some fuzz and am just as glad some of you didn't go there. FWIW the reason the guitars are not big and doubling the bass like a Mofo is 'cause that's what XXX was for at mix time. Noise noise noise.

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Fabricoh35

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2006, 01:30:18 PM »

Mix = OTO
Tools = Adobe Audition

To me the tracking was so good on this especially the drums that I didn't really need to do much.  Based on the crazy composition I thought it needed to have a main body of the song with the supporting "effect" tracks moving around all over the place under it.  I think it works with headphones but may not translate as well over speakers.  I used the moog part in the intro but felt it needed some high end freq's added so I duplicated the intro part of it and ran one through a pitch shifter and blended with the regular one.

The rest of the tracks have a little eq and some have a little compression on them.  The one of the bass tracks has a little flange added.

The end I thought needed something.  Had I been producing I woudl have suggested a lead part or soloish type guitar track for that section.  But since we could not add parts I decided to add a flange part.  I bounced the end tracks to a stereo track and added the crazy flange to it and blended with the main tracks.  As you can tell there is a bit of a volume jump.  That's because the end part was a bit of a last minute thing and I would have blended that a bit better under other circumstances.

Is it okay to ask fibes about the tracking now?  I'd love to know how the drums were tracked.
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cerberus

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2006, 01:39:09 PM »

i have not mixed in six months. so i took a too conservative approach.  

i intended to not be manipulative...to present "oto" as a similar listening experience to hearing the band play it live. i started with the idea that it's mainstream enough so that anyone who likes rock should be able to relate...

the main issue for me to solve was dynamics and density... so i regret not filtering some guitars heavily, not using any delay or reverbs on the "fuzzy" elements to bring them out but allow them to be turned down more.   in fact i used no reverbs at all, almost no eq, no buss compression, no peak limiting.

instead i expanded the dynamics of almost every track, especially the drums, while compressing copies of the tracks and runnning these in parallel so that the dynamic range of the mix got larger sounded more like i imagined their live sound would be.  

then i ran each track backwards through each process, and this gave me an opportunity to flip the polarity on some and crossfade them to affect what i refer to as "the yin/yang continuum"... it turns out that a compression setting that pulls inward slightly will tend to push outward when run backwards... to blend the copies together can afford very strict control over microdynamics, often just a touch of the reverse version can be enough...sometimes the reverse version sounds better, particuarly on drums where the envelope shape for attack and decay are very similar.

this process also affects the phase rotation and the amount of transient smearing on filtered processes, so i can use very mild eq settings and then apply their inverse as well for more control over nuances in frequency curves.  if your'e thinking it's radical or something,...i learned it from steve albini!  he ran tape backwards through compression for some tracks on the page-plant album.

i did use serveral modulators and delay effects to change the texture of some instruments... particularly the vocals (which also employ pitch correction).  also crazy guitar and freq guitar needed to have their tone adjusted, more tubelike overtones were added here...and some transistor ones... because i took these as lead instruments, so they had to sound sonically rich and deep,  and also more organic...which these two tracks themselves lacked.  i treated the other guitars that make the repeating riff as rhythm guitar elements.... though i agree they are also "lead guitars", something had to be turned down or filtered or panned out of the way, so i felt the main riff was strong as a background element.. but i do like the mixes that put it more up front.

i used q-clone to convolve transfer functions made from vintage analog devices onto some tracks such as the overheads, to make the cymbals sound less digital-like and more "real" as in "tape"...pseudo tape is what i used, i know real tape and i don't have it.  the snare got mildy saturated with mageneto, (which is technically a peak limiter) on a parallel snare track (there are five parallel snare tracks) because i wanted to keep the snap and the skin... i really wanted to have skin here...so the snare is parallleled so i could try to have both... the microdynamics are arranged carefully so that on some hits there is more skin and some hits have more snap. this instrument and the kick ball are intentionally spiked up with expanders so that they should hit a peak limiter well before the guitars vocals and other drum sounds, which i think i distorted enough. those i made  less dynamic so they wouldn't tend to distort easily under a limiting process.  

i also used the ssl listen mic compressor on the room drums... a technique which i think kevin said he tried on the recording but did not work.... probably  i should have thrown this track out and made my own drum submix,  why do i think it contains some "special dna" of the recording because the artist included it?  knowing what to throw away is important...i missed that opportunity here.

some of the compression processes i applied were on stereoized components and on the overheads which were stereo... those were all done as m/s processes. but i did mostly monaural processes and panned the results after the dynamics, just before summing.

i used bass enhancement in small amounts, but bass as an instrument is sacrificed somewhat for density... in retrospect and after hearing some other mixes, i'd think i would have been better off filtering some low freqs out of the guitars to let the bass breathe..... i spent so much time on the kick drum instead, but the kick ball track would have popped out more easily if i had cleared some low end space for bass instead of letting the guitars cover most of the bass.  what was the bass ?  i love bass so much i could only decide that the synth bass was not really a bass... but that "xxx" was indeed a bass... so there are two basses here as well as a thick array of growling guitars.... i didn't want to have to resort to "thinning" anything but the synth bass... thinning is for wussies!

i had always thought to set up a ducking thing, but in the end, i was not sure which track i really wanted to duck and under what... so i did some fader automation to make the final buildup after the break and the ending seem more dramatic... here you will find the moog synth finally emerges again as a lead instrument (i left most of it in the intro)..also i have done some panning to make the players seem more animated in this part alone.  now i wish i had given more of this specific kind of attention to each part, not just the final thirty seconds...

jeff dinces

Fibes

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2006, 02:13:37 PM »

Fabricoh35 wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:30

Is it okay to ask fibes about the tracking now?  I'd love to know how the drums were tracked.


I'm not J. and personally i think y'all need to concentrate on your hard work for at least a little while, if J wants to start a thread then so be it but I'm getting into the mix aspect of this excercise and wouldn't want it to lose THAT focus.

You will all get a kick out of it when we get there however.
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Fibes
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LSilva

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2006, 03:22:16 PM »

For mixing, I used Sonar (badly).

From all the OTO submissions that I've heard so far, it seems like I'm the only one who distorted the living shit out of the drums. Either I'm an idiot or all of you are. Laughing

I felt like they sounded too 'nice' for the rest of the tune.  I used Cakewalk Amp Sim and distorted the whole drum sub (except for the actual drum sub track).

I took Fibes cue and distorted the XXX track as well.  

I used a bunch of reverb on the kick and snare tracks (pre distortion).  I thought it would be cool to have kind of an 80's cannon ball snare type of reverb on there and make the drum sound cavernous.

The only other thing I did was to 'stereoize' the vocal with a hard  panned delay. It's probably too much, but I thought the vocal was too 'in your face' before that.

This was a great time.  I hope we can do it again soon.  It's always a treat to mix someone else's material- especially in this case since it was such a non-typical song.

Thanks guys (and thanks J for posting my mix),
Lou



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Lou Silva

cerberus

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #8 on: July 25, 2006, 06:34:46 PM »

LouMan wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 15:22

I used a bunch of reverb on the kick and snare tracks (pre distortion). I thought it would be cool to have kind of an 80's cannon ball snare type of reverb on there and make the drum sound cavernous.

oh that was you! well it certainly took me back in time. it may seem  out of fashion or out of place, but is it wrong?  i do notice some pre-dx-7 synth tones are popular again now. the thing to do is to listen to yours fresh and see if it seems wrong and not creative when the other mixes are not in the front of your mind.  it is too familiar a sound for me not to be reminded of other music by it; so it's hard for me to know what percentage of record buyers would really identify it as an "80's trap kit sound", or if it would distract them.

jeff dinces

j.hall

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #9 on: July 25, 2006, 07:12:29 PM »

Fibes wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:13

Fabricoh35 wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:30

Is it okay to ask fibes about the tracking now?  I'd love to know how the drums were tracked.


I'm not J. and personally i think y'all need to concentrate on your hard work for at least a little while, if J wants to start a thread then so be it but I'm getting into the mix aspect of this excercise and wouldn't want it to lose THAT focus.

You will all get a kick out of it when we get there however.




this actually is the thread for all this discussion......

start asking every one all the questions you want, and start answering questions.
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Fibes

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #10 on: July 25, 2006, 07:54:18 PM »

j.hall wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 19:12

Fibes wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:13

Fabricoh35 wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:30

Is it okay to ask fibes about the tracking now?  I'd love to know how the drums were tracked.


I'm not J. and personally i think y'all need to concentrate on your hard work for at least a little while, if J wants to start a thread then so be it but I'm getting into the mix aspect of this excercise and wouldn't want it to lose THAT focus.

You will all get a kick out of it when we get there however.




this actually is the thread for all this discussion......

start asking every one all the questions you want, and start answering questions.


Well you heard him.

Anyone care to guess what format OTO was recorded in?
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Fibes
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NelsonL

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #11 on: July 25, 2006, 08:19:07 PM »

Fibes wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 16:54

j.hall wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 19:12

Fibes wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:13

Fabricoh35 wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:30

Is it okay to ask fibes about the tracking now?  I'd love to know how the drums were tracked.


I'm not J. and personally i think y'all need to concentrate on your hard work for at least a little while, if J wants to start a thread then so be it but I'm getting into the mix aspect of this excercise and wouldn't want it to lose THAT focus.

You will all get a kick out of it when we get there however.




this actually is the thread for all this discussion......

start asking every one all the questions you want, and start answering questions.


Well you heard him.

Anyone care to guess what format OTO was recorded in?



ADAT?
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LSilva

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #12 on: July 25, 2006, 08:21:37 PM »

Fibes wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 19:54

j.hall wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 19:12

Fibes wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:13

Fabricoh35 wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 13:30

Is it okay to ask fibes about the tracking now?  I'd love to know how the drums were tracked.


I'm not J. and personally i think y'all need to concentrate on your hard work for at least a little while, if J wants to start a thread then so be it but I'm getting into the mix aspect of this excercise and wouldn't want it to lose THAT focus.

You will all get a kick out of it when we get there however.




this actually is the thread for all this discussion......

start asking every one all the questions you want, and start answering questions.


Well you heard him.

Anyone care to guess what format OTO was recorded in?



Evil?


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Lou Silva

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #13 on: July 25, 2006, 10:31:54 PM »

D.P.
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scott volthause

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #14 on: July 26, 2006, 12:35:23 AM »

Fibes wrote on Tue, 25 July 2006 19:54



Well you heard him.

Anyone care to guess what format OTO was recorded in?



Nope. I'm definitely not going to play that game. I will say I thought the source material sounded good though, no matter what the format.

If I recall correctly, I think I've read around here before that you've used the Blue Ball on kick, and since the kick track was called "kick ball", I'm curious if you used the Blue Ball on that. If so I'm astounded. I never thought it would sound that nice, although it's somewhat apparant that whatever followed it (pre and comp) was decent as well.

I'd love to hear your "intended" mix of the song, just to see how badly I reamed your tune. (this is a superhorse song, right?)
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cerberus

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #15 on: July 26, 2006, 12:36:44 AM »

i am not used to this style (oto); but i felt that everything was recorded with much more compression than i'm used to... so that is where my very first observation comes in: "hey this thing is mixing itself".  

i feel like the guitarist(s) is very particular about their sound and may not be willing to leave dynamics to "chance"... or the mix engineer for that matter.  this is a main reason i chose a live/non-manipulative motif... it seemed like most of the tracks were already puffed up, and most were  saying to me:  "i'm important, don't leave me out of the mix".

i am thinking that my favorite oto mixes (hello adam, where did you disappear to?) must have used some radical gating/expansion.... i was just too meek.  on one hand i wanted to make a pop-ish mix.. on the other, i found no strong hooks to grab on to, but i could have carved some out if i had been less ginger about stepping on kevin's band's toes...again i guess i have "insulted" a guitarist once... and a singer more than once...  (one dude had the balls to ask me if i would "treat bob dylan's vocals that way"  what a diva!) i don't know kevin's band.. so would it have been ok to pitch shift a guitar up an octave?  i didn't want to go there.   when i mix a beatlesque pop song more like northern lights, i think  anything like that is ok... but "leather jacket" rock bands..<<imo>>  tend to be very serious about themselves sounding on record similar to the way they sound live.

there is great playing in this recording, but the recording as a whole seems to lack "articulation".  i would suggest to record a band playing this densely on tape, so that the saturation does it's thing, the rough edges do not need to be looked after so much...   the vocals also sound like they are compressed, can't you just turn  the preamp down or use two preamps? why should such loud vocals even need to be gated?  but yes they kind of do..what is up with that weirdness going on with the vocal and it's "noise floor"?  

why not record some direct tracks that are really raw guitar along with the amped and pedalled ones so the mixer can have more options? usually bass is recorded direct and amped, so i wish with all the basses and guitars didn't sound amped in the same room.  (and the vocal too perhaps?)

the leakage is ok with me, i really didn't feel compelled to gate that, but in expanding the drums that got pushed down which i meant to do instead. i wanted from the outset to use the leakage to advantage... instead of reverbs, which i usually use about ten of, mostly on vox and drums (e.g. whatever mix i posted in the "introduce yourself" thread here);  but no reverbs at all are on my oto mix.

jeff dinces

Adam Miller

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #16 on: July 26, 2006, 08:51:16 AM »

My mix:

Done in Cubase SX. Compression and eq by and large courtesy of inbuilt cubase plugs. More critical compression from Waves c1/Rencomp. Sonalksis comp on the 2bus. Short reverb from waves IR1, and spring emulation from waves supertap delay.

Drums

Well recorded, obviously- I didn't need to do a great deal to them (although I did anyway). Kick ball got the customary eq scoop, also some de-essing to even out the amount of beater slap between strokes in the chorus. Kick sub was lo-passed at 2k, then blended in underneath.

I duplicated the snare track- one got a small eq push at the top and bottom, the other was gated and smashed through an overdrive plugin.

I thought the verses would sound cool with panned mono drums... so that's what I did. I also put gobs of spring reverb on the snare to make it sound nice and lofi.

Drum subgroup got a bit of squash from the Magneto tape saturation plug.

After a while I got slightly pissed off at the mono-ness of the Oh's, so I dropped in some hard-panned crash cymbal samples at the relevant points of the chorus.

Guitars and noise

...were essentially mixed by using lots of automation to try and carve out some space and a sense of movement in the track. This probably took 50% of the mix time. Everything got filtered and eq'd heavily, particularly the digital bass, to make it all fit. I couldn't find a use for the moog bass... so out it stayed.

I subgrouped all the guitars, ran a couple through amp sims to get a bit more body and less fuzz, then compressed the whole lot to get them more aggressive. Nice.

Bass

Well, I didn't figure that one was meant for a distortion, and one was for clean- so I whacked them both through quadrafuzz...

And a stack of compression. And then waves Renbass to put back some sub.  

Vox

were pretty dry- hipassed at 300hz, a small 6k boost, some delay in the verses to sit them back with the drums.

That's about it. No fancy expansion techniques, just good ol'fashioned compression and eq.

I had fun doing it- so thanks to Fibes for the tracks, and J for arranging everything.

Cheers

Adam
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Fibes

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #17 on: July 26, 2006, 10:25:29 AM »

The formats were: ADAT, VS 880 (in hotel rooms) and then finally landed in DP... Those tracks are over ten years old and were from a record that was never finished or released of my old band GAM.

The drums were recorded with primarily 57s, with an SM2 overhead and no that wasn't a Blue Ball on kick, chances are it was a D-30 or D-25 but I'm guessing D-25. The preamps were prolly Neve 33115 on Kik, SNR, OHS and Mackie on the rest. Guitars were recorded on the VS 880 direct (maybe re-amped) and were intentionally "wrong." The vocal was done with a 57, Art MP-1 somewhere out there... and into the VS-880, same with the Moog. I think the Bass was Tracked with a Peavey VMP2 and later run through an LA2A upon Transfer. I think the drum sub was for the Vs880 guide track but don't remember.  

As soon as I get the DAT machine working I'll try to post my Original mix of the tune and one that I've done recently for giggles.


FWIW I really dug a lot of the stuff y'all have done to the tracks and I think that it speaks volumes about how important the selection of a Mix engineer is, not only in talent, but most importantly, in personality. I hear a different soul in each mix, and that is freaking cool IMNSHO.

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LSilva

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #18 on: July 26, 2006, 03:41:35 PM »

Cary Holding wrote on Wed, 26 July 2006 09:46



First, although sampled drums are not my favorite, they seemed to work for this particular song.  Why did some feel the need to treat them so radically?  I understand it’s a preference thing.  Hearing that much reverb or distortion on the drums makes me ask; Am I that ‘out of touch’ with what’s going on right now?



I went radical because I felt the song called for it.  The drums seemed like the only 'conventional' tracks out of the lot (except for the 2 virgin bass tracks).

To me it seemed like the production and tracks were totally committed to sounding the way that they were going to sound.  It was fearless- so I needed to be equally fearless. Mainstream really never even occurred to me.

I couldn't really get it to sound 'right' (to me anyway) without it.

As a footnote, I don't consider myself (nor do I ever aspire to be) a good mixer.  I just enjoy recording stuff and playing with audio.  

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Lou Silva

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #19 on: July 26, 2006, 04:16:28 PM »

LouMan wrote on Wed, 26 July 2006 12:41

Cary Holding wrote on Wed, 26 July 2006 09:46



First, although sampled drums are not my favorite, they seemed to work for this particular song.  Why did some feel the need to treat them so radically?  I understand it’s a preference thing.  Hearing that much reverb or distortion on the drums makes me ask; Am I that ‘out of touch’ with what’s going on right now?



I went radical because I felt the song called for it.  The drums seemed like the only 'conventional' tracks out of the lot (except for the 2 virgin bass tracks).

To me it seemed like the production and tracks were totally committed to sounding the way that they were going to sound.  It was fearless- so I needed to be equally fearless. Mainstream really never even occurred to me.

I couldn't really get it to sound 'right' (to me anyway) without it.

As a footnote, I don't consider myself (nor do I ever aspire to be) a good mixer.  I just enjoy recording stuff and playing with audio.  




To further Floodstage's point-- I'm pretty sure you guys are talking about different songs.
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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #20 on: July 26, 2006, 10:57:55 PM »

rattleyour wrote on Wed, 26 July 2006 16:16

LouMan wrote on Wed, 26 July 2006 12:41

Cary Holding wrote on Wed, 26 July 2006 09:46



First, although sampled drums are not my favorite, they seemed to work for this particular song.  Why did some feel the need to treat them so radically?  I understand it’s a preference thing.  Hearing that much reverb or distortion on the drums makes me ask; Am I that ‘out of touch’ with what’s going on right now?



I went radical because I felt the song called for it.  The drums seemed like the only 'conventional' tracks out of the lot (except for the 2 virgin bass tracks).

To me it seemed like the production and tracks were totally committed to sounding the way that they were going to sound.  It was fearless- so I needed to be equally fearless. Mainstream really never even occurred to me.

I couldn't really get it to sound 'right' (to me anyway) without it.

As a footnote, I don't consider myself (nor do I ever aspire to be) a good mixer.  I just enjoy recording stuff and playing with audio.  




To further Floodstage's point-- I'm pretty sure you guys are talking about different songs.



Ha!  Yeah, I'm completely sure Louman didn't see that I was referring to Northern Lights.  Regardless.  All fixed.
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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #21 on: July 26, 2006, 11:16:38 PM »

i've been known to actually do my moderating job from time to time.......HA

sorry guys, i should have figured that one out prior to starting just one thread for two songs.

anyway.....

the point of this thing was for people to learn exactly how other guys do what they do.

no one seems to really be getting on that.

are every one's mixes just not that exciting to any one else?
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Fabricoh35

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Re: IMP5 mix discussions
« Reply #22 on: July 27, 2006, 12:06:14 AM »

j.hall wrote on Wed, 26 July 2006 23:16


the point of this thing was for people to learn exactly how other guys do what they do.

no one seems to really be getting on that.

are every one's mixes just not that exciting to any one else?


I have a lot of questions but I need a little more time to sort them out and match up which questions go with which mixer.  For me personally I need to "live" with the mixes a little longer and really get to them.
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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #23 on: July 27, 2006, 12:53:37 AM »

I'm getting it. A lot of it is hard to put into words but I'm digging on hearing things that I never would have thought to do and that's what makes all of us "special." I haven't had too much time to make notes and put them in text but on a basic general level i think this shows how different we all approach the mix process and how even a small chunk of the process can yield very different (although not better or worse) results. It's gonna take some time to digest and formulate ideas on the specifics per each mix.

Overall y'all should all be proud of yourselves, the majority of the mixes shine in their own way.

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #24 on: July 27, 2006, 01:18:02 AM »

It's weird... I feel like I can't comment on anyones mix because as I listen I think to myself, "Oh yeah, I can kind of see why they did that."

I thought they were all good for what they were.

I will add though J, I found it interesting that your mixes were very "guitar forward" and "drums rearward" for a drummer. However, the thing that impresses me most is the control that your mixes have. Everything is in it's place. I won't say that I love it, but it's impressive since I have yet to be able to master absolute control over sonics.
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Mark.Fassett

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #25 on: July 27, 2006, 04:37:21 AM »

Well, I've been playing at recording and mixing for right around a month, now, and spent my initial pile of money on monitors, a firepod, mics and Cubase SX, so I'm pretty much stuck with the plugins that came with Cubase and free ones (Mostly the Classic ones from Kjaerhus Audio).

Bass - The three bass tracks are pretty much even as far as levels go. I panned bass to the left a little, and xxx to the right about the same amount. I left digital bass right in the middle. I didn't touch them, otherwise.

Drums - I used the Classic compressor with the "Kick & Snare" preset (yeah - I'm still trying to figure out how these things work) on kick ball, and sent all the drums to an fx track with Classic Reverb on it. I didn't use any EQ as I pretty much liked them the way they were.

Guitars - I didn't do anything with crazy gtr and freq gtr other than to pan them to oppisite sides and set the levels to where they could be heard without driving me nuts. Hit gtr had a high pass at 204Hz, a 3db cut at 800hz, a 2.9db boost at 2Khz, and a 3.8db shelf at 5.5Khz. Gtr uzzy got a high pass at 206Hz, a 3.4db cut at 800Hz, a 2.4db boost at 2.5Khz, and a 3.8db boost at 7.1Khz. Room gtr had a similar high pass and cut at 800Hz as the other two tracks, a 2.4db boost at 2Khz, and a -1.9db shelf at 5.7Khz. I was mostly trying to separate them from the bass tracks.

Vocals - I split the chorus and verse onto two different tracks. I wanted to make the verse brighter without affecting the chorus. On the verse, I put a high pass at 250Hz, a 3.2db boost at 1.5khz, a 3.8db boost at 5.6khz, and a .4db boost at 16Khz. I then ran it through the built in DeEsser, the Classic reverb (a large hall), the Classic flanger, and a compressor. The chorus got a high pass at 150Hz, and a 10db cut at 440Hz, and really small boosts at 1Khz and 10Khz. It was run through the DeEsser, the Clasic Reverb and the compressor.

This was great fun. More satisfying than pounding out code all day, in some ways, though after listening to the other mixes, it seems there were alot more things I could have done with this. I certainly didn't listen to all the tracks closely enough before getting started as there were definitely parts I missed.
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Adam Miller

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #26 on: July 27, 2006, 08:55:42 AM »

So J.... tell us about your mix. Was it done ITB, or is your Amek still in action? It sounded to me like quite a straightforward treatment fx wise- I like it.

Think my fav mix overall was assman's, it had a nice bite to the low mids that gave it quite a cool edge.

I think, as a whole, I preferred the more conservative treatments to the radical ones- not to say that there weren't some good ideas on show in all of them though. I think y'all could have compressed the drums a bit more though (except maybe Scott...)  Smile

Feel free to lay into my mix as you see fit....

Adam
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el duderino

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #27 on: July 27, 2006, 02:57:24 PM »

Adam Miller wrote on Thu, 27 July 2006 08:55


Think my fav mix overall was assman's, it had a nice bite to the low mids that gave it quite a cool edge.



hey, Thanks alot. I'll post up info on what i did hopefully later today when i get home.

but for now i can say it was done at my house
PT LE with Waves platinum bundle and URS classic console EQ's
Monitors were Dynaudio BM5A's.

I havent had a chance to listen to all the mixes yet, only about 4 i think. But i liked them all, it is very interesting to see what people have done with it. I really liked some of the edits made, thats one thing i wish i had more time to mess with but so it goes.
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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #28 on: July 27, 2006, 06:37:18 PM »

It is pretty amazing to hear the different interpretations of the song.

What really amazes me is how 'clean' some of the mixes sound. Some of you got a lot of clarity out of the tracks.

I had a bitch of a time with that.  It seemed to me that no one track seemed to do all that much on it's own. But with all the tracks together, it really came to life.

I didn't have the time or patience to really weed out all the important parts of every track to make sure that it 'spoke' at the appropriate time.

How did you guys do it?  Did you guys listen to each track solo'd until you found out where everything was?

Just curious...
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Lou Silva

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #29 on: July 27, 2006, 10:27:27 PM »

scott volthause wrote on Thu, 27 July 2006 00:18


I won't say that I love it, but it's impressive since I have yet to be able to master absolute control over sonics.


that comment to me means you didn't like my mix at all.

so instead of me diving into what i did, i'm actually much more interested in hearing what you think is wrong with my mix

that goes for every one.  feel free to tell me what you personally think is wrong with my mix.


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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #30 on: July 27, 2006, 11:00:54 PM »

J. you get the gold star for top end.

That said, the lows sound to me like you are mixing with a sub. I think i know you do but, i hear it. Some of the mid-bass gets lost whereas the lows pop through. Sure, I know it's partially the bassista nd the tracking bastard but the bass levels don't match up with your top, so either start wearing a one piece or go nude.

Get my drift?

FWIW although it was sonically different in many ways J. hit what I recall my original mix pretty closely, cept i had distorted bass in sections. Must get DAT wired...

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #31 on: July 28, 2006, 07:05:50 AM »

j.hall wrote on Fri, 28 July 2006 03:27


that goes for every one.  feel free to tell me what you personally think is wrong with my mix.



If I'm nitpicking, then I would say that maybe the drums suffer a little at the expense of the guitars/synths. To me the drums drive the track, but to my taste they're perhaps pushed back behind the guitars here. Having said that, I do like loud drums, and even then when I revisit old material I tend to find I put the drums a bit too far forward in the mix- so it's probably just my fucked up taste.

The other thing I'd say, is that maybe the mix was a bit static, in terms of automation and fx. But in a track as dense as this, it's hard to appreciate what someone else may have done behind the scenes, so this observation might be quite wide of the mark.

As i said though, i'm nitpicking.
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scott volthause

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #32 on: July 28, 2006, 02:43:27 PM »

j.hall wrote on Thu, 27 July 2006 22:27

that comment to me means you didn't like my mix at all.


untrue. i did like your mix / mixing in general for the reasons stated... you have a great talent for individualizing components and making them all audible and controlled. it's impressive and intimidating.

it's tricky though. obviously we saw different things in the song, based on the approach to the mix we individually took. that goes for everyone involved. it's like standing in the middle of your friends living room that has white walls and suddenly blurting out the color that you think the room should be painted.

obviously this song was a blank wall in unmixed form, and we all stepped into the room and shouted "RED!" or "GREEN!"

for me to turn to you and say, "Dude, red? Are you crazy? It should totally be blue." that would be assinine.

j.hall wrote on Thu, 27 July 2006 22:27

so instead of me diving into what i did, i'm actually much more interested in hearing what you think is wrong with my mix


i thought the super wide and upfront guitars were a bit overdone. the drums were pushed back a tad farther that i would have done it.

it's not wrong. just different than what i did.
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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #33 on: July 28, 2006, 11:56:39 PM »

Fibes wrote on Thu, 27 July 2006 22:00

 but the bass levels don't match up with your top, so either start wearing a one piece or go nude.

Get my drift?




not really.  do you mean my bottom end is too big, or not big enough?

my sub only balances out the bottom octave in my room.  trust me, it's not cranked by any means.  

i didn't think the drums were that far back.....i'll have to take another listen to my mix.
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Fibes

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #34 on: July 29, 2006, 12:08:15 AM »

Your bottom octave is fine, it's above that where I'm hearing a bit of a wandering.

As I said before it's minor and prolly my fault.

Listen to the bass guitar...
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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #35 on: July 29, 2006, 12:13:39 AM »

fault doesn't matter, just wanted to clarify.

if it's minor i'm not worried, if it's major i want to evaluate.

i'll double check but i don't think i eq'd your bass sound at all.
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Fibes

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #36 on: August 01, 2006, 09:43:46 AM »

Here's a mix of OTO from a decade ago:

OTO

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Fabricoh35

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #37 on: August 03, 2006, 01:01:52 PM »

I'm going to start with Volthause's mix.  From a creative standpoint I like what he did with the song best.  The dropouts and the break and the vocals added at the end are great touches IMO.  From a sonic standpoint it is not quite my favorite.  It is very compressed and upfront and I don't know if I am totally in love with that.  Granted if I had only heard this version I would probably not even think twice about it.

Did you put the break in each track or was that something you put into the 2 track mixdown?
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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #38 on: August 03, 2006, 10:11:44 PM »



I second the vote for Scotts mix.  Although I didn't have a chance to do a mix of this song, so he really had no competition.  Razz

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #39 on: August 05, 2006, 05:59:56 PM »

Thanks guys.

Fabricoh, I admit that I did overdo the compression, but that was my intention. I really thought that it would push everything forward, almost in a "almost going to explode" fashion. To me, that's what the song said to do.

As for the break, I did the break on each track.
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Fabricoh35

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Re: IMP5 "OTO" mix discussion
« Reply #40 on: August 05, 2006, 11:21:16 PM »

Just as a side note on my mix.  I don't know if you can tell but the whole mix was done on a pair of $15 Koss headphones.

If anything I would say it is a credit to great tracking.  With clean tracks you can get away with quite a bit and still come out looking pretty good.
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