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[cerberus]

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]

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

[Fibes]

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.

[LSilva]

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.  

[NelsonL]

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.

[Cary Holding]

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.

[j.hall]

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?

[Fabricoh35]

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.

[Fibes]

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.

[scott volthause]

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.

[Mark.Fassett]

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.

[Adam Miller]

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...)  

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

Adam

[el duderino]

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.

[LSilva]

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...

[j.hall]

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.