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[Mike Slay]

I'm a FOH guy by trade and lurk over in the LAB, but I dabble at the home recording thing.  Anyway I was looking for some feedback on my home recording attempts that did for a friend's band.  

The first two tracks are form the latest project and are labeled new.  They were recorded in the bass players basement and mixed on an older pro tools rig.

The second two tracks were recorded in my bedroom on my laptop and mixed on nuendo.  

any way here's the link.
http://www.myspace.com/nueesardentes

please reserve all comments related to engineering quality or lack thereof for this forum and not to be posted on the myspace account.

in advance thanks

[j.hall]

sounds pretty good.  

my observations are as follows:

kick drum doesn't cut through the wall of guitar and gets lost a dull thud

mixes sound distorted as in 2 buss clipping (could be an mp3 thing though)

good balances

i'd say overall, it sounds like a live sound mix.  which isn't a bad thing......it just isn't a "studio" type approach.

for what you described your situation to be....these mixes turned out really well.

[John Ivan]

I listened to "dance song" The guitar part that starts the verse section is really cool ,It reminds me of early YES. :-}

J's comment about the kick is right on IMO. In fact, the snare sounds a little tubby to me too. The guitars are just a little loud but, all in all, it sounds good. There is a ton of energy here.

Part of the deal might be how you are monitoring and that's a HUGE subject.. Ain't it fun though?..:-}

[Thomas Lester]

I think you are asking about the second two tracks...  If so...  I dig them.  Great band.  The mix gets messy on for two weeks when the dirty guitars come in...  I dig the vibe.   Definitely sounds like it was recorded in a bedroom, but overall done well.

-Tom

[Mike Slay]

First off thanks for listening.  I appreciate the feed back.  As for the snare being "tubby".  It was totally the drummers desire to have a "fat" snare.  I personally love big fat snare but I think he asked to take it a bit far.  No one said anything about the drums before the break on Latina Flava.  My hard disk burped and killed about 4 or 5 bars prior to the break so I ended up cutting and pasting them back together. I know the distortion toward the end of Latina Flava is a mp3 thing.  Right at the moment I don't have a cd of the first two so I can't deffinatively say.  I believe  I went a bit overboard in my half ass approach to mastering on the 2 newer tracks and tried to get far more level than my ability would allow.  The big thing that caught my eye was the comment sounded as mixed live.  I think this was the critique I really was really expecting.  I believe the major root of the problem is I think of tracking in terms of live sound.  Since in my battles in the live world I fight evil rooms and loud wedges every day I lean towards the direct mic sound as much as possible.  And I think that's number one issue I've got to deal with.  Of course I probably would need a decent room to deal with first.  The other habbit from live is I tend to be a bit heavy handed with EQ'ing.  Maybe I'm wrong but I think I probably need to be aiming in the more subtle direction.  Monitoring is an issue for me.  Primarily I have a small pair of event tr6's and sometimes i get to play around with some mackie hr824's or whatever the model number is.  I agree somewhat with the kick drum thing.  But if I'm not mistaken my absolute weakest area is guitar in terms of not getting what I want.  I just seem to get harsh guitar sounds that don't sit well in the mix no matter what.  Finally i know i did more harm than good in trying to master the tracks myself.  

[wwittman]

I think subtlety is highly overrated.. especially as regards EQ.
it's actually one of my common complaints with live FOH engineers.. the good ones are NOT afraid to EQ to make it sound good.. the bad ones throw up their hands as if to say, "well the guitar is dull in here, what can i do?' rather than FIXING it.

[John Ivan]

wwittman wrote on Wed, 20 July 2005 18:27

I think subtlety is highly overrated.. especially as regards EQ. it's actually one of my common complaints with live FOH engineers.. the good ones are NOT afraid to EQ to make it sound good.. the bad ones throw up their hands as if to say, "well the guitar is dull in here, what can i do?' rather than FIXING it.

Yeah, I agree with this out look. When I mix FOH {which isn't very often any more} I do what ever I have to to get it to sound as record like as I can. Carve what ever you have to to make it sound great. That's what the tools are for.

[floodstage]

The first 2 songs were a bit clipped as earlier comments say.  

I like the bass tone on Latin Flava.

Latin Flava was the best mix of the four songs IMO.  Probably because the song has some space written into it.

The left guitar was a bit too loud on For Two Weeks.  

The mixes sound like good live mixes to me.  (except the hard panned guitars - I rarely hear hard pan at live gigs)

Overall, it does what a demo should do other than the clipping.

You guys are energetic.  (That's a good thing IMO!)