Dirty blues rock (Ben Harper/Blind Boys cover)

[Brendo]

Some of you may remember a song I posted a while back, in a thread named "Losing Perspective"... this is the same band, but doing a cover of "Well Well Well" by Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

http://68.146.204.100/brendo/wellwellwell7jan07.mp3

Mix done at 2am in headphones. What ideas can you lot come up with to spice it up a bit?

[seagate]

Drums up a bit.

I'm listening on a laptop with my iPod buds, so it might just be me but everything is bunched towards the lower end, maybe just open the guitars up a little...

But what would I know, I still have my mixing training wheels on...

http://www.msc.id.au/private/tmp/couch.gif

[Brendo]

The band asked for "warmer" sounds than the roughs, I translated as "lay off the treble a bit".

The drummer isn't the greatest, so maybe I was subconsciously trying to hide him...

[Mixerman]

The band asked for "warmer" sounds than the roughs, I translated as "lay off the treble a bit".

The drummer isn't the greatest, so maybe I was subconsciously trying to hide him...

It's certainly warm.

You buried the drumme and I can still tell he's not "the greatest," so I'd say that tact didn't work out very well.

The best way to hide a less than stellar drummer is to use more room mic. The room tends to "smear" and hide such maladies as poor timing. If you don't have much of a room to work with, then ccompress the overheads more (which I would suggest anyway. And give me some snare on those snares. There is no top end on those, yet the cymbals are all top end. The drums are an instrument. One instrument, and should sound like one instrument. If some parts of the drums are dark and others are bright, they sound like different instruments. Like overdubs.

Once you have the drums sounding like a single instrument, then you need to open up the entire mix a bit. There is a difference between warm and dark. This mix SHOULD be warm, but it should also have clarity. You do that with a touch of broadband 16k on each channel or across the 2-buss (careful, a prosumer EQ across the 2-Buss could do more harm than good.) And I mean a touch. Like in the 1db range.

Mixerman

[Brendo]

Thanks MM... I'll get on that.

There's no room mic, unfortunately - so fucking with the overheads seems to be the order of the day.

[Brendo]

I don't suppose this is any better?

[ajcamlet]

is that a house snare drum, or did the dude bring it?

[Brendo]

dude brought it. house snare = worse... who the hell gets a "Basix" sponshorship anyway?!

thats a tama superstar snare.

[ajcamlet]

lemme guess the dude hasnt changed the heads since Clinton was in office and the snare wires are probably all fucked up, bent, and completely misaligned

ANY drum can sound passing if its set up correctly. Even a Basix. The cheaper the drum the harder you have to work at it to get it passing and the sweet spot is most likely very very narrow sonically and from a TIME perspective (i.e wont stay there very long and is heavily influenced by climate). but it can be done. That is certainly not that shitty of a snare drum (superstar) and it has the capability of sounding quite good! (i had one for a while)

Im going to guess that drum sound like ass in the room. couple it with a less than stellar player (at least in this performance) and you get a shit ass sounding back beat. This is a case where i would probably throw up my hands and layer it with a sample.

p.s: would it be a terrible thing to actually end the tune on the acapella vocal & drum thing rather than bring the band back in?
just a passing thought.

[Brendo]

about ending on the vocal & drum thing... the singers keep telling me they love the way it kicks back in.

um... yeah, he hadn't changed the heads on that snare, he did tune it though.

the basix sounds good with new heads and tuned up high... but it wasn't in that state on the day.

background to this project, we did 3 songs in 2 days.

[bunnerabb]

Is it me or is there a very small amount of information over 3k, here?

I'm listening on crap, atm, so...

[seagate]

This mix is a lot better...

[Brendo]

Is it me or is there a very small amount of information over 3k, here?

I'm listening on crap, atm, so...

There's much less in the OH's at least on the new mix... but there's a touch more on the vocals and other instruments.

[Mixerman]

Okay, this is way better.

Now it's sounding like everything has the same sort of warmth to it. This makes it MUCH easier for the Mastering Engineer as well. You see, if your cymbals are super bright but the rest of the mix is super warm, then it makes it much harder to EQ the mix.

I do think the snare is a little dark. I taks it you didn't use a bottom mic. If you can get some snares out of that bad boy, I think the mix would be better. You can do that by adding top end to the snare mic channel. You can also cut in the 400hz range (maybe as low as 200hz (sweep to find the most offensive and boxy frequency while boosting, then cut that frequency)). I'd cut that frequency on the toms as well. If you cut that range though, you will probably also have to raise the level of those instruments to compensate for the EQ cut.

All that said, I think this mix is pretty close, and if those changes don't seem to improve the mix to you, then go with what you have here. A little mastering should do the trick.

The important thing is, the vocals are nice and loud, and the song has a good vibe about it.

If you make any more changes put them up.

Good job.

Mixerman

[Brendo]

Correct, no bottom mic... didn't think I needed it, after hearing them in rehearsals, his snare was pretty "snarey"... but I thought ahead and recorded a trigger track, so I can drop in bottom samples if you think that would help? I was already cutting a bit of box, but cutting too much leaves very little else.

There's also tons of hats in the snare track. Would you believe I just typed "hate" instead? Because that probably applies, too. Tons of hatefulness up where the snares would be.

Man, maybe I need to mix my drums like the guy in that Gearwire video.

Female vocal wants some changes to the vocal, a phrasing thing in the chorus, the words "ground" and "knees" in all choruses shouldnt dra-ag like they do. grou-ound, knee-ees... so I'll do those and drop in undersnare samples at some point this weekend.

[Mixerman]

Correct, no bottom mic... didn't think I needed it, after hearing them in rehearsals, his snare was pretty "snarey"... but I thought ahead and recorded a trigger track, so I can drop in bottom samples if you think that would help? I was already cutting a bit of box, but cutting too much leaves very little else.

There's also tons of hats in the snare track. Would you believe I just typed "hate" instead? Because that probably applies, too. Tons of hatefulness up where the snares would be.

Man, maybe I need to mix my drums like the guy in that Gearwire video.

Female vocal wants some changes to the vocal, a phrasing thing in the chorus, the words "ground" and "knees" in all choruses shouldnt dra-ag like they do. grou-ound, knee-ees... so I'll do those and drop in undersnare samples at some point this weekend.

Yeah, I wouldn't bother with the undersnare sample. The thing about the undermic is, it gives the drum high end. It opens itt up. Makes it sound less boxy. Am undersnare sample isn't going to fix the dark nature of that snare.

I think you can get away adding some 10k to that snare. Just make sure the hat mic doesn't get too loud.

In the future, you should consider recording a bottom mic on the snare. I generally buss the top and bottom mic to one channel for printing, but I wouldn't recommend this at first. Record your top and bottom mic to seperate tracks, and then as you mix more of your stuff, you'll start to recognize how little of it you need. Once you understand that, then it's a safe bet to print them together.

Look. All in all, this doesn't ruin the song for me. It's a very dark snare, but you know what? I find myself listening to the vocals, so who gives a shit? Fuck it.

That said, brighten up the snare a touch.

Mixerman

[Brendo]

I think you can get away adding some 10k to that snare. Just make sure the hat mic doesn't get too loud.

In the future, you should consider recording a bottom mic on the snare.

It's a very dark snare, but you know what? I find myself listening to the vocals, so who gives a shit? Fuck it.

That said, brighten up the snare a touch.

Mixerman

Will do.

Whenever I've recorded undersnare in the past, I've had issues with it rattling in sync with EVERYTHING on the kit... far more, uh, pervasive, in the mix, than tom resonance...

What would you usually use under there?

[Mixerman]

Will do.

Whenever I've recorded undersnare in the past, I've had issues with it rattling in sync with EVERYTHING on the kit... far more, uh, pervasive, in the mix, than tom resonance...

What would you usually use under there?

I don't get very inventive under the snare. Basically any small diaphragm condener will do the trick. If the snares are ratlling too much, you can always use tape. That's usually a function of the instrument being tuned improperly. And sometimes, you WANT all that snare rattle.

Some guys like to record the snare with one mic from the side. The thinking being, there should be SOME place that you can capture a realistic picture of the drum without using two mics. I agree with the thinking behind this, but I have never had much luck with this technique. Still, some people swear by it.

Recording the top of the drum with a condenser mic will also give you a bit more of a realistic picture. But I can tell you, that every AE I know has independently gone through the phase of recording a snare drum with a condenser, and every AE I know has abandoned this practice for the multitude of other problems that arise from such a decision.

Mixerman

[Brendo]

Some guys like to record the snare with one mic from the side.
Ah yes, I've done this before... but I went back to micing the top.

every AE I know has abandoned this practice for the multitude of other problems that arise from such a decision.
Some students at JMC had a C1000 on a snare one day, and I walked in and told them their snare sounded "ugly", and they assured me it was just the way his snare sounded.

A couple hours later, I walked into their session, and decided to solo their snare track - turns out that they were overloading the mic, it almost sounded like it was going into heavy limiting after a short blast of distortion and then slowly releasing. This was happening before the desk, obviously, because their level into Alsi wasn't hitting red.

They went through and picked out 5 or so good hits from the track and manually replaced every hit... I think they learnt this lesson the hard way.

What would you say cuased this? Would that be the front diaphragm hitting the backplate and then peeling off?!