Listening to this again I'm starting to like the drums more, it just sounds manic :) I've been trying to get a decent heavy recorded tone but I cant do it, it always sounds really compressed and scooped sounding even if I boost the mids with an eq in reaper (that actually tends to sound worse and really fake). This is the best I've got:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=493678&songID=6767571
Any tips? Thats 4 tracks, panned 100L 80L 80R 100R and for the 80 panned ones I had the mic closer to the centre of the speaker. Its like it doesnt sound saturated or clear enough. I guess tightening up my playing would help a bit to make it sound clearer. Also the fact I still dont have an interface (or mic stand) cant be helping :oops: Maybe I need a "metal" pickup, though I am using a pig 90 on full output which seems to be pretty hot..
Ok, internet worky normally again (for the daytime anyway - they "throttled" me for being in the top 5% for users: dial up speeds if I'm lucky in peak hours for 1 week! Anyhow...serves me right I suppose, I knew there was a fair usage thing)
First, that wasnt half bad mate!
I did notice a few things though (good job it was a familiar song, so I had a reference point, rather than just guessing what it was you wanted)
Tonally
- Your gain level is just a shade high. Less gain, more highs/prescence
- There are quite a lot of low mids in the sound that are adding to come out as woofy I see that you've tried to immitate the low mids of the track, and you've done a good job! They've just gone a bit too far. You have been wise to control the bass though; that is pretty good level wise, but lacks dynamics (hard to get in a track without sending your levels to pot)
- The high mids are pretty close
- the highs are dulled
Playing/recording technique:
- some of the tracks werent quite in time. Not horribly out of time, but enough that it detracted from the impact of each attack, and you could sometimes hear a swish of dual attack accross the stereo field as one guitar sparks up followed quickly by another.
I dont know what youre doing to record this, its obviously in time enough that its played to a timing device of some sort (drums or click basically), but I've found that if I play a track, and its a good take, I have rather too much faith in that track, and subsequent tracks when I play along to previous tracks arent as good. The previous tracks obfuscate problems in the newer tracks, and the more tracks, the more problems sneak in - by the time you get to tracks 3 and 4 they can be pretty bad, and making the mix sound bad, but not bad enough (with the others being there too, and there being at least one good track) that its immediately obvious that thats the problem. I dont know if youre doing this or not but it sounds like the same sort of syncing problem that I had when I recorded like that (all tracks on).
The answer is, of course, to play each and every track as though its the first - to drums or click only, and inspect it thoroughly before then unmuting the
previous best, first track you did that you nailed, and seeing how well they sync up. So record track 1, mute track 1, record track 2, inspect track 2 against click/drums, unmute track 1, inspect again, record track 3,
inspect against track 1, and so on. This is because errors build and the timing of your tracks can drift if you check it against the immediately previoius one. Do this and you should find that when you unmute the lot, they all fall nicely on top of each other.
EQing and mic positions - I dont know where your mics are: I'm guessing close, centre, on-axis? Thats about as good as its gonna get to get the most attack and clarity on the tone, but its gonna give you the strongest bass response too. If you are on-axis, try off axis (vary the angle, see if any work) to see if that diffuses some of the low mids, at least on a couple of the tracks (I'd suggest the inner ones: keep accentuated attack in the outer tracks, but add some space in between, as per the original)
To get more dynamics in the low end, CRANK IT. Seriously. The sound of a speaker moving in wide vibrations, as in, wide enough that you can see it, clearly, moving, is what gives you that dynamic swing in the low end that this sound really needs. If you cant see the speaker, see if you can by shining a torch into the grill. Watch your levels, though: theres a conflict between the levels in pm'd swings and steady-state, open chord stuff. Control with low end. A lot of the heavienss doesnt come from the magnitude of the lows, but from the dynamics of the lows. (clearly evident in this here recording of the PK: its the source of Roos comment about the levels of the guitar: amps and moving speakers accentuate this problem massively. I address it by recording 2 inputs - one that makes the bulk of the sound and one thats got a really punchy, but muddy on its own, low end: I control the dynamics (which I havent on the recordings on here so far, but I have now after doing some more work on the track) by changing the level of the "Bassy" track relative to the "main" track" (as I call em)).
I hope this helped (and wasnt totally irrelevant with you already doing all these things!).
