“Chevelle 2” is just the working title based off trying to get some drums sounding like the band Chevelle
no lyrics or vocal melodies written yet
Basic drums, bass, 2 guitars split out wide. let me know how the whole thing sounds. The groove, composition (so far), bass/kick??, freq balance? dryness/wetness etc etc
Thanks all
intro
verse
prechorus
chorus
short reintro
v
pc
Ch
bridge
solo
chorus out
Chevelle 2 mix 1
Chevelle 2 mix 2 added some smack to the snare
Chevelle 2 mix 3 added more bass compression and boost at 818hz with cut at 818hz on gtr bus
It’s coming along nicely!! Great groove and quite honestly it’s even sounding good on an iphone!
The only thing I could say without hearing on speakers is that I’d like to hear just a tad more crack in the snare. Really liking the guitar work man! Good stuff!
I had a “snare FX” channel which was down at around -20db. I brought it up about 3db and added a few db of high mids up around 3.5-4k. I also put on a transient shaper to the share fx channel to add some sustain to try to get the smack to ring on a bit.
if anything the changes will probably be somewhat subtle
I didnt do anything to the main snare
I also sent the snare fx channel to the 2 drum reverbs “close” and “far” which are both really low anyway but it may just add a tiny touch of extra smack
Awesome tune, Jon!
Great ideas and playing. The drums sound great. But there is something in there that is whispering in my ear “ezdrummer”. You are using ez, right?
I have ezdrummer myself and I like it. So maybe I’m tainted.
But I find that when you get great drum sounds in ez, they tend to spread apart and become “un-homogenized”. That becomes rather tell-tale to me… DO they sound bad? Of course not.
Do they sound un-natural? Maybe only to me and only slightly. Will anyone else notice… I don’t know
But what I do to combat this is push up the rooms a little and/or make my own fake room. Then maybe a little parallel comp and saturation on the whole stereo drum out.
Are you using ezd midi or are you playing or laying it in yourself?
Have fun
rich
The Bass is AWESOME. Again great ideas and playing. Very well represented in the mix.
I’d like to hear more of it and it does get a little lost at the very beginning.
Maybe try some super fast attack super fast release compression. Hit it kinda hard… like 6-8db. It will sound like it’s killing it at first. But use makeup gain to bring it back to level. Then eq to taste and throw it thru a smooth comp like an la2a. Also a 1-3db semi narrow boost at 800hz and a corresponding cut on your gtr buss might also help define space for the bass attack.
But like I said, it’s damn good the way it is…
later
rich
yeah, of course they are ez drums and ez drums midi. it is what it is. its basically use EZ drums or stop making music
it would be very hard for me to explain what all I do to the drums. I break out each channel of the ez drums mixer and pretty much they all have their own eq and processing. usually the kick and snare and maybe OH are sent to another channel which is used as an Fx channel and then blended in etc
Then of course all of that is in a drum folder. There is generally parallel compression at numerous points for the kick and snare etc and of course for the whole drum bus folder
So with the OH, ambient mics, some added verb…it gets pretty complicated IMO. I have a template but each mix is also unique. (since im clueless and reinvent the wheel each time hehe)
Looking back at the bass, I basically go DI and that gets sent to an fx channel which has a TSE BOD overdrive and then I just blend those 2 channels into a bass bus. There is parallel compression on each channel plus the bus, but looking back just now I see that I didnt really have the compression doing much, really only about 1.5db on the DI channel.
here is a quicky mix of the bass and drums as I had them on mix 2 above.
give me a sec and ill do a quicky mix with added bass compression and make up gain and small boost and corresponding cut in the gtr bus
added more compression on bass DI and bass FX channel and bass bus, about 4-8 db on DI and then a little less on bass fx channel (which has distortion plug in) and then maybe 1,5 - 2db on the bus…each with make up gain etc
added small boosts at around 818hz on bass channels, added small cut around 818 on main gtr buss
flattened out some automation on the bass at the very beginning of the song where I had put in small cuts since I was worried about it getting muddy when i hit a lick on the low E
I mix and match ez drummer midi (or groovemonkey or whatever) but on occasion I will add in a few cymbal hits etc
give me the quick version of how you “make your own room”
This is one of my constant laments…with THOUSANDS of us using EZ drummer, it seems there would literally be EXACT recipes or templates floating around just like there are for guitar sims now.
With live drums, I’ll send the OH’s, snare verb and tom verb to another verb set to a generic room tone and compress the crap out of it. If there are any room mics, they will go in there, too.
With ezd, I don’t do it all that much. But I will take the ezd room channel and sometimes the OH’s and send them to a hot fast compressor or a transient shaper with most of the attack turned down.
Don’t get me wrong… you drums sound really good. I’m just saying maybe too good…
With ezd, the midi is pretty good and very believable. But certain licks and fills don’t come across as natural with certain sounds. Like the flammy fill at 0:29-0:30. Because you got such a good sample and processed it so nicely, it stands out as a little less than natural. I think you said you mess with the transient designer on the snare to get sustain. But there wouldn’t be that kind of sustain if you really played that fill. We’re really splitting hairs here and maybe no one cares in real life…
When I use ezd, I’ll either play on my ekit or just program something very simple. Then later track live drums or leave it simple. When I use ezd midi, I’ll tweak any odd spots at the midi level and I’ll usually write my own fills and cuts along the way.
I must say again, you are doing frikken amazing work. So take my “knocks” with a grain of salt and get more opinions.
gotta hit the hay. So I’ll catch you tomorrow
rich
