here is sort of my static rough mix from the other day
here is where I am now:
Drums and bass processed
Guitars and vox not processed
no automation
how it sound? overall balance? bass sitting ok for the most part? kick and snare??
Iām listening on my 2.1 speakers, but I canāt make out the bass very well. I can feel it, but Iām having a hard time making out the notes. I donāt know if thatās a problem or not. I think that the snare drum could use more snap and a bit of reverb so that the sound lasts longer. The snare is definitely better than the first versionāthat one sounded very dull. But this one I think still could sound better.
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yeah, havent got to rhythm gtr yet lol
Its funny, im hit by this interesting idea: one can have only kick, snare, bass, cymbals and yet not be able to hear the kick, snare OR bass clearly lol.
I would put waaaaay more compression and distortion on that bass. The problem with clean bass is that notes will jump all over the place. By compressing hard, you make sure that you get consistent volume out of each note. And adding a bit of distortion can go a long way in helping it cut through the mix.
I hate distorted bass when soloed, but when itās in a track, itās almost a necessity.
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yeah i think i usually might have a separate dist channel with something like Waves MV2 limiter on it and blend it in parallel etc but I was trying to go simpler. But yeah, that bass is really clean
btw, is the Super Delay still available or did Imperial delay take its place?? SuperDelay looks nice
alright, into the breach again:
added 2nd snare compressor in parallel, turned up overall snare (I think, hehe)
added parallel bass dist channel
different reverb
how about now? (vox and gtr still pretty bare, not processed yet)
just for the heck of it, here is the rhythm section
This is coming together. Still in pretty good shape so far. Few thoughts.
I think the long tail on the kick is unnecessary, and was wondering if that real estate in the frequency spectrum might be better of saved for another source. If you really like the verb, have you considered timing it to eighth notes? If you like it longer like that, I would roll a little more top off.
In that second to last mix (the one with the vocals and guitar), how much of the drumset are you pulling off the direct mics, and how much are you getting from the overheads?
On this one, I think the kick is at a good starting point minus the extra reverb. I donāt know if the reverb is actually hurting the kickā¦again my concern is that it could clash with the vocals and the guitars later on down the road.
I agree with Cristina here, that it needs more snap. What most people would do is start mashing the direct mic and Iām not sure thatās the best way to do it. If you have a top snare, a bottom snare, a sample, and a shell mic, I would do an uncompressed balance of all four of them, then sum them (non parallel) into a single snare bus, THEN add compression to everything together.
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reverb has sort of been an afterthought so far, I did realzie I had too much on the bass so i backed off the send. let me go listen to the kick again
ok , Christina commented on the snare in the eariler version but there should be significantly more smack on the rhythm section version. Are u commenting on that version?
On this EZD kit there are no separate snare mics. there is just āsnareā lol
The āOHā on this one is 100% pure cymbal
but then we have an āambā mic which is going to be the room. On that one I sort of have it a little mid scooped and compressed and was using it for some size but now that ive added some reverb its getting a bit redundant. I think i have it turned down a bit
on this one I turned down kick verb, turned down bass about 2 db.
Brought in the rhythm gtr. Only 1 gtr track panned left. āfake doubleā panned rt and compressed and distorted more with some doubler and delay on it. its pulled back some in the mix. gotta leave room for the lead gtr which will be in the rt channel
how we sound now?
This is coming along great.
Thereās a weird honk that sounds like it might be coming from the bass at about 0:56 which you should address.
Iād try getting the bass a bit dirtier, not necessarily by adding distortion but by turning up the fret buz, and the little clicks and clacks which can give it character and add to the feel of the rhythm, you could try boosting the bass at about 1khz and see if you can bring that out.
The guitar tone is better but still too nasal for my tastes, I would cut some of the boxiness by cutting between 200 and 500 hz and maybe a little bit at 2khz and using a shelf boost at about 5 khz. Also, a bit more reverb.
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Both. I was commenting on the method for increasing the amount of smack in general. But lets back up a secā¦
Ok. I understand.
There we go. Why did you add a reverb? You shouldnāt add a reverb to anything unless you canāt get what you need out of the ambient room mic. You should have a couple pairs of room mics. Do you not? In BFD and Addictive, each one of those room mics is a better starting point than any algorithmic reverb because the sample is already coordinated and phase aligned to match the kit. Always! Always! Always! use the natural sound of those room mics before adding any algorithmic reverbs in there at all. This isnāt the case when you receive a drum track recorded in a god damn bedroom, but the rooms that some of these samples were tracked in are some of the most elaborate tracking spaces on planet earth. You better believe Iād wanna hear whatās coming through those room mics!
Hereās a trick I use on Addictive and BFD. Does the snare channel allow you to roll the snare bleed to the room forward and back? You can literally āwidenā a kick drum by pushing more of it through your room mics. Again, a much solution than adding an algorithmic reverb. Is it possible to push some of the snare bleed into the overheads too?
I think that guitar sounds awful. I think the fake doubling is hurting more than helping. Frequency wise, you have to realize that thing is what it is. So thereās nothing you can possibly do to make it sound like an overwhelming massive wall of guitar. Thereās tracking technique required to get that.
If you want to widen it a bit, see what happens if you use a room reverb instead of a doubler to create width. Simply stick it on a bus, keep the tail short, set it to 100% wet and blend it to taste. If you want to create depth in that guitar, try using a some subtle delay. If you want to make it gooey and gobby with more sustain, your Slate Bomber can do that. If you want to warm and thicken it up, try that Slate 1073 at the front of the chain.
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Jon, I agree with Tachinā¦this is coming along great. Showing a lot of improvement here so far!!! Good work man.
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Well the reverb setup is just a convenient thing where its just on a track so i can send whatever to it, bass, harmony vox etc. comes in handy to throw stuff on just to have some sense of reverb while building the mix. naturally i can refine it along the way
Ill recheck that amb mic situation
the way the EZD works, u have different mixers with each different expansion pack. Most of them are dumbed down to one degree or another. Like the one I used in this case only has that one snare mic and it only has ātomsā (as opposed to individuals) and it only has āambā as opposed to several room mics
But then each expansion pack has āoriginal mixā which gives you ALL the mics. When im building a template ill use that one so I can have, for instance, all the tom mics, bottom snare, different room mics etc. I need to build up some new templates since I have upgraded my plug ins and my skills to some degree. I just want to get ONE super solid mix and then I can set up a template and lay down about 5 songs using it
EZD doesnt have the control u r speaking of on the other stuff. Superior drummer probably does but im not going there at this point lol
That being said I just bought a bunch of stuff so keep this in mind for future reference, in addition to waves Platinum/Slate everything I now have:
Trigger 2 Platinum (comes with library of samples)
CLA classic compressors bundle
Waves studio classicā¦so this adds the SSL stuff and the API stuff to my collection
So feel free in the future to reference any settings lol
Ill go do another remix. BBIAB
these are some of the included EZD mics etc
this is the amb mic. Again, if I used the āoriginal mixā id have way more choice but for this particular setup this is pretty much it
and it has a āreverbā channel which I generally just keep way down low if it all
it also has a ācompā channel which is just compressed. mostly kick and snare, I usually just keep it really low
a lot of it comes don to multiple ways to do similar stuff but I generally try to make my own reverbs etc since im trying to learn how, but im not above using the included ezd stuff if it works better
ok, these r snippets with no outsde reverb on drums, just amb mic etc. it has to be automated because the toms are way overbearing thru the amb mics
bass is re-eqed some
also, different SGear guitar choices on the snippets
āAC Crunchā guitar
āTremendous leadā guitar
Plexi crunch 1 gtr
could be some vol differences on those gtrs since sgear presets are all over the place
any preferences?
they all sound like ZZ Top to me lol
That sounds fucking amazing. And it tells you something I didnāt realize about the snare. Thereās not a lot of snap in it to begin with. Do you have control of the velocity curve for the snare? See what happens if you expand the input value to never fall below 120, and normalize all of the midi data for the snare to range only between 120 and 127. That way youāre utilizing only the round robins of the top dynamic range.
Also, do you have an option to switch the snare articulation to a rimshot? Not a sidestickā¦a rimshot? Sometimes that can help bring out punch, bite, and snap in the snare, but it does change the feel a bit.
Good. That thing sounds like shit 
If you have that Slate FG verb, that thing should go a lot further. On big old school drums, Iād start by going through presets on the older Lexicon units, and then check out some of the Bricasti emulator verbs in the FG verb.
This is well worth the time to experiment with!
I think those are pretty damn usable!!! What happens if you bus those over to an all guitar channel, stick the AC crunch hard left, the tremendous guitar dead center, then the Plexi crunch 1 over on the right?
You have a ton of cool plugins to work with now! When you sum all 3 of those guitars into a single āall guitar busāā¦Iād throw that SSL channel strip on there. 9 times out of 10, I prefer the G channel (the black one) over the E channel (the grey one). Always keep analog on. Always keep the āsplitā function engaged unless there is a reason not to. I would remove your Slate Console drive emulator completely when using the Waves SSL. Before you even touch the EQ, gain stage. Roll your preamp around until you find a level saturation spot you like, then back your master fader down. Important note: it is ok to peak this plugin. You donāt want it blasting red, but this plugin was designed to act a certain way when it sees an occasional peak in the input meter. You NEED to flip between your input and output meters because this plugin does not have a true master volume like the UAD one does. The transformer circuity on the master fader was modeled to behave like the analog desk, and this is part of what makes this SSL plugin special. So learn to tune synchronize the trim and the fader to control the amount of console distortion.
That 2500 is one of the most powerful tools for a group of drums, a group of guitars, or a group of strings etcā¦ever made. Pay attention to the thrust control. Thatās the rockstar feature of this plugin. This is something no other hardware unit can emulate, nor can any other plugin, as both the circuit and the code have 30+ some patents that are proprietary to API.
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yeah ill have to check the actual drum midi on the snare values
of course when i installed my new plug ins, all of a sudden my ez drummer and sgear dont want to show up now. I gotta troubleshoot em. always something lol
btw, that amb mic had FG-Stress on āBigā drum room at 64% and Slate Lift set pretty mild lol. it just made it a bit thicker
I have seen similar things mentioned elsewhere. Is that a semi normal thing?
That still wouldnt really be stereo though would it, since its just one source? Its just going to give a thicker sound?
if I get the mix sounding decent I can always just lay down a true double on one side etc
What about for lead vocals, is it a similar thing? Main vocal up the middle and then doubles out wide??
I was surprised a tiny bit when i was analyzing all of the ref MP3s I bought that there is hardly ANY vocal stuff out on the sides (muting the mid using voxengo MSED)
is this becuase everything is just panned center or is it because they have doubles out left and right that balance out to sound center?
On this song of mine I have the one main vocal and then the 2 harmonies that come in whenever. What type of panning should I do there?
I have always panned harmony vocals and delay throws out to the side or even mid positions like 44 or 75 etc. Is most of that stuff generally kept centered up??
Dude i appreciate all of the help. Im going to send you a check lol
What part? Youāre talking about guitarsā¦right? To do minimal processing on the raw sound and heavier processing on the merged stems? Thatās more normal than it is less normal. Same with heavy stacks of backup vocals. When you merge and then compress you get glue that you donāt get otherwise. You may want slight surgical compression infront of a group bus though on certain tracks. That way if you rogue notes that poke out in certain places, you can get them a little more under control.
Again, youāre talking about the guitarsā¦right? Pan them at the source, then feed them into a stereo bus. Its true stereo as far as Iām concerned because as soon as you start throwing your amp sims on there, thatās pretty much a distinct source. Just make sure the second amp sounds different enough from the first one to where where you donāt get phase issues.
Good question. I do a trick I learned form Fab Dupont where he places a heavily distorted vocal directly underneath the dry vocal dead center. I have a few sample mixes from Warren Huart where he took his lead vocal, ran printed four stems through four doublers, distorted all of them, then panned them wide. I double and triple take vocal stacks sometimes, but I almost never duplicate a vocal (as in hit command D), place a millisecond of sample delay on them and then pan it wide. For me, just using the micro shifter, dimension D, or Eventide works better.
Most of the stuff out on the wings is effects processing. I never move the vocal out of the center. I donāt care if its a live music broadcast and the singers stands on stage left the entire show. Mine never leave the center, nor do the stacks. Only harmonies and gangs on the side. Even with a southern gospel quartet or an all girl group like the pussy cat dolls, all lead vocals center always (for me) until they go into choir modeā¦then I start to move them around.
now that (again for me) depends on what the doubles are doing. If the whole purpose is to widen the vocal, then obviously, you want them panned out. If the doubles are there to re-inforce the center vocal, then I never spread them. The question is are you stacking for thickness and density, or are you stacking and doubling more for width? Two different techniques.
For this particular thing, if it were me I would keep the harmonies moving around the mix. Meaning some parts dead center on top of the lead, other parts slightly left, other parts right with the reverb and delay returned to the opposite side only in certain parts. I think this would help it stay dynamic.
The general rule of the thumb I follow on panning the harmonies, pads in intervals, spread them. Counterpoint, always center. Parallel, mostly center. When you have blocks of harmonies, I approach them like a chamber orchestra. Start the mix with the tenor/alto middle voice hard left and hard right, balance them, wedge the soprano voice into the center, then blend in the bass. So get your inner voices to the far sides, then add the top and bottom to the middle.
? When youāre talking about panning position, you want to say stuff like hard left/middle/right, or 11:00 or 3:00. etc.