The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Sick and Wrong wrote:Try slowing down the tempo to 1/4 speed when recording the fill, and then do it, say, 8 times. Cut out the best take and paste it where it needs to go (at normal speed). As you get better doing fills this way, you can incementally increase the speed at which you record them, and soon you'll be doing them at normal speed.
If you can edit individual bad hits into the position or velocity you want, this can really help, too.
This works with Battery; I don't know about FL.

I'm assuming from this that you are talking about recording live MIDI fills. While I'm working towards getting the equipment to do this, right now I'm only able to program sequences in FL. I don't have anything for recording MIDI (yet).

Bummer. Get a MIDI keyboard.

EDIT: Better yet, get a drummer! CHOOSE CAREFULLY! The best drummers are freakin' WEIRD.

Thanks for the comments, especially the ones from Des. Just a few comments and things I'm still wondering about.

deshead wrote: - Are you recording the guitar line-in, or maybe through a POD? You'd help the tone immediately by mixing in a version of the track that's run through an amp and mic'd. If you think you can get the timing right, your guitar tracks will also sound a lot thicker if you double them (by overdubbing a second, distinct copy of the track.)

I'm definitely already running through an amp and mic'd. I think my big problem with the tone is where I'm positioning the mic. Is there a better place to position it? I'm not quite sure what to do with this.

deshead wrote: - It's obvious that you're using a drum machine. That's not a bad thing in itself, but for drums that sound like Melvin's you'll need to put a lot more time into programming the drum tracks. The 3 main tell-tales of a drum machine are:

1. Robotic high hat and ride: Live drummers don't play perfect 8th and 16th notes, all at the same volume, on the cymbals.
2. Consistent snare tone: Every stickfall on a real snare sounds different, in tone and in volume. If your drum machine doesn't support multi-positional samples, at least vary the volume a little on each hit.
3. Drum fills: It's really hard to make a drum machine play an organic fill. Frankly, I'd avoid drum fills altogether, and just use the toms and crash for accents.

There's one problem with this. It's not a drum machine. It's me drumming. Would me being less of a boring drummer help this, or is there just no hope for the sound of my kit?

deshead wrote:- Your vocals are uneven, and specifically too loud in places (the first "and I hate" in each chorus of Blank Stare is a good example.) It's rock, so the priorites in your mix should be, in order:

• drums
  bass
  vocals
  guitars
  everything else

If your guitars drown out the vocals, or anything drowns out the bass or drums (which happens in Blank Stare after the 2nd chorus,) you've got problems.

Is there a way I can compress my vocals so they don't jump up in spots? I'm not sure exactly how to do this. The whole compression deal is still a mystery to me.

Well, I guess that's it. Anyone want to clear these up for me?

JR I hate to answer questions with questions but I think it would be helpful if you followed JB's earlier suggestion about specifics, so.....

What kind of guitar / amp combo are you using?
What kind of mic's are you using for that and the drums and how are you placing them?
What kind of drum kit do you have? (Make, model, # of pieces and what kinds of cymbals) EDIT:Oh and what kind of heads do you use?
How are you recording bass?
What kind of effect equipment do you have? (Reverb, compression, mic pre-amps etc.)
Most importantly, what are you recording into? Blank stare sounds like you bounced it between a couple of cassette recorders until you were done. EDIT: Oops, headphone issue. Sorry. And then how do you convert it to MP3?

Seriously, be specific about your entire process and collectively we may be able to get to the solution. And provide links to as much of the equipment as you can.

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:What kind of guitar / amp combo are you using?

Guitar - Godin Detour
Amp - Traynor Guitar Mate 20

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:What kind of mic's are you using for that and the drums and how are you placing them?

For Guitar - CAD ICM 417 Condensor pointing straight at my amp
For Drums -
Room Mics - 2 CAD ICM 417 Condensors hung above the set on two sides
Kick - CAD KBM 412 Kick Mic pointing straight at the kick
Snare - APEX 770 Unidirectional Dynamic Mic pointing at a fairly steep angle near the edge of the snare

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:What kind of drum kit do you have? (Make, model, # of pieces and what kinds of cymbals) EDIT:Oh and what kind of heads do you use?

Drum Kit - 5 piece Mapex M series with Remo heads
Cymbals -
Ride - Sabian B8 20"
Hi Hat - Sabian B8 14"
Crash - Paragon (Branch of Sabian) 16"
Stax - Portnoy Signature Max Stax large
Splash - Zildjian Avedis 10"

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:How are you recording bass?

Don't have a bass. Wish I did though.

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:What kind of effect equipment do you have? (Reverb, compression, mic pre-amps etc.)

All that's on my standalone (see below)

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:Most importantly, what are you recording into? Blank stare sounds like you bounced it between a couple of cassette recorders until you were done. EDIT: Oops, headphone issue. Sorry.

I'm recording into a Yamaha AW1600 Professional Audio Workstation. It sounds great, and it is, but I just haven't been able to get great sound out of my skills yet.

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:And then how do you convert it to MP3?

Audacity! Don't laugh.

I don't have the time to put up links to all of them, but I think I was specific enough that you could probably just google the stuff and it would just come up. If you really really want links, ask, but I don't think you'll need them.

For a long time I tried to learn how to program my own drums but it turned out I was relatively hopeless at it.

I now use Jamstix. For those of us who are percussively challenged I think it offers a good alternative to trying to figure out how to get a decent drum track.

Eventually I plan to get an actual drum kit and learn to play it.

Steve

jolly roger wrote:I'm definitely already running through an amp and mic'd. I think my big problem with the tone is where I'm positioning the mic. Is there a better place to position it? I'm not quite sure what to do with this.

Do you have the volume really low when you're recording? Your guitars sound dry (which is why I thought they were lined-in) .. Maybe if you could get the amp driving a little more, it would thicken the tone.

As for mic position, I suppose it depends on where you currently position the mic. Every amp is different, so there's no simple rule here. But in general you don't want the mic pointed right at the center of the speaker cone. Moving it off-axis a few inches (or more depending on the speaker size) to pick up a bit more body.

Given your mic list, I'd use the 770 to mic the amp. Even the pros use SM57's on guitar cabinets. The slower transient reponse of a dynamic mic lends a little natural compression to the sound.

Have you ever tried using two mics, one on the cone, and one 3 or 4 feet away to pick up some air?

jolly roger wrote:There's one problem with this. It's not a drum machine. It's me drumming.

It sounds like you manually played a drum machine with your fingers, and quantized the hi hats. So, I guess kudos on your timing!

jolly roger wrote:or is there just no hope for the sound of my kit?

There's always hope.

Along with the general advice I gave above, I'd try:

- Bringing the kick drum WAY up
- Lowering the level of the snare mic in the mix. The snare sound in the overheads is probably a little more lively. A little less drum-machiney
- Those CAD 417's are pretty bright mics, so you might get a more even sound if you position them below the kit, pointing up.

And again, in general a rock mix is built around the drums. As you add other instruments to the mix, make sure you never lose the kick and snare.

jolly roger wrote:Is there a way I can compress my vocals so they don't jump up in spots?

It depends. For wild swings in volume, compression will make the vocal sound artificial (compressed, if you will.) So it's generally best to "ride the fader" first, to get the vocal as even as you can before compression. Does the AW1600 support volume automation?

jolly roger wrote:I'm not sure exactly how to do this. The whole compression deal is still a mystery to me.

http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showth ... ?p=2042686

JR I was really surprised by the equipment you listed. I thought sure as heck there would be something obvious I could point to there. That amp is probably the weakest link in the chain, but I would think you could get a passable tone out of it. Try the microphone and techniques Des talked about for recording that. Actually all of Des's advice was solid, as always.

One thing I would advise would be to really focus on your mixing. By that I mean, spend lots and lots of time on it. Go through each track individually and really tweak the EQ and compression. Try the extremes of the settings to get a real feel for how it effects the overall sound, and find the sweet spot for the settings. When your ears get tired walk away from it and come back to it. I've literally spent days on mixes and still not been happy. You have to spend a lot of time on setup as well. It's difficult being the musician and the engineer so it's easy to rush that process, but you can't. You really need to take your time and get it right. Microphone positioning is critical, especially for the drums. I'm assuming you're recording those as individual tracks and not just a stereo mix. If not, try that. You can always dump it down to a stereo mix later.