Tapsearch Com EditorNew song up at MySpace
February 4th 2007 23:56
My last couple weeks' labor, "Blood in the Water," is up on MySpace. I'd love to hear everyone's comments.
As usual, apologies for the really bad singing. Without a band I have to do everything myself, and that's where I fall short. And I don't have the patience to pitch-correct each note.
It's easily my greatest mixing/mastering feat -- I managed to work guitar, bass, vocals, drums, synths and some piano around each other, and the levels average around -11.5 RMS (for non-music people, that means it's acceptably loud when compared to professional recordings, something I've never managed before). I do wish some of the instruments stood out more in the mix (especially the bass, though whenever I turned it up it sounded too loud), but I gave them distinct enough EQ patterns that you can pick them up if you listen.
Some tech geek stuff:
--Recorded in Cubase LE through a Presonus Firebox. Monitored, mixed and mastered on AKG K240s.
--The guitars are my Epiphone Les Paul, recorded via the XLR outs on my Behringer V-AMPIRE (great for recording, not so hot in terms of reliability and on-stage usefulness). Ideally I'd crank the thing up and stick a mic in front of it, but my roommates might disagree. I used the Crunch V-Amp setting, my favorite for both live and studio applications, except on the solos, where I used "Brit Hi Gain." **coughMarshallcough** Bridge pickup except on the second solo, where both guitars use the neck one.
--I use the standard hard rock model for mixing. One guitar hard right, the other hard left, the solos down the middle except when they're harmonized. Then, one moderate left, the other moderate right. I panned the synths and piano hard to keep them away from the vocals.
--Minor point on the second, harmonized guitar solo. The song is in drop-D tuning, one-half step down, but I needed to hit a high D natural. So, I recorded the high part in standard tuning. This is where a 24-fret guitar would come in handy, but I have yet to buy my first ESP.
--The vocals are recorded on my new Rode NT1-A. You'll notice there's a lot more "air" compared to the other three tracks. It basically massacred the SM-57 I was making do with, both in volume and quality. The downside, however, is that even with a pop filter (constructed on the cheap out of ladies' nylons and a wire hanger), the Rode picks up a lot of plosives and hissing sounds. Rather than EQ the whole track, I went through it in Cubase, highlighted the offending split-seconds and killed the gain by about 5 dB. If you turn it loud it's still a minor problem though. Maybe I should've tried 10.
--The drums, save the bass, are the samples from Hammerhead (free), exported as WAVs and re-arranged in Cubase. The bass came from Discrete Drums, though I noise-gated it to eliminate the nasty reverb. I used four tracks -- one for the snare, one for the bass, one for the hi-hat (panned moderately left) and one for the loud one (panned moderately right).
--The synths and piano come from my Yamaha keyboard, which I got for $72 on clearance with my Kmart employee discount a year or so ago.
--For the bass, I recorded MIDI with the Yamaha, and then used the vb-1 virtual instrument that came with Cubase. It's awesome. (The instructions are hard to deal with on how to use it though -- route the MIDI out to the vb-1, and you should be able to hear it. Adjust the tone, both solo and in the mix; I found it helpful to turn up the damper and tone controls almost all the way. Then, put the record indicators on either side of it, solo it and go to export audio under the file menu. Finally, import it back as an audio file. Would be a helluva lot easier if they made it so you could convert it to audio without going in and out of the program!)
--In the mixing stage, I added some compression and EQ to each individual track. I'd like to think I cut out a place for each instrument, but on some stereos I've tried the mid-lows kind of all mush together.
--Here's something I did very different -- I made absolutely sure that there were no above-0 dB peaks in the mix. That meant turning just about every track way down and setting the master gain to -7 dB. I had a very quiet mix going into the mastering stage.
--No worries, though. After some gentle EQ (killing the extreme low end, beefing up the lows and adding a touch of treble) I used two free compressors, the C3 Multi Band Compressor and the Classic Master Limiter. The C3 takes some major tinkering, as you can adjust the definitions for each of the three bands, and even solo the bands and listen individually. I've found the default setting a great starting point, but it's hard to nail the minor improvements. I added some more bass, and some more highs. It was tempting to jack the levels up right there, but I waited...
...Which brings me to the Classic Master Limiter, far and away my secret weapon for making this track better than the others I've done. It's a very simple, one-knob plugin. You turn the knob down, and it simultaneously lowers the threshold and increases the makeup gain. It basically lets you decide how loud your mix will be. The trick is to get it so the meter goes off regularly, but so there are pauses where none of the lights are on. If you over-limit you'll turn the mix into a brick, and sometimes the WAVs will clip in iTunes or whatnot. The mix was so quiet I added almost 10 dB.
--The levels were only at -14 RMS (use the free Voxengo Span to tell, btw) or so, so I ran it through another round of mastering. I used the Classic Master Limiter again to add about 2 more dB. For some reason, limiting seemed to work better in two stages -- in theory at least, I should have been able to just turn the limiter up a little in the previous stage, but iTunes disagreed.
As usual, apologies for the really bad singing. Without a band I have to do everything myself, and that's where I fall short. And I don't have the patience to pitch-correct each note.
It's easily my greatest mixing/mastering feat -- I managed to work guitar, bass, vocals, drums, synths and some piano around each other, and the levels average around -11.5 RMS (for non-music people, that means it's acceptably loud when compared to professional recordings, something I've never managed before). I do wish some of the instruments stood out more in the mix (especially the bass, though whenever I turned it up it sounded too loud), but I gave them distinct enough EQ patterns that you can pick them up if you listen.
Some tech geek stuff:
--Recorded in Cubase LE through a Presonus Firebox. Monitored, mixed and mastered on AKG K240s.
--The guitars are my Epiphone Les Paul, recorded via the XLR outs on my Behringer V-AMPIRE (great for recording, not so hot in terms of reliability and on-stage usefulness). Ideally I'd crank the thing up and stick a mic in front of it, but my roommates might disagree. I used the Crunch V-Amp setting, my favorite for both live and studio applications, except on the solos, where I used "Brit Hi Gain." **coughMarshallcough** Bridge pickup except on the second solo, where both guitars use the neck one.
--I use the standard hard rock model for mixing. One guitar hard right, the other hard left, the solos down the middle except when they're harmonized. Then, one moderate left, the other moderate right. I panned the synths and piano hard to keep them away from the vocals.
--Minor point on the second, harmonized guitar solo. The song is in drop-D tuning, one-half step down, but I needed to hit a high D natural. So, I recorded the high part in standard tuning. This is where a 24-fret guitar would come in handy, but I have yet to buy my first ESP.
--The vocals are recorded on my new Rode NT1-A. You'll notice there's a lot more "air" compared to the other three tracks. It basically massacred the SM-57 I was making do with, both in volume and quality. The downside, however, is that even with a pop filter (constructed on the cheap out of ladies' nylons and a wire hanger), the Rode picks up a lot of plosives and hissing sounds. Rather than EQ the whole track, I went through it in Cubase, highlighted the offending split-seconds and killed the gain by about 5 dB. If you turn it loud it's still a minor problem though. Maybe I should've tried 10.
--The drums, save the bass, are the samples from Hammerhead (free), exported as WAVs and re-arranged in Cubase. The bass came from Discrete Drums, though I noise-gated it to eliminate the nasty reverb. I used four tracks -- one for the snare, one for the bass, one for the hi-hat (panned moderately left) and one for the loud one (panned moderately right).
--The synths and piano come from my Yamaha keyboard, which I got for $72 on clearance with my Kmart employee discount a year or so ago.
--For the bass, I recorded MIDI with the Yamaha, and then used the vb-1 virtual instrument that came with Cubase. It's awesome. (The instructions are hard to deal with on how to use it though -- route the MIDI out to the vb-1, and you should be able to hear it. Adjust the tone, both solo and in the mix; I found it helpful to turn up the damper and tone controls almost all the way. Then, put the record indicators on either side of it, solo it and go to export audio under the file menu. Finally, import it back as an audio file. Would be a helluva lot easier if they made it so you could convert it to audio without going in and out of the program!)
--In the mixing stage, I added some compression and EQ to each individual track. I'd like to think I cut out a place for each instrument, but on some stereos I've tried the mid-lows kind of all mush together.
--Here's something I did very different -- I made absolutely sure that there were no above-0 dB peaks in the mix. That meant turning just about every track way down and setting the master gain to -7 dB. I had a very quiet mix going into the mastering stage.
--No worries, though. After some gentle EQ (killing the extreme low end, beefing up the lows and adding a touch of treble) I used two free compressors, the C3 Multi Band Compressor and the Classic Master Limiter. The C3 takes some major tinkering, as you can adjust the definitions for each of the three bands, and even solo the bands and listen individually. I've found the default setting a great starting point, but it's hard to nail the minor improvements. I added some more bass, and some more highs. It was tempting to jack the levels up right there, but I waited...
...Which brings me to the Classic Master Limiter, far and away my secret weapon for making this track better than the others I've done. It's a very simple, one-knob plugin. You turn the knob down, and it simultaneously lowers the threshold and increases the makeup gain. It basically lets you decide how loud your mix will be. The trick is to get it so the meter goes off regularly, but so there are pauses where none of the lights are on. If you over-limit you'll turn the mix into a brick, and sometimes the WAVs will clip in iTunes or whatnot. The mix was so quiet I added almost 10 dB.
--The levels were only at -14 RMS (use the free Voxengo Span to tell, btw) or so, so I ran it through another round of mastering. I used the Classic Master Limiter again to add about 2 more dB. For some reason, limiting seemed to work better in two stages -- in theory at least, I should have been able to just turn the limiter up a little in the previous stage, but iTunes disagreed.
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