Synonym Music

also james, here's an example of why the basics are so important. Shapes and Distance drum demo it is taken from this thread . that sound was achieved by finding the best room in the house, setting up the kit in there and tuning it properly, and then moving the mic all over the room until it sounded best. oh yes, *the* mic. that drum sound is one shure sm57 in a room. incidentally i think that recording with that one cheapo mic sounds a lot more natural than the one you posted. the good news is, you can learn a lot and there's plenty of room for improvement

I'll have to pass that on to one of my professors...

But I bring up The Globe Sessions yet again. MFM - a {censored}ing hi-hat mic, mono overhead, close kick, close snare, close tom. That's it! Stellar sound. The only thing I'm not sure of is if the one distant mic is above the kit (an OH) or in front of it. The kick definitely seems to have an outside mic - that could another separate placement used to make it beefier, or it could just be the distant mic.

They sound pretty rough, but hey.. I don't think the original recording sounds that great either, so why not improve upon it?

It won't get fixed in mixing. No way. The recordist could've just kept it simple - spaced pair, kick, snare, maybe one or two toms - but instead there's parts of the kit all over the place. There's a lot of phase cancellation, practically no high end past 11kHz, boomy/resonant low mids, harsh high mids, small cymbals, nightmarish room tone, yadda yadda yadda.

I'd reject that recording. There's nothing I could do.

Stop overcompressing. Let some instruments overlap in terms of where they're panned. You're a little hell-bent on hearing everything all the time.. Not really how a mix works. There are often areas of focus for different sections of a song that don't sound right until you let the energy dictate what the spotlight should be during that time frame.

Some of the instruments also sound a little closed-in (sax, acoustic.) That's a result of an overly dead room. The proportions are also a little funny, like the horns will drone on with no real direction for opening parts of the chorus when they should be a converse energy compared to everything else that's going on. The drums, guitar, vocals and everything are really moving, they're staying - but it's as if they haven't really "decided."

I'm not really an amp or guitar guy, though I am a "sounds" guy. I would generalize that cheaper solid-states and emulations can get you fizziness, but not always. What are you using now?

You'd EQ both instruments a little differently anyway. It's just they shouldn't be conflicting so much from the start. Cymbals are an odd choice for guitar frequency overlap - I don't hear that often.

A little thin and fizzly. One thing I notice is that it shares too many frequencies with the cymbals.

Harsh and crowded, but otherwise pretty good.

That's a shame. I didn't buy from them often, but I do remember the service being really good. I hope this transitional period gets worked through - it's having some pretty deep ripples now.

Yeah, well..

Fairly solid tunes. The vocals don't have a lot of body, and their performance sounds like you striving for technical acuity rather than emotion. There is a third dimension to lyrics which has to be in the performance - most people can hear if you're faking it.

Landon Pigg was right up on the mic for Coffeeshop. Don't be afraid to get up close and personal and play with proximity effect.

I think it was 21 million.

Hi guys It would be great if you could give me some crit on the songs on my bands myspace site. They were recorded by ourselves at our schools studio. Any advice on how to improve next time would be great

You'd still get more mileage out of better mixes. It'd take a lot of work, but don't throw in the towel so quickly.

On the recording side:

- Capture more guitar parts. These are where you lose momentum the most. Notice how things suddenly empty out on the verses for Losing My Soul? How about some strums?

- Use a real piano and stereo miking.

- Play confidently. Dig into it.

- Get an overheads sound first before you put any more mics on the kit. That OH sound should be really good by itself. Then fill in spots (snare, kick, toms etc; the common things) to make them sound less distant and roomy.

- Consider doing a scratch vocal for the live, full-band takes and then overdubbing a lead vocal. This is better for flexibility overall, but it doesn't really work with all singers, so the choice is yours.

- Work on your timing. This will come with more extensive amounts of practice, but yes, it makes a pretty big difference in the recording - even if a mix engineer can time correct and piece together takes. It's not preferable for anyone to do that.

- Kill those bad notes. Nail down parts.

- This could be Myspace, but it all sounds a bit too dark. Don't be afraid of high end.

Timing, better samples would make a bigger difference than the mix itself. Once you get to this stage there's no way to cover up underlying faults.

They're offering up the Big Mono kit for free at Analogue Drums.

While some overlap of the kick and bass is not unusual, it's rare to hear them sharing too many of the same prime frequencies. Often one is above and the other is below.

And by cutting parts, I mean re-arrangement. That happens well before EQ. If the kick has to be less busy (common), whatever, but if they're reacting off each other then it's important that both be heard close to their original idea... In which case they need their own frequency ranges.

Great song. Plenty of masking. Overlap is one of the keys to euphonous recordings, but that's not to say you shouldn't ever carve if need be.

At first I thought it was the acoustics stepping on the bass, but no.. It's the low kick pattern along with some of the low mids from the acoustics. Even if you don't agree, the fact is that you have at least two instruments dipping into very similar ranges at the same time. Masking. I hear it a lot in the lows and I either start scooping or start cutting parts quite aggressively.

Don't be afraid of the mid or high mid range. The balance is cloudy overall.

I would say you have something good going on there.

Link was broken for me.

Well I listened the first time anyway, but at least it's a little more accessible. Your own website is even better. I see you mentioned drum sounds in your initial post... That's really the only sore thumb to me. The tonal balance and FX suggestions are minor at best; I would finesse the drums before all else.

I would not be afraid of layering very unorthodox samples. It's not a well-known fact, but even Drumagog has simple waveforms (sine, square, triangle, etc) built in that you can layer underneath the replacement sample. It's more or less synthesis when the two sounds are summed - kind of in an additive way because you're creating one sound from several, though there is no direct or predictable grafting of waveforms due to their complexity, nor do they share any type of parameter modulation.

Next time soundclick.

Annoying high midrange that is not cohesive with frequencies above and below. Yes.. The cymbals have too much high end but not enough high mids; the guitars have too much high mids and not enough mids, same with the vocals though they don't sound particularly out of place.

The drums. Clinky hi-hat, basket-ball kick, thin toms. While the OH mix is about where I'd put it, maybe this song could use more. Some sample laying (not replacement in this case) could help beef things up. There's no ring-out to anything.. It sounds very unnatural.

The reverbs on some vocal phrases could be made mono and have a much longer decay. This is a solution for creating effectual space without taking up too much room.

That's too much bleed and I'd start baffling to taste. I think the key to these recordings is getting the room as a separate entity, where you have a stereo picture of all the players together and then highlight each of them from there with spot mikes. That's quite difficult without a great sounding space, however, because it will also clue listeners into dimensions when they hear the reverb ring out.

Maybe you could nix the reverb altogether and settle for a smaller space, which is more conducive to jazz anyway. That would probably take some test/rehearsal recordings to get right, fewer spot mikes, and a good amount of repositioning.

-Great recording in general, though your gear isn't exactly hurting you here... I can hear some very slight overly resonant tones on the upright and a little too much distance for the horn. It's very minor, but since you have reverbs running on this I'd go with something more focused before I hit the FX. Low ratio compression on the bass could help even it out.

-I'd also automate the overheads slightly as the player is quite busy on his cymbals and it's a little much the whole way through.

-There's some bothersome high end on the upright around the entrance of the horn solo that stays throughout the rest of the song.

-Guitar could also use a little leveling out too.

-Flute gets pinched at 4:26

Remember that you're only easing dynamics along in this situation as the performances did a lot of that for you. I'm so used to 15 dB of GR on vocals that it's ridiculous; thanks for this inspiring recording.

Pretty good recording and okay mix overall. Vocals are a bit too forward in most of those songs as well as overly sibilant. I'm definitely not a fan of the clipping in "When You're Older" and "Bigger than Before" at all; on both songs it sounds jagged and improper.

Give me drums on at least one song...?

The timing on this piece of gear has been immaculate for me:

I think you'll be fine.

You see? I'm old and stuck in my ways.

Write songs, learn others by ear, inventory all the gear in the school.

Bling bling!

P.S. Boo to sunflower seeds with shells. It's so much work to break them open that I just started getting lazy and buying deshelled. Is there some method to the madness that I'm passing over???