Actions - Devil's Words (Rhythm Power mix)

[Rhythm Power studio]

Very good song to work with.
Drums had some issues but were handled accordingly. Toms were distorted (obviously the signal was peaked during recording), the snare was probably the worst snare sound I 've ever heard. Also I didn't like the placement of the overheads. The left one was probably just above the hihat. Too much hihat and too wide stereo image. I sampled the kick through Ezdrummer 2, triggered the snare and sampled it through Ezdrummer 2, too. I blended it with the original snare sound and it actually worked pretty good, to my surprise, despite the raw sound being pretty poor. I also triggered the toms and sampled them through Addictive Drums 2, as their distorted sound, at some points, rendered them useless to me.

As for bass I run it through Amplitube 3.

Liked the guitar tones. At some point, they have accidentally copy pasted the one guitar to the other guitar's track and vice versa. Simple fix, you just cut and paste accordingly.

Very good vocalist and very good recording. The backings had some strange things going on towards the end of each phrase. Don't know how that happened.

[sbhrule15]

Very good song to work with.
Drums had some issues but were handled accordingly. Toms were distorted (obviously the signal was peaked during recording), the snare was probably the worst snare sound I 've ever heard. Also I didn't like the placement of the overheads. The left one was probably just above the hihat. Too much hihat and too wide stereo image. I sampled the kick through Ezdrummer 2, triggered the snare and sampled it through Ezdrummer 2, too. I blended it with the original snare sound and it actually worked pretty good, to my surprise, despite the raw sound being pretty poor. I also triggered the toms and sampled them through Addictive Drums 2, as their distorted sound, at some points, rendered them useless to me.

As for bass I run it through Amplitube 3.

Liked the guitar tones. At some point, they have accidentally copy pasted the one guitar to the other guitar's track and vice versa. Simple fix, you just cut and paste accordingly.

Very good vocalist and very good recording. The backings had some strange things going on towards the end of each phrase. Don't know how that happened.

Hey there,

It seems this song was recorded with the intent of being used with samples. Nevertheless, in my opinion I think you've done a good job.

Here's what I enjoyed about this mix:

- Balance of the guitars. The guitars sit at a nice volume to where they don't cover up the finer details of the drums, but not so soft that the drums become the lead role.
- Your overheads. The overheads really "sit" in this mix, and do not jump way out.

Here is what I think could sound great with some adjustments:

- Direct drums and room. In my opinion, I think that the snare rings a little much, and a room sample might help put the snare in a space. The toms do cut through well, but to my ears sound a little paper-y. Surprisingly, the best technique I've found to give the toms (and all the drums) depth while being able to cut through is to use room samples to put them in a space. Be weary, though, as too much will sound overbearing, and the room samples should all be of the same room.

- Drum Bus. My biggest improvement as an engineer came when I started working more on the busses than the individual drums. You can give the impression of the drums being louder and punchier by a smart use of dynamic and harmonic effects on the drum bus. My go-to tool for this is Fabfilter Saturn (multiband saturation) and Fabfilter Pro-C (compression). What I will do is put Pro-C on the drum bus first, slam the track, tweak settings until the initial transient still pokes through, then raise the threshold back up to a manageable level. If you can make it sound decent when overdone, it will sound great when brought back to normal. After that, a subtle use of saturation to glue everything together. For a mix like this that demands extreme presence, don't be afraid to let the direct drums almost "pump" the overhead a little: That effect is common in modern mixing nowadays.

- Bass Limiting. A lot of engineers always forget the importance of a stable and meaty low end. If it's awry, it's the first thing for the listener to notice. Limiting the bass at the end of the chain will help keep your low end stable and ground the whole track.

- Vocal compression. If you listen to any of Queen's earliest albums, you'll notice that his breaths in of air are the same volume as his highest belts. That was the moment one of my professors described to me as "the moment he learned good compression". The vocal is your lead focus, and needs to always sit in front. Don't be afraid to slam the vocal with compression a little bit! Whether singing very softly or very loud, it needs to be heard. A good way to be able to absolutely SQUASH the vocal and keep it musical is to use multiple stages of compression, with each instance (likely 2 to 3 stages) having a lower threshold than the last. Obviously don't squash so much that it distorts, but reign it in.

Overall, I think the levelling of this mix is good. However, some smart use of processing will serve you extremely well.