*cracks knuckles*
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "Drums:
I hear some pretty heavy quantizing..."
Yeah, the edits are pretty gridlocked. That's the style I learned engineering on and it's the way i prefer to do things, granted a conversation with the band has taken place. The band and I had several talks about how we wanted it to sound and we all agreed that we wanted it as perfect as it could be. That was a decision we made based on our tastes and what they wanted to do with the music. As such, if a band didn't want that treatment, I wouldn't do it. That happened recently with a local death metal band who play the hell out of their instruments. I just got a good performance per part and we moved on. This project was also around a year ago and I feel that I'm a much better engineer now. The attention to detail was there, but I didn't necessarily know what to listen for sometimes as far as artifacts in the edits, etc. Everything is crossfaded and was faded in/out the best I knew how. There are some overhead fades that are weird. Consider that when you're slamming your overheads into a compressor the way I like to, fade outs kinda go under the radar. This tangent can be considered a response to a few other things you mentioned.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "Listen to the OH track in the first fast part (0:58-1:02). Those are some impossibly fast hits on the china."
I didn't listen to the solo'd overhead track like you said but referring to the drum fill leading into the next part, I would point out two things for you to consider:
1) This is called a euroblast and at this tempo was china-snare-china-snare (etc) at 32nd notes. The drummer of this band is very talented and played it consistently whenever it came up. He played all of this stuff no problem. It's a treat tracking drummers like that.
2) Despite having a solid drummer, we still wanted the tracks gridlock edited. If there were flammy parts of the euroblast that still needed to be edited I edited them the best I could. Sometimes we can spend far too long looking into the minutia of edit locations and crossfade lengths and locations when it doesn't even matter. If I feel a bad edit goes unnoticed when the entire song is playing, I'll generally leave it. I ask you to consider that the layman (and honestly, many engineers) won't hear an artifact like that in the final product.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "...there's some strange panning going on 1:04 with the snare shifting to the left."
The snare track is panned at zero (center) the whole time. You may be hearing the snare in the overheads. With this mix, I decided to experiment with slowing down the attack time on the overhead compressor a good bit to let snare through. I would wager 40-50% of the snare sound of this mix is from the overheads, not the direct or the sample. I do things differently now, using L1 to snip off snare hits from overheads and then compressing. This definitely gives a much more controllable track.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "The low tom track is pretty distorted with clipping around 2:10."
I'm going to assume you mean my mix and not the raw file. Not to be condescending but it's probably distorted and clipping from the distortion and the clipping I put on there. I didn't really know how to process toms to make them cut through a dense mix like this. To this day I still find that toms have to undergo the most drastic transformation of probably any element of this style mix. I would make decisions differently if I mixed this today but I'm still happy with the mix the band put out.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "Bass: Just arrangement wise- Having the bass tremolo-pick along with the guitars (2:31) makes that whole passage pretty muddy and must have been a pain to record. I think it would've been enough for it to just play the 8th-notes or even quarter notes to fill out what the guitars were doing."
Agreed. The bass player kicked ass otherwise. I remember sitting with them for a few minutes talking about it and I made the executive decision to just match the guitars because that's what the man was used to playing and I didn't want to dwell too long on small things. 80/20 rule. I did have a crossover setup for the bass (two identical tracks, one high-passed and one low-passed and each processed differently and bussed together). I tend to do this a lot for bass. I automated the low pass track down during sections like this. Rather than put C4 or C6 to tame the low end of a single track, I would rather slaughter the dynamics of the low end with L1. Usually I jerk that slider all the way down to start and usually it doesn't move after that. If I were to track this song today, I would handle things differently. I would get two different performances for a section like this and have the high pass track be tremolo picked while the low pass track would be picked more slowly. I understand now that lower frequencies develop more slowly and don't react well to happening quickly.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "Just a heads up to check the stems after exporting."
I definitely could've done better here.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "I hear the vocals cutting in a lot in your mix. I'm guessing this is the gate opening but it could be a good idea (if you have time) to manually fade..."
I definitely don't use a gate on vocals. I sometimes use one on the way in depending on the situation and environmental factors at hand but it's very relaxed, with a light ratio like 2:1 or 1.5:1 and a very relaxed threshold. I manually edited and faded all of these tracks but I have to admit I didn't know a ton about what I was doing at the time. I think I've got the hang of it now. Editing is one of my stronger skills at this point.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: "Mastering:
I see your track clipping quite a lot. +0.8 at the peaks. It's true lots of pro tracks sometimes clip but I've never really seen any over +0.1-0.2. Make sure the brickwall limiter is doing it's job.
The track is also a bit bright. I'd pull those upper mids down (2-3k) a few db as well as adjusting +8k."
The only thing I knew about mastering when I worked on this was that it existed. I definitely didn't know what a brickwall limiter was. I honestly can't even tell you what I used on the master here. Probably a 4:1 compressor with 30 ms attack and 10 ms release taking off 3 dB at the loudest parts,
solely because that's what I know Joey Sturgis does. But I don't even have what he uses. I still stick with those settings as a starting point because they do work but I'm more aware now than I was before. I probably threw on some Saturation Knob (which is awesome and everyone should have it) and then broad stroke EQ and dithering. I'm certainly no mastering engineer and always recommend to my bands that they master through someone else but they never do.
(11-01-2017, 03:00 PM)RobWo Wrote: Again, thanks for posting this. I just wanted to point out some things I felt were taking away from the track rather than adding to it. Please take these remarks as constructive and well meant. I didn't spend an hour writing this just to be a know-it-all ass. I know you won't go back and redo this but see it as things to keep in mind for next time. If you have any questions regarding specifics I'd be happy to try and help."
Rob, It means a lot that you reached out and took the time to help me out. I tried to reciprocate by responding thoroughly and respectfully, but I'm sarcastic and cynical by nature and I hope a negative or condescending tone doesn't come through, because it wasn't intended! I appreciate that there are things I need to pay more attention to in tracking and then more things in editing and I feel like I'm on the way there. Thanks for reaching out, my friend!
