Painted Skies (First take on this)

[Shul]

I've listen to the tracks.... and decided not to spend time on this one... Drums are absolutely not in place and vocals are totally out of tune !

To me, it's a non sense to try to mix this. The band should have used programmed drums, and spend more time to get better vocals. The "fix in the mix" definitively won't work here.

About your mix Shul, I think you can be way more agressive to get a more "in your face" sound, especially the guitars which sound very distant.

I can hear you tried to fix the kick as much as you can, but still.... not listenable for me (not your fault at all ! )

Lol yeah I agree they are not the best tracks.
If you ask me, this was recorded in one take .. perhaps guitars and vocals where added in a later time.. but the drums sound like they were taken in one take and that's it. I doubt they re-recorded that or that they "punched" in somewhere. I believe this is a band that is just starting out and barely has any experience with recording. Drummer is not used to playing with a click track. I noticed he tried to get in sycn several times to later get out of time. Perhaps he didn't used the click track at all... either or the double kick is very inconsisten and that's what is throwing him off.

Now the way I would approach this situation if a band came and lacked recording skills... In the most nice manner I would tell the drummer that He needs to practice with a click track. I'd say "this is just gonna be a demo.. let's just leave it at that. When you guys improve we can record the real thing" ... I mean no one wants garbage for a song.. so I'm sure they would accept the terms of it being a demo. For example this files are a fair demo quality recording. It gives them experience in the recording side of the project as well as another perspective of the overall result in the song. Sooner or later when they compare with other records they will forsure see that they need to improve their playing skills.

Fair and square I would take this job and I would mix these stems. Obviously low quality in the oven=low quality out the oven as well.
I'm sure at some point they were like "you can fix that right?" so it's less pressure for them in a way but is more pressure for the mixing engineer.. now if the recording engineer doesn't give a crap he won't mind recording this.. but Some people actually do. I'm sure these guys did the best they could and therefore I mixed this with a lot of respect. I came out of a band in which none of us had experience.. I mean my drums where not off beat like this but none the less... at some point we did say "oh but you can fix that right?" .. and the recording engineer said yeah LOL. End result was a mess.. and I had to mix all my self because I was gonna put the "fix" time that our recording/mixing engineer wouldn't. Our songs came out okay.. not pro quality but above average.. I've heard worse

anyways... Yeah I did fix the most important parts of the kick. Fixing everything is impossible because that would mean fixing tempos in guitars and bass and even vocals.. so I just fixed important parts in the kick. As for the guitars since drums are not playing in sync with the tempo.. I felt a more soft/ pleasant to the ears sound would be more compensating for that aggressive off sync drum beat. So in a way is "i can't stand those drums" and at the same time "the guitars are so soft" so in a way (i thought) it would take the attention of the drums and focuse more on the guitars.. which are not that bad of an arrangement.
Yes the vocals have tuning issues.. but I didn't fix that because the drums where the ones causing the most trouble in my opinion. So in the time I worked with these .. i just focused on fixing the drums. Like you already know.. you can't fix everythig in a recording.

Thanks for the comment and no I don't mind those comments.. comment away... the more stuff we talk about the more we learn.