The Well Tweaked To Death Version

[andrew0v]

Pretty overkill on this mix Listen to the SECOND version

[dcp10200]

For a mix that's supposed to be "Tweaked to Death" it really doesn't sound tweaked. Really it just sounds like a faders up mix, the sample on the snare, kick, and rhythm guitar are the most prominent elements of your mix and is just drowning out the rest of the mix. I can't really tell if you'e included vocals because of the mess that's going on. I would completely scrap this mix and start fresh. Find a real cracking snare sample and a kick with a decent bit of click and a tight sounding low end, Eq and compress them till they fit in the mix if need be and move to bass.

A big thing that I found that helped was ditching the stock drum sounds altogether save for the overheads (the overheads will be your cymbals track so just highpass everything below 600 or 700 Hz). Really the stock sounds here don't fit this genre at all, they're loose and flappy sounding without much punch to them, the saving grace is that they're in time and are played fairly tight. The drums in general are the biggest pitfall of this set of multis as the stock guitar and bass tones are pretty solid already and include DI versions to reamp if need be, and the vocals just need some highpassing and eq , heavy compression, De essing, and a touch of limiting.

Bass wise I found using the DI bass with TSE B.O.D (free plugin emulation of the Sansamp Bass Driver) with some drive and a scoop around 300 Hz and some compression and limiting got the bass most of the way to a finished sound. The other 20% was using the bass Fx track high passed at 250 Hz and lowpassed at 3.5 kHz blended in with the DI. This allows you to control the eq and percived distortion on the bass, making it easier to fit it with the guitar. Guitar wise, if you scoop out the ugly mids at 450-500 Hz, boost some 1.5 kHz and roll off the high end at about 7 kHz, you should be 90% there. Add a multiband compressor to the guitars to clap down on 250 Hz so the palm mutes don't get out of hand and you should be fine.

From there play around with your levels and do some volume automation and iron out the kinks, you miht also find a mixbuss compressor and some tape saturation will glue it all together, just be gentle with it and use it subtly.

Really in the end find a reference mix in the genre that you really like and aim to get a similar sound, obviously don't try and copy it to the t but listen to how all the elements are working together and how you can apply that to your mix.

Cheers, and hope this helps
Doug

[andrew0v]

For a mix that's supposed to be "Tweaked to Death" it really doesn't sound tweaked. Really it just sounds like a faders up mix, the sample on the snare, kick, and rhythm guitar are the most prominent elements of your mix and is just drowning out the rest of the mix. I can't really tell if you'e included vocals because of the mess that's going on. I would completely scrap this mix and start fresh. Find a real cracking snare sample and a kick with a decent bit of click and a tight sounding low end, Eq and compress them till they fit in the mix if need be and move to bass.

A big thing that I found that helped was ditching the stock drum sounds altogether save for the overheads (the overheads will be your cymbals track so just highpass everything below 600 or 700 Hz). Really the stock sounds here don't fit this genre at all, they're loose and flappy sounding without much punch to them, the saving grace is that they're in time and are played fairly tight. The drums in general are the biggest pitfall of this set of multis as the stock guitar and bass tones are pretty solid already and include DI versions to reamp if need be, and the vocals just need some highpassing and eq , heavy compression, De essing, and a touch of limiting.

Bass wise I found using the DI bass with TSE B.O.D (free plugin emulation of the Sansamp Bass Driver) with some drive and a scoop around 300 Hz and some compression and limiting got the bass most of the way to a finished sound. The other 20% was using the bass Fx track high passed at 250 Hz and lowpassed at 3.5 kHz blended in with the DI. This allows you to control the eq and percived distortion on the bass, making it easier to fit it with the guitar. Guitar wise, if you scoop out the ugly mids at 450-500 Hz, boost some 1.5 kHz and roll off the high end at about 7 kHz, you should be 90% there. Add a multiband compressor to the guitars to clap down on 250 Hz so the palm mutes don't get out of hand and you should be fine.

From there play around with your levels and do some volume automation and iron out the kinks, you miht also find a mixbuss compressor and some tape saturation will glue it all together, just be gentle with it and use it subtly.

Really in the end find a reference mix in the genre that you really like and aim to get a similar sound, obviously don't try and copy it to the t but listen to how all the elements are working together and how you can apply that to your mix.

Cheers, and hope this helps
Doug

Ya I purposefully didn't mix the vocals at all cause they were pretty bad but I did a lot of work on the guitars I was going for a very natural sounding sort of djent tone sort of like meshuggah and the tone that Keith Merrow uses I actually used a lot of processing and multiband compression with mid gates and vocoding on the guitars so im not sure how it sounds like I just turned the guitars up with the faders im pretty sure that wouldn't be many peoples approach to mixing I really struggled with the snare so ya I think that needs work lol and the cymbals and overheads are pretty lacking in my mixes as well

[dcp10200]

Ya I purposefully didn't mix the vocals at all cause they were pretty bad but I did a lot of work on the guitars I was going for a very natural sounding sort of djent tone sort of like meshuggah and the tone that Keith Merrow uses I actually used a lot of processing and multiband compression with mid gates and vocoding on the guitars so im not sure how it sounds like I just turned the guitars up with the faders im pretty sure that wouldn't be many peoples approach to mixing I really struggled with the snare so ya I think that needs work lol and the cymbals and overheads are pretty lacking in my mixes as well

Thing is, you can't really all it natural either, unless your amp really sucks or you just have a really muddy tone, this isn't what you would associate with the word natural. Keith and Fredrik's tones don't really sound like this either, on that front all your fancy processing got nothing done. Sorry if it sounds harsh, believe me I've had the same problems in the past. Remember this, Keep It Simple Simon, alot of times an overly complicated processing chain will give you this result and make your tones sound muddy and undefined so, remove all your plugins from your DI guitars and start over.

For the next version limit yourself to this chain: 1. Overdrive emulation: Volume cranked, Tone Cranked, and Drive on 0 2. Amp Sim: just any high gain amp sim will do, I like the Nick Crow Labs 7170 and 8505 sims for a 5150 kind of tone and even the Van51 in Guitar Rig 5. 3. Cab Sim: Grab Rosen Digital's Pulse plugin, this includes a free cab sim and allows you to add your own cab sims to it and blend between the 2 cabs. I personally like Catharsis Fredman Cabs, Redwirez 1960a V30 loaded cabs, and the Metallica IR Pack by BGelais but really most of the IRs out there are great. 4. Eq: start out with a High pass at 100 Hz and a low pass at 7 kHz, from there scoop out that muddiness at 400-500 Hz, don't go too extreme or the guitars will sound really strange and hollow. Just enough so that you get abit of definition. Try a boost around the 1.5-2 kHz area, this can give you a good bit of cut out of the guitars but if you're not careful can end un making them super harsh, follow that with a cut in the 2.6-5 kHz range. In that range guitars start to have a weird white noise kind of sound that really makes a mess of the top end. 5. Multiband compression: Set it up so that your comp triggers at 250 Hz, use a -26.5 dB threshold, 16 ms attack and a 25 ms release. I'm not really sure on a ratio (I use Waves C4, there isn't a ratio, it's just a range control which controls the maximum amount of gain reduction) so I assume an 10 oe 15:1 ratio. 6. Limiter: Throw on a limiter as the last thing in your chain just to keep everythin nice and tight. I used Waves L1 (as I like to call it JoeL Oneisack) but really any limiter will do (a free version of L1 exisits called W1 if you don't hae it and it works the same way), just set it so it pulls 6 dB of reduction and the release is 4.84 ms.

This should get you a more full fat metal tone that's easier to play with and an easy to repeat (If you have Reaper just save it as an effects chain) sound. Don't give up on this track, it took me a good few hours to get where my mix is and I'm still trying to get it right. Also, if the rest of your mix is in order the vocals should pretty much drop in with some eq, compression and some automation. The biggest problem with them is that there's alot of proximity effect from the vocalist being too close to the mic, it's as easy to fix and high passing at 200 Hz. I know you can do it.

Cheers,
Doug

[andrew0v]

Ya I purposefully didn't mix the vocals at all cause they were pretty bad but I did a lot of work on the guitars I was going for a very natural sounding sort of djent tone sort of like meshuggah and the tone that Keith Merrow uses I actually used a lot of processing and multiband compression with mid gates and vocoding on the guitars so im not sure how it sounds like I just turned the guitars up with the faders im pretty sure that wouldn't be many peoples approach to mixing I really struggled with the snare so ya I think that needs work lol and the cymbals and overheads are pretty lacking in my mixes as well

Thing is, you can't really all it natural either, unless your amp really sucks or you just have a really muddy tone, this isn't what you would associate with the word natural. Keith and Fredrik's tones don't really sound like this either, on that front all your fancy processing got nothing done. Sorry if it sounds harsh, believe me I've had the same problems in the past. Remember this, Keep It Simple Simon, alot of times an overly complicated processing chain will give you this result and make your tones sound muddy and undefined so, remove all your plugins from your DI guitars and start over.

For the next version limit yourself to this chain: 1. Overdrive emulation: Volume cranked, Tone Cranked, and Drive on 0 2. Amp Sim: just any high gain amp sim will do, I like the Nick Crow Labs 7170 and 8505 sims for a 5150 kind of tone and even the Van51 in Guitar Rig 5. 3. Cab Sim: Grab Rosen Digital's Pulse plugin, this includes a free cab sim and allows you to add your own cab sims to it and blend between the 2 cabs. I personally like Catharsis Fredman Cabs, Redwirez 1960a V30 loaded cabs, and the Metallica IR Pack by BGelais but really most of the IRs out there are great. 4. Eq: start out with a High pass at 100 Hz and a low pass at 7 kHz, from there scoop out that muddiness at 400-500 Hz, don't go too extreme or the guitars will sound really strange and hollow. Just enough so that you get abit of definition. Try a boost around the 1.5-2 kHz area, this can give you a good bit of cut out of the guitars but if you're not careful can end un making them super harsh, follow that with a cut in the 2.6-5 kHz range. In that range guitars start to have a weird white noise kind of sound that really makes a mess of the top end. 5. Multiband compression: Set it up so that your comp triggers at 250 Hz, use a -26.5 dB threshold, 16 ms attack and a 25 ms release. I'm not really sure on a ratio (I use Waves C4, there isn't a ratio, it's just a range control which controls the maximum amount of gain reduction) so I assume an 10 oe 15:1 ratio. 6. Limiter: Throw on a limiter as the last thing in your chain just to keep everythin nice and tight. I used Waves L1 (as I like to call it JoeL Oneisack) but really any limiter will do (a free version of L1 exisits called W1 if you don't hae it and it works the same way), just set it so it pulls 6 dB of reduction and the release is 4.84 ms.

This should get you a more full fat metal tone that's easier to play with and an easy to repeat (If you have Reaper just save it as an effects chain) sound. Don't give up on this track, it took me a good few hours to get where my mix is and I'm still trying to get it right. Also, if the rest of your mix is in order the vocals should pretty much drop in with some eq, compression and some automation. The biggest problem with them is that there's alot of proximity effect from the vocalist being too close to the mic, it's as easy to fix and high passing at 200 Hz. I know you can do it.

Cheers,
Doug

Oh I did not use the di's that were given I just mixed the distorted recorded guitars by the way it would probably sound a lot better without them and the di's through bias fx or something I may try that too lol

[andrew0v]

Ya I purposefully didn't mix the vocals at all cause they were pretty bad but I did a lot of work on the guitars I was going for a very natural sounding sort of djent tone sort of like meshuggah and the tone that Keith Merrow uses I actually used a lot of processing and multiband compression with mid gates and vocoding on the guitars so im not sure how it sounds like I just turned the guitars up with the faders im pretty sure that wouldn't be many peoples approach to mixing I really struggled with the snare so ya I think that needs work lol and the cymbals and overheads are pretty lacking in my mixes as well

Thing is, you can't really all it natural either, unless your amp really sucks or you just have a really muddy tone, this isn't what you would associate with the word natural. Keith and Fredrik's tones don't really sound like this either, on that front all your fancy processing got nothing done. Sorry if it sounds harsh, believe me I've had the same problems in the past. Remember this, Keep It Simple Simon, alot of times an overly complicated processing chain will give you this result and make your tones sound muddy and undefined so, remove all your plugins from your DI guitars and start over.

For the next version limit yourself to this chain: 1. Overdrive emulation: Volume cranked, Tone Cranked, and Drive on 0 2. Amp Sim: just any high gain amp sim will do, I like the Nick Crow Labs 7170 and 8505 sims for a 5150 kind of tone and even the Van51 in Guitar Rig 5. 3. Cab Sim: Grab Rosen Digital's Pulse plugin, this includes a free cab sim and allows you to add your own cab sims to it and blend between the 2 cabs. I personally like Catharsis Fredman Cabs, Redwirez 1960a V30 loaded cabs, and the Metallica IR Pack by BGelais but really most of the IRs out there are great. 4. Eq: start out with a High pass at 100 Hz and a low pass at 7 kHz, from there scoop out that muddiness at 400-500 Hz, don't go too extreme or the guitars will sound really strange and hollow. Just enough so that you get abit of definition. Try a boost around the 1.5-2 kHz area, this can give you a good bit of cut out of the guitars but if you're not careful can end un making them super harsh, follow that with a cut in the 2.6-5 kHz range. In that range guitars start to have a weird white noise kind of sound that really makes a mess of the top end. 5. Multiband compression: Set it up so that your comp triggers at 250 Hz, use a -26.5 dB threshold, 16 ms attack and a 25 ms release. I'm not really sure on a ratio (I use Waves C4, there isn't a ratio, it's just a range control which controls the maximum amount of gain reduction) so I assume an 10 oe 15:1 ratio. 6. Limiter: Throw on a limiter as the last thing in your chain just to keep everythin nice and tight. I used Waves L1 (as I like to call it JoeL Oneisack) but really any limiter will do (a free version of L1 exisits called W1 if you don't hae it and it works the same way), just set it so it pulls 6 dB of reduction and the release is 4.84 ms.

This should get you a more full fat metal tone that's easier to play with and an easy to repeat (If you have Reaper just save it as an effects chain) sound. Don't give up on this track, it took me a good few hours to get where my mix is and I'm still trying to get it right. Also, if the rest of your mix is in order the vocals should pretty much drop in with some eq, compression and some automation. The biggest problem with them is that there's alot of proximity effect from the vocalist being too close to the mic, it's as easy to fix and high passing at 200 Hz. I know you can do it.

Cheers,
Doug

Ya if i broke out my bias fx and ez drummer plugins i could have it sounding a lot better without all the bad nuances but i wanted to keep this natural sounding like the band recorded it

[dcp10200]

Ya if i broke out my bias fx and ez drummer plugins i could have it sounding a lot better without all the bad nuances but i wanted to keep this natural sounding like the band recorded it

9 chances out of ten the band wanted the drums sample replaced, judging by how the stock drums sound, also this is by no means natural. If you handed this to the band they wouldn't be too happy with the results here, it seems "natural" is just a code word for doesn't really sound great. If you want a natural sounding recording listen to Zeppelin, if you want to make a modern metal track,be prepared to sample replace bad sounding drums, and reamp bad sounding guitars. My critique still stands, don't be lazy, fix your mix, don't all it "Tweaked to death" if it's not and then try to pass it off as "natural", mark it down as a fail and try again.

Cheers,
Doug

[andrew0v]

Ya if i broke out my bias fx and ez drummer plugins i could have it sounding a lot better without all the bad nuances but i wanted to keep this natural sounding like the band recorded it

9 chances out of ten the band wanted the drums sample replaced, judging by how the stock drums sound, also this is by no means natural. If you handed this to the band they wouldn't be too happy with the results here, it seems "natural" is just a code word for doesn't really sound great. If you want a natural sounding recording listen to Zeppelin, if you want to make a modern metal track,be prepared to sample replace bad sounding drums, and reamp bad sounding guitars. My critique still stands, don't be lazy, fix your mix, don't all it "Tweaked to death" if it's not and then try to pass it off as "natural", mark it down as a fail and try again.

Cheers,
Doug

well considering the actual song has the actual drum track on it im not sure what you mean the band wouldn't be happy

[dcp10200]

well considering the actual song has the actual drum track on it im not sure what you mean the band wouldn't be happy

In my experience, most bands want a commercial quality mix, something that you could play next to another mix in the genre in the real world, it stands on it's own two feet. Most bands do record live drums, that is obvious, but due to mixing budgets, poor quality recordings, or not haing the sound that they are looking for, those drums are sample replaced or reinforced to give them more punch and clarity in a mix. These drums here were clearly recorded with the intention of being either completely replaced by samples (with Slate Trigger or a similar program) or blended with samples.

This in no way sounds like a commercial mix, the drums don't have the power in them, guitars, despite being gated don't hae the attack or low end punh for a modern metal/Djent mix and overall sounds like a demo. If you were being payed for this mix, a client or band would expect the best quality mix available, this isn't it, the client now is angry with you and expects better, if that means using EZdrummer samples with a triggering program and Bias for the guitars, so be it.

I'm sorry if this comes across as harsh, this mix needs some serious work and overhauling to make it better.

[andrew0v]

well considering the actual song has the actual drum track on it im not sure what you mean the band wouldn't be happy

In my experience, most bands want a commercial quality mix, something that you could play next to another mix in the genre in the real world, it stands on it's own two feet. Most bands do record live drums, that is obvious, but due to mixing budgets, poor quality recordings, or not haing the sound that they are looking for, those drums are sample replaced or reinforced to give them more punch and clarity in a mix. These drums here were clearly recorded with the intention of being either completely replaced by samples (with Slate Trigger or a similar program) or blended with samples.

This in no way sounds like a commercial mix, the drums don't have the power in them, guitars, despite being gated don't hae the attack or low end punh for a modern metal/Djent mix and overall sounds like a demo. If you were being payed for this mix, a client or band would expect the best quality mix available, this isn't it, the client now is angry with you and expects better, if that means using EZdrummer samples with a triggering program and Bias for the guitars, so be it.

I'm sorry if this comes across as harsh, this mix needs some serious work and overhauling to make it better.

Well know that you've kind of called me out i've posted a reamped version just with the di guitars and bass