So here's my take on "Pennies".
First, I wanna point out that I'm a total n00b when it comes to audio engineering. That said, I was not completely unaware of the recording process and I've got a pretty good head on my shoulders. My ear is well trained for detail because I've been playing one instrument or another both alone and in groups since I was a kid (I'm now a fraction over the 40 mark). I started taking classes at the local community college ad the end of August 2013 and had never even seen a DAW until January of this year when I started learning protools. Let me say that I have had some very good instructors! Not having $600 to spend (plus plugins!) I bought a copy of Sonar X3 Studio (using my student ID to drop the price down a fair piece) and that's what I mixed this in, using nothing but what Cakewalk supplied with the package.
Oh, and a reminder to the other folks submitting mixes. When looking at a drum kit, please do not forget to examine phasing. You do not know if it was corrected to tape or left as is. This one was as-is. I had to flip the top snare (the bottom mic receives the first in-phase impuse so I consider that the central reference and judge the rest of the mics based on that) and the room mics. I note this because the last mix I listened to had a very thin ringy snare sound and that's what I've discovered happend when I was working on a school project back in early April so figured I'd point that out.
Now, my comments about my mix...
I wanna say that that drum kit was very hard to deal with. That was probably 40% of my time. I went slow and was very picky and, being new, also had to redo some things I realize I did wrong. So total time spent on this was roughly 25 hours. I don't mind because it was a learning experience. The big issue I had was that there was so much bleed into the kick mic that it was hard to get just the kick. That and the ~80-100hz tone. Took some creative EQ to tamp that down where I was happy with it while still having a good thump. I found the overheads all but useless and the room mics were more like front-of-kit mics. The snare was so prominent in those that the close mics on the snare didn't add much. That was also where the cymbals came through the clearest so I couldn't just turn it down and use the others. Then there was the little surprise of a second concert-type snare drum at the end that didn't have its own track and showed up in both the kick and room mics. Had to copy those to a separate track to try to bring that out.
It took me a while to figure out what the engineer's intentions were with the guitars--why there were four coppies of each part. About half way through, I realized that each guitar was recorded with stereo mics. Things started to become pretty clear once I figured that out. You can tell this because if you solo A and B and then polarity reverse one they largely cancel. These were meant to be panned hard right and left. There were then two subsequent mono takes for coloration and panning effects, although the stereo tracks help narrow the field a bit.) The engineer did this to add body to the track and then give himself some flexibility. I've thought about this sort of thing while I was doing research earlier in the year and ran across a few interesting articles.
I, however, took a little different approach with the guitars. I did do that for the lead and third part but then ran all four tracks through a stereo sub. These three subs I then ran through another sub to create a guitar stem. panning and volume effects were applied to the subs but the compression, expanders, etc were applied to the individual tracks with EQ on both the individual tracks as appropriate as well as the stub. Another EQ was applied to the stem but this one was just to allow me to duck out the central band of the vocals and bass so they would spend less time fighting each other in the mix. I'm not entirely satisfied that I did that properly since I still had to put the vocals a tad above where I felt they belonged.
I mixed using mainly headphones since I don't have monitors per se, just PC speakers that, while not bad, definitely do NOT have a flat response. Thus my low end may be a bit higher than I want it to be.
As a final note, I will point out that I did *not* listen to the posted sample track AT ALL except for about 30 seconds when I was picking out a song to download. (That was about 10 days ago.) Nor did I listen to any of the posted tracks until I was better than 95% done. When I got done with my mix and compared it to what was originally done, I was frankly astonished by how close many of my decisions were to that mix. I swear, I didn't copy! Honest to goodness! Their mix seems a bit fuller than mine but I think mine has a little more clarity.
I hope you like it. Any comments on things that I might have done differently/better/more creatively are welcome. It was quite a trip working on this and I did indeed have a good time doing it.
Enjoy!
Oh, to the site managers... the text file you include with these zip files... It'd be nice if you included a list of mics and placement used if such information is to be had. Mainly just for interest.
First, I wanna point out that I'm a total n00b when it comes to audio engineering. That said, I was not completely unaware of the recording process and I've got a pretty good head on my shoulders. My ear is well trained for detail because I've been playing one instrument or another both alone and in groups since I was a kid (I'm now a fraction over the 40 mark). I started taking classes at the local community college ad the end of August 2013 and had never even seen a DAW until January of this year when I started learning protools. Let me say that I have had some very good instructors! Not having $600 to spend (plus plugins!) I bought a copy of Sonar X3 Studio (using my student ID to drop the price down a fair piece) and that's what I mixed this in, using nothing but what Cakewalk supplied with the package.
Oh, and a reminder to the other folks submitting mixes. When looking at a drum kit, please do not forget to examine phasing. You do not know if it was corrected to tape or left as is. This one was as-is. I had to flip the top snare (the bottom mic receives the first in-phase impuse so I consider that the central reference and judge the rest of the mics based on that) and the room mics. I note this because the last mix I listened to had a very thin ringy snare sound and that's what I've discovered happend when I was working on a school project back in early April so figured I'd point that out.
Now, my comments about my mix...
I wanna say that that drum kit was very hard to deal with. That was probably 40% of my time. I went slow and was very picky and, being new, also had to redo some things I realize I did wrong. So total time spent on this was roughly 25 hours. I don't mind because it was a learning experience. The big issue I had was that there was so much bleed into the kick mic that it was hard to get just the kick. That and the ~80-100hz tone. Took some creative EQ to tamp that down where I was happy with it while still having a good thump. I found the overheads all but useless and the room mics were more like front-of-kit mics. The snare was so prominent in those that the close mics on the snare didn't add much. That was also where the cymbals came through the clearest so I couldn't just turn it down and use the others. Then there was the little surprise of a second concert-type snare drum at the end that didn't have its own track and showed up in both the kick and room mics. Had to copy those to a separate track to try to bring that out.
It took me a while to figure out what the engineer's intentions were with the guitars--why there were four coppies of each part. About half way through, I realized that each guitar was recorded with stereo mics. Things started to become pretty clear once I figured that out. You can tell this because if you solo A and B and then polarity reverse one they largely cancel. These were meant to be panned hard right and left. There were then two subsequent mono takes for coloration and panning effects, although the stereo tracks help narrow the field a bit.) The engineer did this to add body to the track and then give himself some flexibility. I've thought about this sort of thing while I was doing research earlier in the year and ran across a few interesting articles.
I, however, took a little different approach with the guitars. I did do that for the lead and third part but then ran all four tracks through a stereo sub. These three subs I then ran through another sub to create a guitar stem. panning and volume effects were applied to the subs but the compression, expanders, etc were applied to the individual tracks with EQ on both the individual tracks as appropriate as well as the stub. Another EQ was applied to the stem but this one was just to allow me to duck out the central band of the vocals and bass so they would spend less time fighting each other in the mix. I'm not entirely satisfied that I did that properly since I still had to put the vocals a tad above where I felt they belonged.
I mixed using mainly headphones since I don't have monitors per se, just PC speakers that, while not bad, definitely do NOT have a flat response. Thus my low end may be a bit higher than I want it to be.
As a final note, I will point out that I did *not* listen to the posted sample track AT ALL except for about 30 seconds when I was picking out a song to download. (That was about 10 days ago.) Nor did I listen to any of the posted tracks until I was better than 95% done. When I got done with my mix and compared it to what was originally done, I was frankly astonished by how close many of my decisions were to that mix. I swear, I didn't copy! Honest to goodness! Their mix seems a bit fuller than mine but I think mine has a little more clarity.
I hope you like it. Any comments on things that I might have done differently/better/more creatively are welcome. It was quite a trip working on this and I did indeed have a good time doing it.
Enjoy!
Oh, to the site managers... the text file you include with these zip files... It'd be nice if you included a list of mics and placement used if such information is to be had. Mainly just for interest.
Old West Audio
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