My Burning Bridges Mix worked on for days

[takka360]

Yes but send the vox to the side chain of the comp.set up bus up in the side chain on the comp and send the vox to that bus.
Make sure you turn the side chain button on on the comp

[ViciousBliss]

Takka, which comp are you referring to? As far as I can tell there are no side chain buttons on the CLA, Nomad Factory, or T-Racks stuff. I've seen sidechain buttons on the Softube Fet and the Rocket. My Softube trial expired but I guess one can still use Rocket with a countdown til they come up with the cash. Even on those two, I don't recall their being an option on choosing a sidechain. I'll have to look at more instructions.

Another thing I tried was the Trackspacer, but just on the vocals. I may have to give that a shot on the drums. If anyone here hasn't heard of it, it's a 32 multi band EQ that intelligently analyzes an affected track that you insert it on along with a sidechain of a bus or something and subtracts frequencies from the affected track so that everything blends. You just set the parameters and listen.

[takka360]

Just use the protools comp that has a side chain. Yes I know track spacer

[ViciousBliss]

I went and made some adjustments. The biggest problem for me is making the vocal less hollow and these drums. It's very difficult to integrate these type of drums for me. They kind of lend themselves better to a dryer production. I think I found what you were talking about, takka.

http://erikhawkins.berkleemusicblogs.com...mpression/

That opens up a lot of possibilities. I've read the PT manual, watched lots of Pensado's Place and other educational shows, but all this info isn't going to sink in over night, especially if I'm not attempting anything where I can use it. Most of my time was spent with Reaper, it's only been the last 4 weeks or so where I've been using Pro Tools. When I went through and listened to a bunch of classic and modern stuff, there is a huge difference in the drums for sure. Even something like a Lullacry Be My God snare would be much easier for me to add fx around. Snares for songs like When the Night Comes Down by Priest were pretty easy to work with for me. There's so much space to play around in.

Death are actually a big influence on the drum sounds I want to get. Leprosy for the snare and either ITP or Symbolic for the kick. I think there's some melodic metal influence on the vocals in this song. Definitely more aggressive than that stuff though.

One modern metal production style I did like was used on a lot on Frontiers records stuff like Allen Lande:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GADAAvlQHJY

and Tony O'Hora

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtDitUeYTUQ

To me it seems to have all the benefits of the classic and modern tools and without sounding too terribly squashed. For the melodic death metal style that a lot of bands such as Killswitch took influence from, I always liked stuff like Amon Amarth's Once Sent From the Golden Hall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW4dA1X9fqU

thanks again for the tips everyone

[jeffd42]

What do you have your HD800s hooked up to?

I use a UAD Apollo Twin and a Centrance DACMini (the first has more natural tonal balance, the second is more precise but a bit harsh with the HD800s). Neither amp probably an ideal match for those headphones. IMHO, mixing on headphones works ok for individual tracks but I can't put together a full mix balance and/or balance the EQ across the full spectrum without speakers.

This sounds interesting. Is there a good guide? [to sidechaining]

Some FX will let you mix dry/wet, so that's a starting point. But you'll have more control if you send to an AUX and then you can then EQ in (and out) of the effect, add delays, stereo spread etc, and mix/automate the effect and the original to taste.

[On multing] You mean use a multi band eq to bring them out of the track?

Different concept. Create another audio track, copy and paste only the sections you want to treat differently (specific cymbal crashes in this case). If it's just volume changes then of course you could do it directly with automation instead. However, if its different EQ or effects treatments then multing the audio out provides more control.

[ViciousBliss]

I find that checking on headphones is pretty critical for me because a lot of stuff that sounds tolerable on the monitors is glaringly revealed to be too much on the K701.

I setup the sidechain bus using the dyn compressor on the drums. I think that helped. Then I went back and changed some of the routing. Some video I had seen had said to setup an aux track, you would set the output of all the individual tracks you want to share an effect to the bus going to the aux, and then add aux sends on the individual tracks going to that same bus on top of it. The snare for example would read output bus 1-2 and then have an aux send that said bus 1-2.

So I watched another video and decided to take the first two lead vocals, the first two guitars, and the kick and two snares outputs off their respective fx bus aux and send them direct to the hd 1-2 output. Then I left the same aux sends in place but with minimal volume. So the snare would say output hd 1-2 and aux send bus 1-2.

I think this cleaned up a lot of what I wasn't liking. I bypassed cla vocals and scaled back some fx and changed some others. Tweaked the compressors on the drums. Rewrote the automation for lead vocal two using the mouse and the grabber tool since I haven't got the cash for Wave Rider yet. That thing saves so much time I definitely miss it. I used to spend hours drawing automation in Reaper and the results were never as good as what Wave Rider does. At least PT makes it a lot easier to do the automation by hand.

Consider this just an in progress change, I'm going to spend more time with it later today.

[takka360]

Mixing is very hard and takes a very long time to mix really well and this mix is deffo a very hard mix anyway for anyone.

[Blitzzz]

Mixing is very hard and takes a very long time to mix really well and this mix is deffo a very hard mix anyway for anyone.

hmmm. I think Burning Bridges is quite easy and you don't need much to make it sound "right". High/lowpass filter and stock reverb, delay, eq and compressor is everything you need imho. The vocals are allready processed to a degree (edited, eq'ed and compressed with fx allready on it), rhythm guitar and bass tones are compatible. You do need to automate the volume faders to bring the right instrument/track in the spotlight and back into the mix if something else is more interesting/important. But other than that I´m not sure why so many people decide to aggressively change the original sound of the recorded tracks and totally mess things up. Why do you put heavy distortion on allready heavily distorted guitars and make them unlistenable, boomy and flat like a dead bird on a highway? Or excessively use reverb on a metal track that should be "in your face"? I don't think a mixer should completely change the sound of a band - he should enhance it. If a band wants to sound like Kyuss and the recorded tracks are allready very close to this sound I don't think that your job is to make them sound like `tallica from the 80s just because you love that sound.

That's why i don't like this mix. It tries to change the sound of a band that doesn't want to sound like early Slayer or Metallica. And on top of that the mix just doesnt sound good. It's flat, there is too much distortion all over the place, there is way too much reverb and the snare sticks out of the sound like the burj al arab in Dubai. And you completely missed to bring out all the details: I can't hear the toms before the 1st chorus at 0:33. I can't hear the toms at 0:52 - they are crucial to move you into the next verse. If you don't put those toms in the spotlight there is no need to even include any toms in your mix - they can't be heard anyway. And the list goes on: I can't hear the guitars in the screamo part. The second chorus hits like a wet noodle - where is the BANG, where is the movement? Every verse sounds the same, every chorus sounds the same. Why is the 1st solo completey masked with this annoying delay? I can't even hear what notes the guitarist is playing. Where is the second half of the solo? Why is there no BANG when the 3rd chorus hits? Where are the melody guitars in the last chorus? I can't hear them. Where is the double bass?

You can bash me for writing this and that's totally understandable. I'm not a pro mixer and everything I wrote is just my 2 cents and you can choose to completely ignore me =) I do understand that you want to make some things different. But you should really work on the basics before trying to do things different or even think about stuff like side chaining. You might wanna check this article with Andy Wallace if you like old slayer and stuff:

http://therecordingrevolution.com/2014/0...y-wallace/

Edit: For me, Takkas latest mix of Burning Bridges is one of the best here on this forum. You might want to check it out. I really like how the chorus hits the listener - every time.

[takka360]

Its fitting it all in that's the big thing and getting the re amp sounds right.There is a fair amount going on .

[ViciousBliss]

Blitzzz, I tried slate vtm and found it kinda underwhelming. it was extremely subtle in what it did. Magnetic II seemed to be able to do the same thing and a lot of other stuff. its got a lot of versatility. I plan on demoing the new slate vmr and vcc 2.

Otherwise my list of plugs to buy is pretty small. Waverider, autotune 8, and Pro Q2 for now. Maybe this new Excalibur. I'd probably get kramer master tape for a rock bottom price. My thinking was to acquire the best tools possible and commit to learning them.