[LAU] New blues and soul-esque tracks, need recording, mixing and mastering hints!

[Jostein Chr. Andersen]

This is a kind of OT (not Linux related) stuff, but the I take the risk to 
write in this forum anyway:     :-)

fredag 13 augusti 2010 02.14.40 skrev  Loki Davison:
> > How did you record it, is it only two tracks or multitrack? It's not very
> > easy to come up with a good answer for you here. :-) It's not very much
> > meaning to suggest adjustmens as the mix sounds like now. A new raw mix
> > please! :-)
...
> 
> It's multitrack, 5 tracks total. 2 for drums, 1 for guitar, 1 vocals,
> 1 bass. There is a bit of spill in the vocals and a little in the
> guitar from the drums. I can record it as many time as required. It's

OK, multitrack, then you _can_ make a new raw mix before asking questions 
about how to go further. :-) It's still pretty meaningless to suggest anything 
about compressing, processing, and all other stuff before I can hear some 
better balance, in a nutshell:

Three Weeks In Albania: Way to load guitar, too little bass.
Frustration: To low vocal, to load guitar.

For the third time: A new raw mix please! :-)

> just i'm not sure how to modify the mic setup to get the desired
> results. The most mics i've got for the kit are 2 pencil cardoid
> condensers and 2 omni's. I'm not using the omni's at all in the
> current setup. Would it be handy to have them as room mics? Or closer

Two cardoids and two omnis? Maybe you should continue with Recorderman for the 
cardoids and add one of the omnis for the kick drum? There are descriptions 
all over the 'Net and in magazines like SOS on how to mike up drums, but they 
can only serve as directions. You are the one that must experiment with the 
room and the equipment you have in order to get best possible results, you are 
stucked with what you have. Let your ears decide, have faiht in that you'll be 
better and better. :-) The mics you have are not ideal (not many people can 
afford that) but you might get wonderful results anyway! from what I can hear: 
nothing stops you from making good results.

> to the kick? What effects would you normal use on a DI'ed bass? Not
> sure if it sounds too clean.

The bass must be filtered and EQed in conjuction with the drums. When it 
interact with the drum kit (and it's kick drum), then we can talk about if 
it's clean or not or what to do. Normally, you will want to use a highpass 
filter first (this is probably the single most importanst step) and then 
compress and then EQ. This order of filtering and processing is common for 
most instruments. On bass, you will probably HP > 40 Hz, Compress around 5:1 
with attack somwhere unde 55 ms (listen and decide) and use a low pass filter 
for regulating how much fret and string noise you want. You must also leave 
space for the kick drum (and the kick drum must leave space for the bass) - 
that's one of the main reasons why you must have a stronger kick drum in your 
recording.

There is really no absolute rights and wrongs here. Anything you do impacts 
everything. A good idea is to take a walk and get some distance from the 
recording and then do a raw mix in 10 minutes or so. But how you finally ends 
up here is based upon testing, experiense and preferences. If you really want 
specific detailed help and advices, then you must provide the tracks separated 
and also improve the recording material (better drum balance). This topic is 
not Linux specific, so you will probably get better help elswhere than here, 
but it's nice that thing like this shows up here too from time to time :-)

If you give your tracks to diffrerent experienced people, you will still get 
very diverse final mixes, so I just say good luck with your music and have 
fun.

Jostein