Struggling Audio Engineer; Full Metal Production

[Tactical Tiger]

I designed this track to showcase various instruments used in a full metal production. Everything is there minus live vocals. I used Live Acoustic Guitar, Midi Violins, Viola, and Choir by Garitan orchestra 4. Two guitar tracks panned hard left and right recorded through a peavey vypyr 120(that needs tubes) and mic'd with an audix i5 going into my TC Electronic Desktop Konnekt 6. A DI bass track with distortion. Drums are superior drummer using the metal foundry samples. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and the favor would be returned. Thank you for your time.

https://soundcloud.com/tacticaltigerpro/full-metal-production

 

[HaloHat]

First I know less than nothing about mixing etc. so giant grain of salt on my comments. I'm listening on 5" 100w monitors at a medium volume.

The bass guitar sounds good to me starting at about 14 seconds in then seems to fad out at about 42 seconds in and throughout the remainder of the song [which I like]. Kind of seems lost in the kick drum to my ears.

Better in every way than I could do lol...

 

[RagtimeDandy]

Everything is of course stylistic, but the drums do just sound like "demo" drums. Like room-recorded ones, straight into the mics, and if that's the intent, sure, but mixed with the orchestral elements, which are high quality, there's a sort of duality that doesn't quite mesh. I recommend toning down the room mics quite a bit, and tightening up the kick drum as well as getting a bit more punch from it. As far as the mix goes, try to focus on each instrument sitting in its own tonal layer. There's quite a bit of blending, which contributes to the "demo" sound overall. The orchestral elements are significantly higher than everything else, so I'd turn those down a little.

Overall it's a killer track, but if you're looking to push the sound quality further, the single most important thing I learned was less is more. The guitars don't need much bass at all once you mix and EQ the bass properly to fill in the gap, which opens up a ton of room in the mix and cleans it up. I generally aim for the kick drum to have just enough 100hz area to have a rumble, but not so much as to suffocate. A little boost at ~300 for punch, then another boost between 1.7-3kHz allows it to cut the mix. All other frequencies remain for the other drums/instruments. This is of course trial and error for each person and what they want to achieve, that's what I've found that works. Guitars I generally sit at a little around 500Hz, then between 1200-1500, with each channel resting towards the extremes of that range. Bass is a little tricky for me, I honestly cheat and just use the DI from Toontracks Guitar Gods (or whatever it's called), and use the Koloss bass tone from Meshuggah, then EQ it to fill in the missing bass range of the guitars, with enough treble range to make it present when needed. I like to let the snare drum sit just above the guitars, as well as between 380-500Hz so it has a little punch behind it. Again, this is all trial and error, but getting a very clean, good drum tone from Superior does take a bit of work. Took me literally two years to get a sound I was happy with.

 

[schwiz]

Overall pretty good man, but the production is demo quality and needs some polishing to be competitive.

More compression and EQ on every instrument front. Those synths jumped out of my headphones and gave me a wet willy. The guitar tone is overly nasally. Not sure where the bass is. The drums don't really fill out the space their sitting in. Buss compression.

Aside from the EQ and compression your track is lacking reverb overall. Reverb will definitely help fill the frequency spectrum and make the track huge. Reverb on the snare, toms, guitars, and synth. I'd also parallel compress the entire drum kit minus the cymbals.

Not trying to be harsh, just wanted to give you some honest feedback. Keep at it mang! Cheers

 

[Tactical Tiger]

Everything is of course stylistic, but the drums do just sound like "demo" drums. Like room-recorded ones, straight into the mics, and if that's the intent, sure, but mixed with the orchestral elements, which are high quality, there's a sort of duality that doesn't quite mesh. I recommend toning down the room mics quite a bit, and tightening up the kick drum as well as getting a bit more punch from it. As far as the mix goes, try to focus on each instrument sitting in its own tonal layer. There's quite a bit of blending, which contributes to the "demo" sound overall. The orchestral elements are significantly higher than everything else, so I'd turn those down a little.

Overall it's a killer track, but if you're looking to push the sound quality further, the single most important thing I learned was less is more. The guitars don't need much bass at all once you mix and EQ the bass properly to fill in the gap, which opens up a ton of room in the mix and cleans it up. I generally aim for the kick drum to have just enough 100hz area to have a rumble, but not so much as to suffocate. A little boost at ~300 for punch, then another boost between 1.7-3kHz allows it to cut the mix. All other frequencies remain for the other drums/instruments. This is of course trial and error for each person and what they want to achieve, that's what I've found that works. Guitars I generally sit at a little around 500Hz, then between 1200-1500, with each channel resting towards the extremes of that range. Bass is a little tricky for me, I honestly cheat and just use the DI from Toontracks Guitar Gods (or whatever it's called), and use the Koloss bass tone from Meshuggah, then EQ it to fill in the missing bass range of the guitars, with enough treble range to make it present when needed. I like to let the snare drum sit just above the guitars, as well as between 380-500Hz so it has a little punch behind it. Again, this is all trial and error, but getting a very clean, good drum tone from Superior does take a bit of work. Took me literally two years to get a sound I was happy with.

Thanks for the reply and tips, this was the first track where i actually used the close and far room mics in superior so im still experimenting with that.

 

[Tactical Tiger]

Overall pretty good man, but the production is demo quality and needs some polishing to be competitive.

More compression and EQ on every instrument front. Those synths jumped out of my headphones and gave me a wet willy. The guitar tone is overly nasally. Not sure where the bass is. The drums don't really fill out the space their sitting in. Buss compression.

Aside from the EQ and compression your track is lacking reverb overall. Reverb will definitely help fill the frequency spectrum and make the track huge. Reverb on the snare, toms, guitars, and synth. I'd also parallel compress the entire drum kit minus the cymbals.

Not trying to be harsh, just wanted to give you some honest feedback. Keep at it mang! Cheers

Thanks for the tips, listening back i hear how nasally the guitar tone is. I understand what reverb does and using it though i have a hard time hearing it with other professional records. Do you have an article or video recommendation to understand this better?

 

[Tactical Tiger]

First I know less than nothing about mixing etc. so giant grain of salt on my comments. I'm listening on 5" 100w monitors at a medium volume.

The bass guitar sounds good to me starting at about 14 seconds in then seems to fad out at about 42 seconds in and throughout the remainder of the song [which I like]. Kind of seems lost in the kick drum to my ears.

Better in every way than I could do lol...

Thanks for taking the time to listen and comment!

 

[schwiz]

Literally every major production has reverb, especially on vocals and snare drums. Most of the time its tucked in under the dry signal, but its there; as you know, too much reverb sounds tacky.

I send my guitar bus, vocal bus, bass grit, drums, and synth to reverb FX channel, which has the reverb mix set to 100%, and no dry signal coming through. From there, I blend in the reverb to sit just under the dry track. It's subtle but necessary in my opinion.

These may be helpful:

 

[prlgmnr]

The balance both in terms of levels and I think... I don't know how best to put this, let's say "timbre" between the metal elements and the orchestral elements isn't quite right to me but this is maybe partly a mixing issue and partly a compositional one.

 

[schwiz]

Also, this is the biggest secret of mine, that is really not a secret at all...

http://nickfever.com/music/delay-calculator

Thank me later (and I'll thank Eyal Levi), when you realize how awesome that calculator is and how much it matters.

 

[Tactical Tiger]

The balance both in terms of levels and I think... I don't know how best to put this, let's say "timbre" between the metal elements and the orchestral elements isn't quite right to me but this is maybe partly a mixing issue and partly a compositional one.

i was putting the strings in place of where vocals would go but that hasn't worked very well. Thanks for listening and giving feedback

 

[prlgmnr]

I do kind of see what you mean with that, a lot of my problem with it was that the strings seemed sort of too "out front" which you would obviously want the vocals to be.