Need advice on mixing home recordings!

Spectator#1

Hi everyone, I'm looking for advice on the mixing down of a few home recordings.

Instead of bothering with the difficult task of recording drums accoustically in a home setting - which generally brings down the quality of our recordings on a whole as a result of a lack of experience and decent equipment - we used the visual method of Step Recording on a Boss BR600 digital 8-track. The drum tracks we managed to produce were more than adequate for the purpose at hand which is to create decent quality demos to bring to a studio.

Now, we then laid down the two guitars and the bass as seperate tracks on the BR600 and, having made sure that the quality was high enough as a whole for a backing track, we transferred the whole lot onto Garageband for a bit of mixing and to record the vocals from there.

The mixes previous to the vocal recording sounded great and the vocals themselves sounded very good, nice and clear when we did them as well.

Now, the problem is mixing the vocals in with the other tracks. Adding it to the mix seems to have unbalanced the whole track, the vocals are at the front, on their own and it doesn't sound as tight as we were hoping for.

In the past, we've generally discovered that putting a distortion on the vocals helps to embed it in the mix and join it to the rest of the song but we are sure that there is another way of doing it that would allow us to keep the clarity of the original vocal track while mixing it so it sounds organically conjoined to the rest of the music.

I'm not sure if that's enough information there for you or if I stated the case properly for anybody to help. In short, we're just looking for suggestions for how we might mix the vocals in with the song without having to buy new software, start again or put distortion on them! I've had a look at the manual a mod posted a link to in a thread of it's own below and I'm going to have a look through that now but any suggestion any of you might have would be more than welcome and much appreciated, thanks!

Thanks in advance!

cornbb

Interesting problem. Getting things right at that stage of the mixing process can be a real bitch alright - what do mean by the vocals being "on their own" by the way? You mention that they're not as tight as you would like, unfortunately the only way to correct poor rhythm is to rerecord or to use better software than Garageband. Apart from that, is it a question of bad volume levels, bad stereo imaging, do they sound too tinny or something? Might be an idea to stick an MP3 online somewhere so we can track down the problem

electro.ie

What mikes are you using for tracking? if the quality of the vocal recording isn't good enough you aint gonna be able to sit it in neatly.

Just a tip mate, try using a compressor rather than distortion and by setting high ratios and slow attack and release times can make a vocal more aggressive than distortion and add an intense presence without obscuring it.

Have a look on the net for vocal tracking and mixing. I'm sure there's loads of tutorials available.

Also if you wanna get into specifics or post a clip I'm sure a few people would give it a good autopsy for ya!

squibs

If the vocals are too out-front it may be that they didn't get enough of the room sound, or the room they were recorded in had poor acoustic qualities. Try a bit of reverb. If possible set room size, early reflections and damping to match the recording conditions for the other instruments. A short ADT type delay could also help, depending on the style of the music.

Failing that, do you have access to a spectrum analyser? If so have a look at the freqs for the soloed vox. Maybe there's an over-dominant mid-range you could tame with EQ.

TelePaul

I think your problem is mixing too many tracks on the boss before loading them to garage band. Your technique sounds very good, as a genuine drum sound is hard to get at the best of times. However, can you load each track individually from the multitrack recorder? The sequencer and hardware recorder will have a different sound, even if it's a slight difference. If you start the mixing process afresh from garage band, you'll be far better off.

This happens me alot when a friend gives me an instrumental piece he'd like to record vocals over; it its on top and doesn't gel with the mix. It could even be down to something as subtle as the Boss' pre-amps versus whatever sound card pre-amps your using.

In terms of technique, you could EQ things but I'd experiment with mic placement before hand. What mics have you got? If it's a dynamic, get right up close. If it's a condensor, well then you shouldn't have this problem! I'd also try singing into a wardrobe full of clothes or against a mattress or some hung towels, they cut down on reflections and bouncing sound waves. Compression will make the vocals more consistent...you won't have too much peaks or troughs, but a good vocal technique will also help. If the inger is experienced, a condensor microphone will generally have a faster response time and a greater frequency response range. If he sinexperienced, a good dynamic mic - like a shure sm 58 - will be more forgiving.

Also, how are you monitoring the final mix ? Headphones or dedicated studio monitors or what?

Carrigsound

Without hearing it I can only guess what the problem is! There are just too many variables. Any chance of an mp3 of it?

Cheers

Liam

Spectator#1

Sorry lads, I've been busy so I haven't had time to reply till now. I'll respond to you all individually in the next couple of days. We're gonna try a couple of the things you guys suggested and then see about maybe getting an mp3 up if there's still any problems.

Thanks for your suggestions, I'll keep you posted!

ogy

try some panning it usually helps things sit together very nicely
i always thought of panning very mechanically, ie, how much of a signal is going out each speaker, and could never really get a handle on it. but i you really think of it as a soundstage, every instrument needs its own spot on stage. tiny adjustments can help loads. also eqing and obviously levels are what you have to take into account

if you think of the hypothetical soundstage as a 3D area, panning is horizontal position, eq is vertical position, and volume is how far forward or backward the sound source is. You want to give every sound source its own spot, obviously with overlap so it doesn't sound overly clinical. in the low end (bass guitar, kick drum) the eq'ing is most important, so the sounds don't mask each other, but in the mids and highs panning is just as important to seperate everything to a decent degree.
general rules of thumb for mixing:
- bass guitar, kick drum, snare drum and lead vocals should be panned to the centre
- the bass guitar should have an little eq cut where the kick peaks and vice versa
- everything else should be panned left and right to varying degrees to give it its spot in the stereo image
- the other parts of the kit shouldn't be panned too dramtically as if the stereo image is too wide it sounds like your drummer has massive arms!:)

hope this helps (and makes sense:)

ogy

try some panning it usually helps things sit together very nicely
i always thought of panning very mechanically, ie, how much of a signal is going out each speaker, and could never really get a handle on it. but i you really think of it as a soundstage, every instrument needs its own spot on stage. tiny adjustments can help loads. also eqing and obviously levels are what you have to take into account

if you think of the hypothetical soundstage as a 3D area, panning is horizontal position, eq is vertical position, and volume is how far forward or backward the sound source is. You want to give every sound source its own spot, obviously with overlap so it doesn't sound overly clinical. in the low end (bass guitar, kick drum) the eq'ing is most important, so the sounds don't mask each other, but in the mids and highs panning is just as important to seperate everything to a decent degree.
general rules of thumb for mixing:
- bass guitar, kick drum, snare drum and lead vocals should be panned to the centre
- the bass guitar should have an little eq cut where the kick peaks and vice versa
- everything else should be panned left and right to varying degrees to give it its spot in the stereo image
- the other parts of the kit shouldn't be panned too dramtically as if the stereo image is too wide it sounds like your drummer has massive arms!:)

hope this helps (and makes sense:)