Too many threads "sort of" touching on this, about mixing/mastering, but I wanted to discuss and possibly learn some things for myself about this. I've talked to the guy who engineers our music plenty of times but love hearing opinions from multiple people about it, as we have a lot of knowledgeable people here. I guess the point of this thread is to ask questions, discuss answers, and for anyone who's in a band, mixing/mastering, or recording to ask/discuss/get opinions on whatever they're doing. MT has never had a big thread on this as far as I can see. If someone digs up something like this that exists, well you can burn in hell because I created a new one. My biggest question...I'm listening to Metallica's Black Album, and am fucking wondering how they got the drums to sound so big. Like...not even drums exclusively (mainly, though), but how the hell do they get the sound to hit so hard? It's like out of my five senses, two of them are now being used..."feel" and "hearing". I "feel" the drums. What aspect of mixing/mastering is most responsible for this? I know it's all about how much money is in a production and gear used, but I've just always wondered. This album's production can still stand up to any metal albums out there and it's almost 20 years old...blows my mind, because there aren't a lot of albums like that. Like if I listen to Enter Sandman in a playlist with a bunch of modernly-made metal, it starts and sounds kind of quiet, then the drums/bass kick in and it blows everything else on the playlist out of the water in terms of production. It's nuts.
The mastering having some dynamic range left intact certainly helps. The drums maintain more of their impact because the transient peaks of each hit aren't being clipped off with a limiter half as much as on most modern metal albums. Before even getting to that stage in the process though, the drums are just quite loud in the mix in the first place. There's also either a lot of the room mics being mixed into the kit sound, or a very big reverb. Maybe both. That goes a long way towards giving the drums that big stadium-rock type of sound. It's a lot easier to do with the slower/midtempo material found on most of the black album than it would be with their thrash material, because there's plenty of time between each snare hit for a big long reverb to ring out without stepping over the top of itself. Listening to a couple of tracks from this album now actually, and I have to say that pretty much all of the power is in the drums. The rhythm guitars sound quite small.
The drums are like multimultimultitracked on the Black Album. I remember hearing Bob Rock say the toms intro of Enter Sandman is like Lars playing that part 12 times on top of each other, I think they just produced/recorded the drums to ridiculous portions on that album and yeah it is the thing that propels the power of the mix the most.
I don't know what's more astounding - that they layered the drums to that extent, or that Lars was able to play the same part with solid enough timing to layer it at all.
I bet the reason the album took like 2 years to make was just because Lars had to do so many takes, and Bob still probably had to cut the shit out of them. Hetfield's so tight he probably did his parts and was done by like mid 1990
This is no joke. Lars takes a lot longer than most drummers to get his parts right in the studio. Hetfield could probably lay them down much faster.
I don't know about the layering of drums. But pretty sure the biggest reason drums on professionally recorded albums sound so good, is because they are recorded in a good room. That is the biggest factor in whether or not a drum sounds full and big.
Why do your recordings sound like ass? great thread on production, touches on a lot of topics most threads gloss over and is specifically geared towards the bedroom producer.
Not really. You can get great sound out of a crappy room as well, as long as you throw up some reflection catchers. The money is in the overheads, alot of engineers just throw them up as an afterthought, but if they're put up wrong they can ultimately make your mix sound MUCH worse due to phasing and spills.
Wow, that is soo wrong. You can't deny the fact that a good room has on a kit. That is why there are million dollar studios. Not saying you can't get great sounds with a lot less. But to say "not really" is pretty wrong. I do agree with the over head mic placement though. Phasing is a huge issue. Luckily with digital recording, phasing can be fixed very easily.
I've really never heard an album with drums like this before. What are some others...are there any better ones? They're just so huge. They're pretty overkill IMO but they work for the style/band/sound.
Good drum sound also comes with how you place the drums. You can have the best fucking room in the world, but if you don't know where to put the floor-tom, you'll be missing out. And the way things are so INCREDIBLY compressed, either in the mixing process or the mastering process, The drum hits won't get to unfold as powerful as they should have, this is especially apparent in Rock and Metal. So IMO, whatever great room sound you have will disappear with the compression. Because of this, i'd say the KIND of drums you use have a lot more to say, and of course the most important part: where you place the floor-tom.
fucking LOL no it can't It can be fixed if its phasing by exactly 90 degrees but thats about it, phasing can totally fuck up a mix and this whole "fix it in the mix bollox" never ever gets a good recording. As for the room when recording drums its pretty much makes or breaks a drum track. If you want your cymbals to sound sparkly you're going to need a specific room, if you want your kick drum to sound HUGE (black album, steve albini style) then you're going to need a specific room, if you don't want your snare to sound likes it in a card board box? then you're going to have to do better than "uuuhh we'll just set it up in my bedroom and put some mics in the corner it'll sound great I saw this video by *insert famous producer here* and thats what he did" EVERYTHING changes how your recordings sound, fucking everything edit: what I'm saying is there is no one element that over rides all the others in being "more important" for the SOUND of your instruments, every detail is just as important as the next
Let's talk about production, baby Let's talk about you and me Let's talk about all the good things And the bad things that may be
Go get the Classic Albums DVD on the Black Album; you'll see how they did it. Spent ages on mic'ing the entire drumset, put up some plates (I believe aluminum or something like that) to reflect sound and some other things. I honestly have never heard of doubling drum parts. Do they actually do that? This being said: try to get a hold of the Black Album in the DVD-A version with the high resolution surround mix on... You'll be blown away even more, I guarantee. The snare sound on "Sad But True" in particular is a joy to hear.
I have this and have watched it NUMEROUS times. I'm aware of how they recorded it, but didn't know what they did with the mastering part of it.
Good read, but holy FUCK some of that stuff they did seems so impractical/overkill. Lol'd so hard at bubblegum and coffee.
Phasing can be fixed easily in editing. You just shift and move the wave forms around until they are aligned. You can't, however, fix the phasing the early reflections, and resonance the room cause. Hey, I win thread.
hey did you know you can cancel a part out you dont like out of a mix by playing the part again exactly the same but out of phase?
Natural reverb causing phasing. This is fact. Think about it, it makes sense. So if a room's natural reverb can cause phasing, it is safe to say that a room drums are recorded it, effect the recording quality. Drums recorded in a small room, will sound much different than drums recorded in a big room, with high ceilings, and good natural reverb and no standing waves. Now, I guess it is subjective on whether or not you want your drums to sound confined and small, but in this thread the OP was referencing on how to get big drum sounds like in Metallica's ST album. So is it really that big of a stretch to say that the room drums are recorded in make a big difference in the sound? No. So what is the problem? Just to give myself some cred. I do have an AA in audio production, and have recorded a few EPs. So I do have some experience in what I am talking about. Not an expert by any means, but I'm not saying anything that I think pros would disagree with.
I think the pros might call you out on phase problems being cured in the mix, as its not always the case. There are varying degrees of phase cancellation, and a few preamps have a variable phase dial to deal with it at the tracking stage. I think it's fairly uncommon though. As you said, it's the early reflections which are the problem. The greater the distance between the two mics from the sound source, the less of an issue the phase relationship becomes anyway, so fixing the time alignment of a distant room mic (for example) is fairly pointless, or even counter-productive. The stuff about the room size and surfaces affecting the drum sound is all spot-on, of course. Not only the room you use to track them in, but the one you mix in too.
Holy fuck. I've seen A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica and was well aware of things like the amp curtain, the full-band performances, the extensive cutting and editing process...but JESUS fuck changing the strings and snare head that often?
Of course correcting for phase during the tracking process is preferred, but with digital editing you can do a lot of amazing things. The first thing I do when starting a mix is phase aligning all my channels. Snare top, bottom, OHL/R, hat, kick in and out, I all phase align. I even phase align the bleed if I can and keep everything good. Powellman is misinformed about what you can do in the editing process. He stated that you can only fix it if it is 90 degrees out (I think he ment 180 though, as 90 degrees doesn't make sense, even with phase inverse switch) but you really can. Take your sources, find where the wave starts on each track, and then put them together, ans phase inverse if you need to. It is not 100 percent perfect, but it is such that phase with mono instruments (snare, kick, ect) is pretty much fixed. The difficulty comes with the over heads. You can pretty much do the same thing with overheads as explained above, but since you pan overheads in the mix, phasing issues can become more apparent. Though if you are at least in the ballpark during the recording, I don't think it is going to botch any takes. One thing you can't fix, is the coloration the room has on the kit. That being said, I have gotten some good sounds in a garage before. I would say the most important things in a good drum mix are: Having something good to being with, phasing, filtering, compression, and performance.
I don't usually phase-align overheads at all. The timing difference with the close mics is what adds the sense of space around the kit. I just maki sure they're both an equal distance away from the snare when setting up and leave it at that.
I do because it can really suck the energy out of your snare sometimes, but if you are measuring out and sticking with the 3:1 ratio rule, you should be fine.
I used to do it back when I still used an X/Y configuration on the overheads, because the phase relationship with the snare is a much greater concern when using that method. For about 3 or 4 years now though, it's been either spaced pairs or spot-miking groups of cymbals all the way for me. The former just sounds much bigger than X/Y, and the latter gets used for metal bands when everything below 600Hz is rolled off the overheads anyway.
Mother fuckers, I've been trying to work on my drum mixing skills lately. My motherfuckering guitar teacher this quarter is actually an audio engineer so he's been helping me with my mixes a little bit, giving me some pointers. One of the first things he had me do with a track was throw the Overheads onto one stereo track, and then align my snare hits to where they happen on the overheads, so there was no delay. Then he had me do shit like gate the toms and hi hat, and it seemed to clear up my mix a lot - at least the drums. Before I didn't really know what to do with that shit, I just tried to EQ most of the mud out of each individual track, but this way, the stuff is only coming through when it's actually being played. Anybody ever do shit like this? I don't know how many of you fags record live drums, fuckin' metalheads. Also, he suggested if I'm in the market for relatively cheap monitors, I try these: http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.co...red-8-Generation-2-Factory-Restock?sku=482827 Thoughts?
Gating drums, especially kick, toms and snare is pretty standard when recording a live drum kit. Another thing I do is put some light compression on each part of the kit to kind of 'even out' the live performance and get all the hits at relatively the same level. Also, I put high-pass filters on everything rolling off just below the fundamental frequency of each drum just to clean up the muddiness and stuff. I've found this is a good way to start mixing drums, then when its all nice and tidy you can get into the more detailed stuff.
When I was recording last year, I was taught the overhead aligning with the close-mic thing too. Really helps if you're going for a dry, tight sounding kit. He also encouraged me to actually cut around the tom hits (he wanted me to do the kick and snare too, but I couldn't be fucked, despite him teaching me a quicker way to do it with beat detective), but it all helps clean up the mix so much.
Phase aligning overheads is a compromise like everything else. Well...as I mentioned before, with X/Y configuration it's more crucial, but every time I've tried it with a spaced pair it may have fattened out the snare a little, but it reduced the perceived size of the overall kit by a lot. I just don't often find it necessary when the overheads are so far from the source/each other anyway. 3:1 rule barely becomes a consideration. Perhaps I'll try it out on my next mix though just to hear the difference outside the studio, and satisfy the curiosity this thread has given me.
Sometimes yes, but it can also be preferable. If you have a lot of spill on the tom tracks (usually due to limp-wristed drummers not being able to hit them hard enough, thus requiring you to use more gain for the mic, thus bringing up the spill) it can be tricky to balance a gate threshold at the right level. If the tom parts are fairly simple/infrequent it can actually be quicker to just cut around them. As for me, I do both. Gate first airing on the side of caution, and if a few stray snare hits or ride bells still come through I just delete them as I listen through. In metal mixes, where I generally spot-mic groups of cymbals anyway, I sometimes even remove the spill between sections on the ride and hi-hat tracks. You never need much of those mics in the mix anyway and it just helps to clean things up that little bit more. I only do it if I have a lot of time to spend on the mix though.
@Dan, or anyone who regularly records bass via DI: I'm planning on recording bass tracks just for demo purposes that I'd later send to someone else to mix in with other tracks (full band). They are recording on ProTools with a much better setup/interface, etc. They live far away so obviously I can't record there. Now, I'M recording from bass > GK head XLR-out > Mbox > Audacity. Will the fact that I'm recording with such a basic setup and especially Audacity effect the quality? Or is a recording a recording? Do I just export my track into a .wav file and send it to them? I'm just a total noob on how this is done. Is the fact that I'm just using such a basic setup with a free recording program a quality issue? What's the best way to ensure I record and send the most compatible track to work with in terms of quality, levels, volume, etc?
All the bass for Failure of Milk was recorded with the DI out from my Genz Benz head into an MBox 2 (apart from Nautilus, which was done before I got the amp, and will be re-amped or re-recorded for the final album mix anyway). The software you use for the job shouldn't even come into it as far as sound quality is concerned, as your hardware signal path is perfectly adequate. As long as you can export the stem track as a wav like you're intending, you'll be fine.
Any monitor with porting under 1000 dollars, is usually a bad idea. the low end boost fucks up the rest of the spectrum
Ok cool, that segues into my next question: If someone else is mixing/mastering/whatever, how much EQ/compression etc should I put on my tone when recording? Also, if I do EQ my tone, Should I set all knobs on my bass flat (active bass), all EQ on my head flat, and EQ with the Equalizer in Audacity? Or is it best to EQ with my bass/head controls and don't do any of it in the program?
I wouldn't mess with anything. Leave everything how it usually is or at least make it relatively full, it's better to have stuff to cut away than to have stuff you can try to boost, but isn't really there. I would just DI the bass and ...send it. Let the person mixing the session deal with all the particulars.
Yeah, this is the gray area for me. How do I "make everything there"? I once thought that EQ was EQ, but I've researched otherwise. If I crank treble on my bass, it won't be the same as the treble knob on my head. This I did know because treble is subjective per piece of gear based on what frequency range, but I've also read gear EQ has different quality-attributes associated with it. Like one device in boosting the treble might give it a cheap tinny sound while another might give it a nice sparkle. This has also always been a debate with live sound for me: EQ my tone from my head...or my bass...or both?
I'd say go as close as you can to getting the sound you think you want, and probably not further. That will probably involve EQing from every place, but just keep in mind that typically people prefer to have more to work with rather than less. But for compression, I'd just leave it alone...any type of effect...including comp I'd save for the person mixing to do.
Set your pickup blend appropriately for the song in question. If you're going to use the active EQ at all, use it to cut out what you don't need rather than boost what you lack. Otherwise I'd probably leave it flat. In my experience, on-board preamps can get quite artificial sounding if you try to boost with them. Amp EQ is usually more forgiving. Compression depends on a few things. If you're not sure about the engineer's abilities or experience, you might be better off not using any compression at all. However, if you're recording a part with a lot of dynamic variance (jumping between slap, tapping and fingerstyle at different points for example), you'll probably want to use a bit just to keep things under control. Personally I'd say use it, but go easy on it - it's simple enough to add more in the mix if necessary. I generally use about half as much compression as I would if I were mixing it myself (so around 2:1 ratio rather than 4:1 for instance), and set the threshold so it's just biting down on the highest volume peaks by 2 or 3 dB. There's no real reason for those figures, I just generally find it enough to liven up the vibe a bit whilst tracking, but without the risk of going too overboard. Dunno what EQ functionality your amp head has, but mine has a sweepable mid control, which I use to suck out that low muddiness that can accumulate around 2-300Hz. The rest I leave flat, and that's more or less the same as I do on stage anyway. The only other amp EQ I mess with sometimes is switching the bass boost (60Hz and below) in and out as a short-term effect in certain parts. Oh, and I wouldn't worry too much about making sure "everything is there", so to speak. Those EQ discrepancies across the spectrum are what give your tone its character. Just make it sound as appropriate as you can for the song, and let the engineer take care of the rest. If you're sensible about keeping the EQ dials reasonably flat (even though, in reality, the actual frequency response will be anything but flat), you shouldn't go too far wrong. Well...unless your bass and/or amp suck absolute dick. Then you're screwed anyway before you even start, so there's no point worrying about it.
Cool, I'll keep all that in mind, thanks. Also: Do you have any idea why this is really? That's what I've heard numerous times as well.
Honestly, I don't really know. I'd guess it come down to component quality much like anything else, and I suppose there's only so much you can do with such a small amount of space, compared to what you'd have in your amplifier or a studio preamp. Then there's the matter of drawing power from a 9 volt battery - electronics aren't my strong point, but I've heard you can get more headroom out of active pickups and certain stompbox pedals by running them at 18v, so perhaps this is a factor here as well. Some are definitely better than others though, and I hear some good things about the Aguilar and Nordstrand preamps.
So I'm just finishing off mixing a track for my band, and the last thing to do is get rid of the tiniest bit of background noise at the end of the guitar track (it's like a high pitched, fairly quiet, but noticeable beep). I can't seem to get rid of it without either making the guitar far too quiet or cutting off the sustain too early. Any suggestions?
