Band playing Sympathy for the Devil

[Seafroggys]

First time I have ever played this with these guys, and the first time they played it in about a year.

Vocals are not being recorded so you only get the bleed from the amp.

Sympathy for the Devil (sans vocals)
lo-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6239854&q=lo
hi-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6239854&q=hi

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandid=771271&content=music

[fishbulb]

I agree that it is very bass-weak and i can't even pick out the bass guitar until the guitar solo.

Other than that the audio quality is top notch for your equipment as always.

[Bonham#1!]

A couple of sloppier parts here and there, but overall very solid and the sound quality was phenomenal. The solo, was not my favourite kind of playing, but good and fitting none the less. Very nice job.

(Solo needed more pinchesssssssss!!!!!!!)

[Seafroggys]

remixed and updated!

[Chippy569]

what's with you and phasers? blekk.

the hats can come down a good 6dB, the snare and kick up 3-6.

the drums have a few timing bloops that you get to edit :)

the overall recording is very, very upper-mid heavy but doesn't have any high-end sparkly good feeling. it sounds stale. there's also very little low-mids. no punch.
guess you should practice with that EQ some more :)

[fishbulb]

what's with you and phasers? blekk.

the hats can come down a good 6dB, the snare and kick up 3-6.

the drums have a few timing bloops that you get to edit :)

the overall recording is very, very upper-mid heavy but doesn't have any high-end sparkly good feeling. it sounds stale. there's also very little low-mids. no punch.
guess you should practice with that EQ some more :)

Wow, i agree with everything i just didn't notice any of it until you pointed it out.

About the phaser, is it only on the guitar or is it added onto the whole track?

[Seafroggys]

I have not used any phasers in post. My guitarist uses one in his playing though. I did notice some unintentional phasing on some of the cymbal crashes; this could be because of my micing, but I have never encountered phasing issues before with this mic setup. But seeing as there's no other explanations, it has to be that. Oh well.

(and yes I do love phaser effects on drums, so what?)

As for the upper mids being too strong and the lower mids too weak, that makes sense. I did shelf the lower guitar a bit too much :p I boosted the highs mainly because I did the same thing with another track we did at somebody's suggestion and it helped (same guitar and rig), but it probably doesn't in this case.

I will lower my imaginary hi-hat track's volume as well.

The snare and bass drum seem fine as they are.

I can't do anything about the highs. And I think the highs are fine as they are. I already boost my overheads above 5k, anymore and my ride will sound like a Z Custom bell.

Besides, highs are overrated. I'm thinking of throwing a tape sim on the entire track anyway. Now those give nice "punch."

[Chippy569]

you can't add punch to a track, that's not how it works... tape sim is just some EQ with a little reverse reverb, if that makes any sense.

and i'm talking highs like 10-15khz. not the sound of the cymbals, but the sound of the room. it sounds sterile or whatever the colorful word i used earlier was. like it's suffocated.

[Seafroggys]

but you said it was missing low mids, which is true, since I unbalanced the guitar with my EQing.

As for the room, I'll just make the back of my garage sparkle with brilliance.

According to my instruments, the guitar barely makes it past 10k anyway, and since its close micced, the room doesn't even play into it. The drums are the only thing that are relavant in that range with the room affecting the tone.

As for adding punch, I've heard somebody (think it might have been Moseph) who says that tape sims work great for that, especially on drums.

[Chippy569]

the room always plays into it. i don't care if you've got the mic 1mm away from the guitar strings, the room plays an effect.

[Seafroggys]

Recording a cab with a dynamic mic at about 3-4" away, the difference between a good room and a bad room would be pretty damn inaudible. If one listened hard enough they might be able to tell a difference. Now if you wanted to put a condensor mic several feet back to get a spacier sound, THEN that's when the room really comes into play.

Having recorded all my **** in a crappy room, you really learn to make use with what you have.

[Chippy569]

how about the surface of the floor between the amp and the mic? that part of the room is playing a very significant difference. since you're micing a cab, you're also getting reflections off the wall behind the cab and to the mic. The real thing these refections contribute is phase difference. The effect is dependent on the frequencies projected. if you have the cab the same distance from the back wall to the cab and then to the mic again, you now have one frequency with double standing waves. same with the side wall.


if you want to whip out some math, you have one path straight from the cab to the mic which we'll put at 4" back. that's .1016 meters. both your source and your mic are both 6" off the floor. now you've set up a nice downard-pointing isosceles triangle. the top edge is 4" long, and either downward lengths are sqrt(40) long. so, your direct signal path is 4" and your reflected path is 2sqrt(40) inches long. so, .1016 meters and .321 meters. now, keeping in mind C=DT (speed equals wavelength time frequency) and the average speed of sound is 345m/s, you have a standing wave at (345/length) 3,395Hz and 1074Hz, both of which are definitely within your guitar's produced frequencies.


then don't forget all your multiples of that are standing waves, so 6,790 and 2,148, and then 13,580 and 4,296, and then 27,160 and 8,592, as well as down to 1,697.5 and 537 Hz.

there's just a little room effect for you.

[Seafroggys]

That's what I'm talking about....in practicle terms, that small 3-4" space doesn't provide for a lot of reflections to get through. Sure the concrete floor would reflect like a mofo, but tell me how the wall behind the cab come into play? If the cab was loud enough to shoot sound behind it, bounce off the wall, and pass through the cab's physical body and still be audible enough for the mic to pick up......then you have problems. Problems which didn't actually exist.

Now if I could have a nice room? **** yes that would be sweet. But I don't. I mean, you can throw at me all this sound reflection co-efficient math at me and try to mathematically prove that my recordings are not up to par (as you pointed out, too much high-mids and not enough low-mids, easily fixable AND something that is actually relevant) but really you are coming off as a pretentious twat who (seemingly) uses intense technical knowledge as a substitute for anything actually useful for practical applications. I see you do it all the time; I remember a thread where you explained to a newbie about the differences between Dynamic and Condensor mics. I don't remember you telling the practical applications of either one (and if you did, it was extremely short) but you gave these huge paragraphs about the technical specifications and differences of each. Do I even know them? I know the basics, sure, just because I've gone to school and read a ton of **** on recording, but I know nowhere near what you know. In the thread going on in the main forum, you went off on Mixers and EQ and stuff with a bunch of techno jargon....but it wasn't terribly interesting to read. Or provided that much useful information.

I mean, sure, I figure there is solace is knowing how things work so you have a better understanding of the universe around us. But that is just overkill and mostly irrelavant. I remember you mentioning once that you worked in a studio, so at least you have credentials. But when I get help from others on these forums (Moseph and the Chemist most notably) they don't respond with pretintious bullcrap....they offer useful, helpful information.

Just a thought when you teach others on this forum in the future.

Also, another thing is you try and instill your production values on mine (and others) work. While you may like sparkling highs and overpowering snare drums, I prefer the CR sound; warmth and beefy snare drums that don't crack through everything. Another food for thought when critiquing others work; you have to work within what they are trying to achieve. Sure they can have crappy production and that could be changed, but that's different from different production values.

That was a long rant. This is why I hate breaks between classes.

Of course I expect a rebuttle on every point, thus making this entire post useless and irrelevant, but oh well.

[Chippy569]

you hand out fish, i'll keep trying to teach fishing then.

i could say this:
Hey, yeah, you just grab a few Sennheiser e835's, hook them into channels 20-24 on the Mackie SR24.4, then turn the preamps up to about +1dB, the faders go to around -20, set the aux1 knobs to around the 11 o'clock position for monitors, turn off the mute buttons, and bring the L/R fader up to 0. Adjust the mid frequency knob and gain to taste. And that would sound great.

if you're in my church, running live sound, on the vocals.

but if you did that in a studio, it wouldn't sound as great. in fact, it'd probably sound poopy. So, i can't tell you where to set what levels. it's entirely inappropriate. Sound isn't "oh yeah you got a kickdrum, ok cool set the mic here and set the levels here, then hit record." there's way the hell more to it than that, as you well know. So I can't tell you what to do. I can only teach what the functions of everything is and hope you have the time and patience to learn the settings that work for you.

[Det_Nosnip]

IMO, you should tune your bass drum up. Right now, it's way too weak of a presence, and the presence of higher tuned, boomier bass drums was a big element of the classic rock sound. I agree about the phaser...don't get me wrong, it's a great effect, but he needs to tone it down just a tad in the beginning.

[Seafroggys]

That's kind of funny, I just tuned it down slightly because I thought it was way too trebly.

The lack of boom is my fault at the tracking stage. I had the mic at the right point but I bumped it and didn't realize until like an hour into our rehersal, when I noticed it was pointed right at the beater impact point.

And I don't mean exactly like CR production. I do take some elements from the "good ol' days" but not everything.

But thanks for the input Det.