New tune, The Box

  • This is another one that rises to the top of the favorites list for me. Really enjoy all your upbeat stuff.


    Your mixes are consistently excellent. It's among the things that I admire about your music. That said, in this particular case the cocked wah solo gets completely lost. It's the first time I've ever noticed something amiss, so I thought I should mention it.


    I listened to it a couple of times and the most useful observation I can offer is that the frequency range of the rhythm guitar and drums seems to be pretty much the same as the solo, so it all just merges into an indistinct blur. Maybe scooping the shared frequencies out of the rhythm / drums and perhaps giving them a bit of a bump in some higher frequencies during that section would give the solo it's own space to stand out and keep the backing band from also getting lost in the blur.


    I mean, you know, if you don't mind the back seat driving. :)

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • Thanks Chris and thanks for your comments on my mixing in general, it's nice to know that you think its consistent.


    Yes on listening back i completely agree about the wah solo. I used the same profile with slightly more gain on the full humbucker which already sounded a tad muddier, then most of the wah frequency range was lower register until the build up part. If i used this tune for the band i'll defintely do something with it.


    Really my mixing is always just blind luck as i never EQ the guitars, they are just as i record them. What type of EQ parameter would you alter for the rhythm guitars? Everyday is a school day, back seat driving welcome ?

  • Everyday is a school day

    Yeah, that's certainly how it is in my universe. Always more road in front of me than behind.


    I don't know which DAW you use, but in Cubase you can bring up an EQ window for track and there will be a real time graphic display showing you the levels across the frequencies. A lot of plugins also do this, so my first step would be looking at the rhythm guitar, then the wah solo, and make note of the overlapping frequencies. It'll probably be several hundred in width across as they're both chewing a lot of turf in the mids.


    One approach for that sort of thing would be to center your EQ band in the middle of that common ground and use a very wide Q. Then, as a starting point, you might try a 3db cut on the rhythm guitar and a 3db boost of the same frequency / Q for the solo. Season to taste, of course, but the idea is for the rhythm to give up some turf and let the solo have it.


    You might then do the extremely narrow Q, 10db boost thing on another EQ bandn and sweep across the rhythm guitar above the range you cut until you find a frequency where a little bit of bite comes through. You can then widen the Q a bit (I'd still stay fairly narrow) and get back in the 3db boost range. Again, season to taste. The wah is so dark you probably won't have to cut that frequency in the solo, so this will give more separation between the two and allow the rhythm to still cut through without getting in the way of the solo.


    You might take a look at the EQ range of the snare & toms compared to the solo as well, and if they're also in the way cut them, and maybe find a different higher frequency that catches their attack to let the bite come through.


    Between the preprocessed and radio ready sound of the ToonTrack stuff and the same qualities in the Kemper profiles, it's easy to just bring up the faders and have something great. This sort of thing is only necessary when someone's on someone else's turf.


    In Cubase, there's this great feature where you can bring up the EQ for one track and then choose as second track. It displays the real time EQ as an overlay so you can see the frequencies of one track in relation to another. I think they got that from the Fab Filter plugin. I absolutely love that feature for exactly this sort of thing.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • Thans Chris. I'll take a look at this, i'm using Presonun studio One 4 Pro