Prelude to Gideon/No One Left Behind

    "Prelude" is a practice riff I wrote for my daily warmups and I think flows well into "No One". I double-tracked the guitars using stereo tracks with Kemper's DT on one of the stereo tracks and turned off on the other stereo track. I think this is tightest I've ever done on a double-track. Used my Charvel strat with SD Distortion pups and David G Burns Dual Amp Boosted profile. One track on guitars has a slight mid cut and the other guitar track has a low shelf cut.


    Additionally, I duplicated the bass tracks. One track was the full response, and the second was isolating just the pick attack frequency and boosting it up in the mix. I added dual compression and a limiter on the bass. I tightened up the drums getting rid of the sustain, and then added compression, saturation, a limiter, and a de-verber.


    I really feel like I am close to cracking the nut. I am very curious as to what you think about the low end of the mix. This is my second render. The first render was really pushing the limits of my speakers and pushing air right into my ears which might be good for some EDM tunes but I was afraid too much for this mix, so this second version got a global low shelf cut.


    BTW, I created all the drum beats and fills myself because I don't seem to like any of the SD3 stuff in their library to fit with my songs; making drums a time-consuming PIA.


    Help me out, guys.


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    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    Like 4

    Solid riffs and much better balance on the this one! Great progress.


    You can afford to bring the drums louder still don't be afraid to pull them all the way till they're too loud then back them off till they just sit nicely rather than mixing them from quieter to louder, you'll be amazed at how loud they can go. It can help to listen to a commercial track while your'e mixing to compare your levels.


    Bass is much better but can still have much more mids punch (and less actual bass), I've found a neat trick is to actually high-pass the bass, level it, then reduce the hi-pass till you start to get the warmth back in, but not all the way just so you have some bass and definition, then balance the kick drum against it for level, and then at the end on the master bus use a little eq to raise the overall bass.


    Essentially - mix to level, master to enhance frequencies is better than mix to adjust frequency and master to level.


    With the guitar I would use an EQ to take out some of the upper mids because the particular sound you've got going on is washing out creating wolf notes, basically a certain frequency is going into clipping/distortion which is creating a range of not as pleasant harmonics as the original distortion. In fact I'd check that it's not clipping on the output of the Kemper. If you see any even small blinks to yellow (not even to red) then you're getting some clipping. Reduce the volume there and then raise it in your DAW. It's amazing how just lowering the volume really enhances the sound with digital gear, absolute opposite of analog.

    Per I know exactly what you mean on those 3 particular things. (1) I had the drums louder then backed off a lot before trying to inch up again. (2) My bass track was missing those mids because I think I backed off on the bridge pickup volume too much as a sacrifice for more low end. I'll keep fumbling through bass tone for a while. (3) The guitar was hot in the yellow to try and match volumes on the other tracks. I actually had the mids cut in version one but raise them with some volume on the version above.


    Would you mind telling me how version one below is with respect to the guitar mid cut, and I think the low end is too much but maybe not?? I'm reading about wolf notes now.


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    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    Like 1

    You're still fighting the bass fluff there with the kick and bass. This is stopping you from being able to raise them to their best levels because it's blowing out when you do.


    Try this, reduce the kick alone in the drums or use a high pass filter just to remove maybe up to 50-80hz tops just till there's no more fluff in the sound. Then raise the drums further till the snare sounds right. Next reduce the overheads to calm the cymbals.


    On the bass create a parallel channel, on the first channel leave things as is but lo-pass till you just have low mids down. Then on the second channel high-pass till you have that up, so you have the complete sound on two channels. Now on the high-passed channel add a tinge of distortion, any distortion plugin should do it. Now raise it till the balance is right. Finally route both channels through a single mix bus and use that to control the overall volume of the part.