New rough recordings (full band)

[Volitions Advocate]

Thanks to some of you guys we've been able to get our recording software/hardware up and running.  Its been goign for about 3 months now but with finals and work trips and such we haven't actually done much.
In any case here is a couple things.  I've posted them on taltopia because I dont think anybody ever really goes there. and these are rough so I dont want too much exposure on them, but I wanted your opinions.

1st track. is called I Can't Breathe
the mixdown is not finished, and when I encoded this the main output slider was very very low, so its a little quiet and its hard to hear the dynamic changes, so bear with that.  Sorry I can't get you a better encode till im down at the studio later.
we didn't pan the guitars so its a little difficult to hear the 2 distinct sounds, which is too bad because there's a lot going on in what seems to be a pretty simple song.  We're thinking of doing a 65/35 split. the guitars seem to really separate and become distinct without giving you that ping pong feeling like we're on 2 opposite sides of the planet.  Also for anybody who ever pays attention to what I post.  The vocalist here is not my wife, i'm in 2 bands and this is the rock band, not the pop band.
We wrote this song when our previous singer was still alive, so we did our best to keep it the way we did when he sang it.  We're a bit of a different band now but its still there.

Keep in mind this was a 16 bit wav compressed to 128k mp3 then encoded at taltopia so quality is going to be a bit off.  We record in 24 bit @ 48kHz.  Let me know what you think of the overall sound quality anyway.

http://www.taltopia.com/view/110162/I-Cant-Breathe

And this one is a scratch track we threw together in about 5 minutes. all played live.  We did this so that our singer could have a copy to work on for lyrics & melody.  Its the only true metal-type song we play.  The rest is mostly Hard Rock.

http://www.taltopia.com/view/110145/The-Nightmare-scratch  (note: the "vocals" at the beginning aren't really going to be in the song  :confused4


For recording we have an 8 channel preamp plugged into the computer with lightpipe.  We usually record drums, then cymbals, then go to guitars.  Both of us use 2 amps simultaneously, so we mic them up separately with sm57s or Equation DS-V7s, depending on which gives us the better sound for the song, and also the direct line out from the amp heads themselves.  If we need a little more "room tone" we use a large diaphram condenser mic wherever it sounds best. (3 feet away. 6 feet away, ear level 10 feet away, whatever)  For bass we just DI straight from the head. and for vocals we use the same condenser mic.

We need some feedback to help us withour production.  Throw it all at me.  Remember these arent' finished products.


EDIT: Hmm.. the first one isn't working for some reason. *working on it* ... ***FIXED***

 

[exalted]

The first song doesn't work (says the media file can't be found).

The second one, sound-quality wise sounds pretty decent. As good if not better than anything I'd expect to hear for free online.

I'd be careful about calling it "true metal", though. You're apt to start a war!  ccasion14:

 

[Volitions Advocate]

i said metal "type"

 

[Volitions Advocate]

Fixed the first song.

 

[exalted]

i said metal "type"

Fair enough. I just know my wife gets her junk in a wad when people make assumptions/general statements about metal. She's a total dork about it.

Fixed the first song.

I gave it a listen, and have a few thoughts, but take them for what they are - I'm a recording neophyte and was only listening to it on one headphone (I'm at work, and the second earbud is broken). The recording sounded a little flat. Not nearly as three-dimensional as the second song. It also sounded a bit repetitive, like you need some good filler...but again, I could only hear the right channel.

 

[Volitions Advocate]

eyah,, its bascially mono at the moment. the guitars need to come up during the loud parts of the song and the whole mix needs to be boosted because when its this quiet its hard to hear when the volume goes up anyway.
Nothing is panned anywhere and thats a problem.

Funny thing is thats the one we spent more time on.  For the second one we just threw up a few mics and hit the button.  Mind you we spent about 2 1/2 minutes mixing that one where as the first one I dont think we've done any mixing yet.

 

[jkellington]

You'd do a lot just bringing your vocals back in the mix a bit and slightly pan your guitar and bass to opposite sides.  I don't know how you tracked your drums, but if any parts of the kit are recorded separatel, just panning your kick/toms slightly to one side and your snare/cymbals to another will give a little more depth to the mix as well.

 

[Superlizard]

Hey Volitions - did you ever suss out that ADAT/whatchamathingie issue from a while back?

 

[Volitions Advocate]

yeah thats how this was possible.
We had to get a soundcard who's optical input was actual ADAT and not just S/PDIF. Works great now.

 

[Superlizard]

I dig it man  :icon_thumright:  one thing  though:

Depending on how you want the intro, doing the gits mono at the beginning works, but when you kick it in, you've gotta "double" those gits... pan 'em hard L and R.

What this does is bring a huge fat wall of guitar sound and fills the stereo space real nice.

 

[GoDrex]

"We usually record drums, then cymbals, then go to guitars."

you record the drums and cymbals separately?

 

[Volitions Advocate]

yeah we only have 8 inputs and the drums bleed into each other in weird spots.  like the snare gets picked up quite loudly on the splash mic on the other end of the drumset.  So far it's given us the best sound.  But we're experimenting, it changes with every song.