Need mixing advice for an instrumental song.

Hi Jeremy, I am hearing all guitars and not much else. Drums seem to be lost and way back. Bass or something low in the rhythm guitars is booming badly and low boomy notes seem to jump out at random.

I would start by getting a big kick ass cracker drum sound happening first and then work on the bass and get that and the drums really pumping no guitars at this point. Send the drum sounds to a drum buss and get some eq and compression (perhaps parallel happening on those)

Then get the rhythm guitars sounding big and clear and fat and possibly get some imaging happening on those. At this point you should have a powerful drum, bass and rhythm guitar thing happening. Turn your monitors down low here too. Can you still hear those three things clearly, if you cannot then something is wrong and out of balance.

The lead sound like a vocal should be clear and easily heard. Try turning your monitors way down low when setting the lead level into everything else. You will find easier to get the level right.

So I guess you have to pull all the faders down and start again from scratch.

I'm with Jeff on this ....all I hear are guitars....... seriously distorted guitars. It really does not sound ready at all for an album. There is much work to be done. 

start at square one.  Turn everything down....delete ALL plugs. 

Get the drums sounding natural.... then add the bass. 

once you get that sounding good...... add guitars, and keep it sounding clean... even if the guitars have distortion.  You should be able to CLEARLY hear each instrument in the mix. if not..... you are not getting the mix right.

When things get cluttered up, the only solution is to go back to square one.

Add plugs and FX ONLY if they are needed and improve the sound of the mix. 

More than one time I have spent several hours mixing only to realize I have a total mess and must return to square one..... so I delete all the envelopes, all the FX and zero all faders and start again. I have learned how to detect when I'm headed in that direction and how to stop and reverse it but it doesn't hurt my feelings one bit to start over... it's all about getting the right mix.

Ok here is my 2nd try at it. 2nd try 
 
I turned the bass tones down on my guitars, turned up the bass to match the drums better. Did a slight change in EQ to the drums so the snare had more snap to it. I added some image width to the rhythm guitars, then brought all faders down and back up to try and get it all to sit right.
 
I feel this try does sound much better, but I think it still needs work. I would love to hear further input after this try. The first bunch of suggestions were awesome :).

Turning the guitar bass knobs down won't do. You need to use high pass filtering, as mentioned by others earlier.
Try something between 120-150 Hz.

"I'm wondering if I should try and get the bass and drums to the center or  maybe pan them out more?"


No need to wonder. As also mentioned already, put kick and bass dead center, that's without question the way to go unless you really know what you're doing and are aiming at some special effect.

Alrighty, I have done all the changes that everyone has suggested and here is try number 3.
 
http://soundcloud.com/fendicator/t25-3
 
I added a HP filter to the guitars, did more with the drums to make them sound better. I actually went back and re-recorded the bass and brought it up in the mix so it should be hearable now, I think. Hopefully this 3rd time is the charm, I doubt it though. I feel something is still missing, just not sure what? Something is too loud or not loud enough, not really sure. I need your guys ears agian :).

http://www.fendicator.com/ghijqwtx/T25-0.zip

Ok, I made folder with a cwp file and the audio folder. All tracks are barebones, no effects no nothin. Kinda sucks though, apparently I have some timing issues to work out lol.

If you are not able to work with this just let me know and I will figure out another way.

Hi Jeremy, Got your zip file OK no worries. A few points:

The levels were so low on the files that the waveforms weren't even visible at first. Had to normalise everything up. (Average levels were around -30 db or lower) Herb is correct in his post below about getting good record levels going in. You may have done that but sometimes it is easy to export them incorrectly.

Most of the tracks were stereo but only had mono information. This is not necessary. Drums are stereo though.

You need to practice exporting. It is an art.

Drums and bass sound excellent. Despite the total drum sound being mixed on a stereo track they sound very good. A little too much reverb on the snare though but should be OK in the final thing.

I see the guitars are all clean so I guess you want me to crunch them up. Can do.

The guitars sound a bit boomy, dull and bassy. You should have recorded them differently so they are clear and brighter. Changing the guitar sound prior to tracking would improve this. Putting EQ plugins on after the event will work but less EQ would be required or at all if they had been tracked better. Get things sounding great at the source. But even so they sound fine and I will be able to massage them into something good. All the parts including the rhythm guitars are very important to the mix. They do have to be present but balanced correctly. 

The mix mentioned above is sort of OK but not a great example you should be trying to emulate. If you read the comments people are saying he does not mix well and it sounds a bit like it too. He is doing all the playing and doing the mix. He is a much better guitarist than a mix engineer. Poor kick definition in that mix.  Very bass heavy too.

I will get it mixed and up on my Soundcloud soon. Just got to do the various Christmas parties and thingies. Might be a day or so.

Now that you and Jeff have said that my input was too low, your both right. Apparently
my input setting on my soundcard was only at 20db. I Just raised it to 50, it does
sound much better now. I wish I would have noticed that about 3 months ago before I
started recording this album LoL. I have done 10 songs with that low input setting.
Do you think I can save them with just normalizing the tracks up, or should I
record the guitars agian?
 
Also, I remember watching a video on mixing and this guy said it was a good idea to
get all the tracks with-in 5db of each other. Is that right, or should I just do it
by ear?
 
Another question, I find myself always lowering the mid range (700 to 800hz)
with a wide Q on my guitars when adding EQ, I usualy do it -3 or -4.
It just seems to clear up the sound to me, this a good or bad practice?

The external ambient noise to signal ratio does not change even after you have normalised. The noise that gets raised up is the internal digital noise that is introduced by your digital recording medium.

For example let's say if you recorded a signal well and it reached -10dB nicely ie you got healthy levels going in as your supposed to do. At 16 bit the practical digital noise floor is 90 dB down so that means you end up with a signal to digital recording system noise ratio of 80 dB which is pretty good. ie you would never hear digital noise that is 80 dB down from a signal.

But if your levels only reach say -30 dB like yours, the digital system noise level is still only down at -90 dB but you only have a signal to digital system noise ratio of 60 dB now. When you add 30 dB by normalising you will bring both the signal and the digital system noise up by 30 dB. You end up with nice loud tracks but with a signal to digital system noise ratio now of say 60 dB. You may start hearing the digital noise floor now but only in very quiet passages.

So if you don't actually want to rerecord anything and I can certainly understand that, then you will probably get away with it. You will find my mix for example will still sound perfectly fine. If the music is pretty loud and punchy you are not going to notice digital system noise that might be 60 dB down.

Herb is definitely correct in terms of re recording especially if things get quiet in a passage anywhere. eg if a signal drops down say another 15 dB due to quietness then the signal is way down at -45 dB now and the digital noise floor is still at -90dB so after normalising you will only have a signal to digital system noise ratio of 45 dB which could prove problematic. You will start to hear the digital noise floor in that situation. But then only if it is on its own and fairly exposed. If there are still lots of things going on around it you may not notice it either. The louder stuff will mask the digital noise on this quiet track.

Jeremy just bringing you up to speed. I am mixing this and so far it is sounding good. I am just trying to fit this into all my Christmas partying!

I am glad you have got the guitar tracks all clean. I am finding the thing to do with the rhythm guitars is to not make them so distorted but rather back them off so they are still crunchy but also that will separate them a bit more from the lead track. I think that is where you might be having trouble in your mix. You are distorting the rhythm guitars too hard maybe. Hard to distinguish those from the lead sound. 

Hmmm I am trying to get a great crunchy rhythm sound from a clean guitar track. I have got Guitar Rig, Studio One Ampire, and Nigel from UAD 1. (This is my first time with Nigel too and that baby is pretty full on) and a few other things too.

This is hard. Danny please help!  Look the best result so far I have got with the rhythm guitars is from Shred would you believe and it's free. Interesting that Native have just given away a free plugin called Driver and it does a pretty credible job as well. (especially with Shred) Saturation knob seems to be no good in this situtaion. I know what I want to hear but just cannot quite get it. I will in time for sure. The lead sound is going to be easier I know it.

I know Ampire and Guitar Rig are all good too but there are just soooo many options. (hey Danny maybe you could point me to a nice crunchy rhythm sound quickly!!)

I do have a Marshall amp here (only a Valve state 100 watt) but I am thinking reamping now and giving that a shot. It does sound a lot better than most of the VST's so far. The rhythm guitars need some stereo imaging as well to get them out of the way of the lead sound. Maybe the reamping on one side and a great VST sound on the other might work. I will keep you posted.

I'm curious about how you monitor your sound? Do you hear the drums and bass clearly in your setup, as I can't hear them properly with my headphones. I hope you'll let us all hear the new mixes by forum colleagues.

Sorry, I've been busy... I have not had a chance to DL the files, but I will do that today.  

edit: transferred and planning to work it today   

Good one Herb and  I hope Fendicator is hearing it too. Herb's mix is much better then the original mix in that I can hear the drums and bass well and the guitars. Good job on the bass too Herb. You have brought that out well. I agree the bass sound is pretty OK and it is not that hard to get the bass speaking a lot more clearly.

I will get my mix finished today I am hoping. I am going to get a similar vibe on the drums and bass except I am going to make the rhythm guitars a little less distorted and more crunchy and the lead I am going to go more all out with the distortion I think. So it will be different in that respect. That is a good thing because you can compare the two and see what works for you more.

At the moment I have been spending the most time on the rhythm guitars, they to me seem to be the most tricky.

Hey Jeff, was the "Danny please help" message before I sent you "those goodies"? I can't remember. LOL! Is everything ok? Need me for anything man? If so, just gimme a yell. I'll check back in a few hours...need a lil power nap. :)

-Danny

Now that I have done it and listened to it a few times the only thing I feel about it now is that I think the rhythm guitars could be a little more crunchy and distorted. It is funny because without the lead present they sound pretty crunchy but with the presence of the lead some of that rhythm crunch might be a bit masked. Danny might have something to say about that too. But if I were mixing this for real that is what I do anyway. I do a mix, live with it for a while and go back and make some changes. I won't do this in this case as I have already spent enough time on it. But I think you will get the idea in terms of the balance of things anyway. The cymbals are pretty loud too and I would tame those down a little if it were me. You can still hear the snare reverb a bit too but as I got all the drums mixed that is all hard to change of course.

 
Yep, you definitely need work on the rhythms Jeff. If you listen to Fender's original, the guitar he has going on is more driven where yours is more clean and sort of weak compared to what he had going on. This sort of rock/metal piece needs a bit more sizzle in the tone. This is where you sort of have to turn off your classic rock roots or even analog preferences. This type of music suffers if it's mixed too warm as the thing that gives it impact is crunch and the right amount of top end sizzle.
 
You should be able to get insane gain with the version of HC I gave you. Listen to that file I sent you using it....I have even more gain than Fender's original yet it's all clean and clear. That's the sort of sound I would go for on this. 
  
If you can't get enough gain, increase the master input gain. That function allows for more signal to be present as well as bring in feedback if needed. Make sure to use the gate we supply as I hear some hiss in your sounds.
 
-Danny