Jazz-Fusion pt II....
 

Just thought I would share with you all the final mixes for my last assignment at school

Just to refresh your memories.....The "band" were all a bunch of music performance students from another college, who hadnt played with each other for quite some time, so it was almost like a free-form jam session, which we recorded all live in the studio. We recorded on a Euphonix CS2000 digitally controlled analogue console, onto a Studer A827 24 track, to 2" analogue tape @ 15ips, 520nWb/m

I recorded the band with 3 other class mates, so my role in this project was strictly as engineer, and I had nothing to do with the actual musicianship (so please try and keep comments on an engineering/production basis)

After recording, we bounced all the tracks into ProTools, and then I burnt the audio files onto CD and took them home so I could mix. All mixing/processing was done in Cubase SX2. No outboard was used in the mixing process.

We recorded 2 songs in a 4 hour session, the first was Cantaloupe Island, which I have already posted in another thread, but as a shortened version. Here you get the full 10 mins or so....just for you Juho, cos I know you loved it ;)

The other is a song called Chicken....another 10 min + monster.

Hope you all enjoy the tunes, and any constructive criticism is welcome! The songs are quite large, "Chicken" is around 6 MB, Cantaloupe is around 12 MB...but boy are they worth it.

Cheers

Chicken

Cantaloupe Island

1. Bass is too muffled.
2. Drums have annoying room sound. Although I'm not sure is it intentional or not.
3. Tell the keyboardist that I'm going to whack his XP10 with an axe (or maybe double its price by spitting on it).
4. Tell me in forehand next time when they'll play Chicken so I can go to wrap Jaco Pastorius' corpse into a cooper coil so that I can get free electricity. One more pink soft jazz version of Chicken and Jaco needs high RPM bearings for his coffin.

That's all I have to say for now. Muahaha.

Ahh Juho.....I can always count on you for some inspiringly witty criticism. You sure are hard to please ;)

1. Not sure what you mean about the bass. Not defined enough? Too much low end? What are you listening on?

2. The room sound you might be hearing is probably the guitar mics picking up alot of drum spill/ambience. Everything was in the same room, so the guitar amp wasnt seperated fully from the rest of the instruments

3. Actually the XP10 was not the keyboardist...the college I go to had some deal with Roland and there are hundreds of the things lying around school.

4. Who is Jaco? ;)

Basic speakers I use for everything. The bass is too boomy. More botne required.

Oh. It's probably that then. Could probably be fixed by micing the guitar PA at very close range so that the gain is so low that the leak is really silent. Also "isolating" the mic from other noise sources helps as well. It's funny how you can restrict leaking with very small obstacles.

They have a deal with Roland and all they have is the one of the worst Roland keyboards ever made? Sounds like a good deal. By the way what kind of keyboardist doesn't bring his/her own instruments? Especially if the only loan instruments are XP10's... (Then you don't have to bring your own gear if the place has Hammond, Rhodes/Wurly and grand piano).

Yeah, we did close mic the guitar amp, using a sm57 and a AKG C414, and it was also surrounded by two gobo's, or dividers, but still, the issue was that the drum spill was far too loud, and the guitar amp wasnt loud enough. When looking at the VU meters, we were hitting at close to 0dB VU but we didnt realise how much of that was the bloody drum spill. So everytime I change the sound of the guitars, the drum sound changes

Funny you say that.....the drummer didnt even own a set of drums! We had to bring in one of the other engineers kit, and some of my cymbals/snare etc. The guitarist only brought his guitar, so we had to use the schools amp, which was a Trace elliot.

Listening to Chicken Jase....

Sounds better than the other one I listened to a month or so ago from the same band for sure.

Drums - I agree with Juho and that room sound. I remeber that from the last one too. The snare just has a "hollow" kinda sound, but it's better than last time though. The crashes and hats sound pretty good. The kick isn't too bad either - just that snare at times.

Bass - I don't agree with Juho here actually. It's sounds alright to me. Sometimes I felt it could have maybe used a bit more presence in the mix though.

Keyboard - No problem at all - except for the choice of sound. Hehe.

Guitars - All need more level in the mix - esspecially the lead section. The the lead is too far into the mid-bass area. Bringing it more into mid range would be nicer for me - needs to scream more.

Heaps of improvement on the last mix I've heard with this band involved Jase. Was it fun going to tape - or just a headfuck?

Yeah...it is a source of frustration for me. Basically, what you are hearing is the sound of the drums being picked up in the guitar mics. Everything in the one room, live, but we didnt crank the gain up enough on the guitar amp, so everytime I turn up the guitars in the mix, or EQ, they affect the sound of the drums

Yeah...Juho is a loser ;)

Yeah, I guess it is a pretty generic sound

Again this comes back to the drum spill in the guitar mics.....if I pull up the guitars, I get the horrible drum/room sound....plus there is a whole heap of hiss and noise when I bring the guitars up too loud. A problem when you record to analogue tape at too low levels

Cheers HC It was awesome going to tape.....I wish I had a 24 track tape machine in my room....I would track everything to tape first before bouncing into digital. It sounds fuckin lovely! and not a head fuck at all. In fact, because we dont have the same editing power as we do with digital, it means you have to perform better as a musican....which yields great results

It's all about the vibe!

That bass need the sound of fingers (which you might call presence)! It should not be a bloody oomph-oomph rubbish bass. It needs the fingers!

Im going to do another mix today.....Im happy with "Cantaloupe Island", but not so happy with "Chicken".

It seems too cluttered and the instruments are competing, instead of complimenting. I will look at the bass and see if I can fix up this presence issue.

Also considering pulling the guitars out so I dont get that room sound, and leaving them only in for the solo (which is what I did with Cantaloupe)

So...just for Juho....Im giving him the finger(s) ;)

What is the deal with colleges and the xp-10? I have taken intro and intermediate electronic music classes at my college and the only synth we have in both classes is the damn xp-10. I hate that synth with a passion! The only patches I kinda liked were synth bass 1 and maybe a couple of user patches were alrite. What sucks is that the user patches sound better than the preset patches, but we couldnt use them because the user patches dont send midi data! Luckily in intermediate we are only using the synth as a midi controller for Reason. I guess as a midi controller its alrite,but its really hard to like this synth.

I think Juho is partially correct about the bass, it doesn't have a lot of transient detail, but I also think it's largely the player's fault. The guitar...if what you've got on tape is a thin guitar sound complicated by drum bleed..well, man, that's not a keeper. You have to be a little forceful when recording bands and make sure they understad that that you'll do whatever you can to capture their sound, but nothing less. In almost every studio I've worked in, we've used an iso booth for guitar. There's also a pretty high noise floor on everything...this can be a struggle to deal with since you're recording to tape, but there are definitely methods to battle it.

I know you're just finishing up recording school, and with that in mind I'd say the mix is alright. I'll be really interested to see what you're cranking out a year from now, once you've had a better chance to work with guys who do this everyday (and are expected to produce results). If I was your professor, I'd give you a B-. If I was the band, I wouldn't pay for that recording....and that's what you've got to keep in mind.

Thanks for the comments....

Just incase you were wandering, My lecturer (Head of Audio, Gerry Nixon) gave me 96% (Distinction) for the recording/mix. Keeping in mind he used to hang out with the drummer from Jimi Hendrix Experience, and has been around for a long time, with some hefty names to his recording achievments.

I was pretty happy with the results, not so happy with the way we recorded guitars. And my mixes.....well, lets just say I should've spent some more time on them instead of leaving them till the last minute

College has finished now, and Im off to Sydney University to do a Masters in Design Science (Audio/Acoustics). I start on Monday!!!!!

Am finishing up a demo I recorded over the past couple weeks, and will post MP3's when they are done. Also doing a live recording for a female singer/guitarist (Percussion as well...) at a showcase gig on Monday night which should be interesting. A new experience for me....will have to take a laptop/ProTools rig and take splits from the FOH desk.

And for the future???? End of the year I am planning a trip to Tibet to record the Buddhist monks harmonic chanting. Should be f*ckin awesome!!!!!