Streets of Rage-Welcome to the Streets of Blast Processing(1-15)

[Garpocalypse]

Working on a name change!

This was my first submission for DoD's Sega Vs Nintendo month. Probably the worst month to have a debut as there were loads of incredible entries. Needless to say, I tanked. Hard. But now I'm looking for some feedback!

Thanks to Aster who blasted out the rhythm guitar part in two days.

I remixed the piece so this is a bit different from my original submission. Here is what I changed.

1. I have six rhythm guitar tracks instead of the original four.

2. I double tracked the live rhythm guitars differently than I did before mostly by cutting up different sections of the playing. (Putting some from the end in the beginning etc.)

3. I cut out the crap intro until i get something better

4. I was very liberal in double tracking, this time I added more tracks for the strings and the lead guitar.

What i'm looking to change:

1. I used a VST for the lead. Terrible idea. I'm looking for a lead guitarist!

2. The ending

3. I'm a bit timid when using mix compression. I played around with it for a nice chunk of time but the piece is still too quiet! Does anyone have any tips that would keep me from feeling like i'm destroying the piece if i use compression?

4. Name Change: My original idea was to cram every SEGA GENESIS related marketing buzz word i could into the title. "I heard Billy got a "Welcome to the Next Level" on the Streets of Blast Processing and Ninten didnt'!. Or something like that. Still makes no sense to me. Who's Ninten?

Original Version (well almost)

http://soundcloud.com/garpocalypse/sormelo1-15-master (1-15)

As of right now, I'm not sure if i am going to submit this to OCR or not. The ideas I used for this mix mostly came from my previous remix of the SOR title (that's currently in the judges panel). The melody does get a tad, what's the word, unrecognizable through a rather large chunk of the mix so unless I rewrite half of the piece I'm sure i'd get a NO(go away!).

Still i'll take any crits I can get!

-gar

Also if anyone was at the listening party listening to this at Magfest i'm curious to know how it was received.

Edit: Update info with current version on last post

[Nonamer]

Who's Ninten?

The main character in Mother.

I think that the arrangement is fine. Nice drums, though they may be overpowering at times IMO, and the guitars are are pretty solid in my book. There's what sounds like strings throughout the piece, and they are hardly noticeable when the guitars are roaring. Don't know if the judges will knock you on that.

[Magellanic]

Using compression will get you some good volume but unless you sort out the guitars, nothing will get that volume increase. Even for a rock track, the guitars are taking up far too much room in the mix (frequency-wise). I'm certainly no pro when it comes to guitars, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. I'm only on my laptop but it seems as though the guitars could maybe do with some/more LP/HP filtering and slight reduction in volume. If the intention is to eventually have a lead guitar that will only add to the dilema. EQ the guitars and perhaps consider going back to having the four tracks.

In regard to mix compression, due to the instrumentation I reckon it would be a bad idea if you're wanting to keep the clarity. The more acoustic instruments will suffer even if you get the mix compression sounding good with the guitars and drums.

In my humble opinion, it just seems as though you need to compromise on certain aspects to really get this balanced and sounding as you would like. I reckon you can still get the power in the guitars that you seem to want without having 6 tracks.

Hopefully that may help, or get you thinking about stuff. Sorry if its useless

[Garpocalypse]

Thanks for the comments. Especially the one on compression.

I'm going to get the rhythm guitars back down to 4 tracks and EQ them differently. I should post something tonight or tommarow. No one thinks that the melodies need to be rewritten? I got kinda playful with it and I was wondering if anyone would recognize it.

[Aster]

Using compression will get you some good volume but unless you sort out the guitars, nothing will get that volume increase. Even for a rock track, the guitars are taking up far too much room in the mix (frequency-wise). I'm certainly no pro when it comes to guitars, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. I'm only on my laptop but it seems as though the guitars could maybe do with some/more LP/HP filtering and slight reduction in volume. If the intention is to eventually have a lead guitar that will only add to the dilema. EQ the guitars and perhaps consider going back to having the four tracks.

In regard to mix compression, due to the instrumentation I reckon it would be a bad idea if you're wanting to keep the clarity. The more acoustic instruments will suffer even if you get the mix compression sounding good with the guitars and drums.

In my humble opinion, it just seems as though you need to compromise on certain aspects to really get this balanced and sounding as you would like. I reckon you can still get the power in the guitars that you seem to want without having 6 tracks.

Hopefully that may help, or get you thinking about stuff. Sorry if its useless

The guitars will be redone double tracked with about 3-5db scooped out at 400hz and a highpass added onto it. I'm still learning a lot about mixing but already I have much better guitar patches and track templates.

I think a little compression on the tracks and mixing them at a lower volume will help too but things will improve.

[Mak Eightman]

Your complain about your loudness lvl understandable. But in this case compressor won't help much. Also I kinda don't understand this "amount" of guitar tracks. Twice recorded guitar sounds great and it is lot easier to work with two rhythms, if you want "force" your rhythm record four guitars using two different riffs, just imo.

I'd suggest you to start your balancing with drums, then bass(i don't hear it now btw), then synths and then guitars. Chose the loudness lvl for your mix with drums and bass, then build your mix. This method work perfect for me.

Also rhythm guitars has a smooth attack, because of too much distortion, i think. This smooth makes a mudding to your mix, increase is six(?) times and you have a noise at the end. Two ways to destroy this effect:

1- rerecord/use less distortion

2- cut the freqs where distortion is the most active(Aster said about 400Hz). I'd say 250-400Hz.

And.. Dude.. Ask Aster for lead guitar, plz.

Hope I wasn't rude:whatevaa: Still don't get this trick about crap tone of guitars, what is tha point?

[Garpocalypse]

And.. Dude.. Ask Aster for lead guitar, plz.

Already done

Hope I wasn't rude:whatevaa: Still don't get this trick about crap tone of guitars, what is tha point?

Not sure what you mean by that one.

Usually i mix by getting the drums to their level then the bass etc. but this time since i figured that since rhythm guitars and the drummer work very closely in metal to develop a solid groove i did Drums, rhythm guitars then tried to stick the bass in there somewhere. Don't hate, just sayin'.

I'm playing with the idea of changing the strings. I was going for a contrast in intensity between the two major elements of the mix but I may just cave in and make everything intense. with more brass.

More to come!

[Garpocalypse]

Update 1-15

I think i had a few eureka moments this time around. I spent a rather large chunk of time this weekend watching mixing videos from RecordingRevolution and I think they really helped.

For this mix I tried a bunch of new things in order to bring out the sound. After making my initial fader adjustments I switched to mono for some serious EQ'ing and was able to get most of the instruments pretty audible compared to how it was before. My only beef with this version is that I think i took too much of a chunk out of the rhythm guitars in order to keep them from killing everything in the mix. The inner rhythm guitar tracks got slammed down to one, center panned, with a different rhythm guitar double tracked and hard panned. I then cut the outer rhythm guitars around 300-400.

For the master I tried something new. I put a multiband compressor on it which is something that I always avoided doing since I figured that I rarely knew what i was doing with a standard compressor. After hours of playing with it I think it helped the mix greatly but I'm sure i killed parts of it. On the plus side the mix is louder! and by louder I mean audible.

http://soundcloud.com/garpocalypse/sormelo1-15-master

Check original post for first version if you want to do some comparing

-gar

[Mak Eightman]

I'll try to be specific.. and.. talk english(sorry, just in case).

Now I understand why I still don't hear bass. Panned Bass? In Death Metal? What? Nooo.. So this panning may also cause forcing of your guitars. Overall guitar track sounds like "delayed". I mean, no matter what you do it still on the top of the mix and sounds "everywhere"(left,right,center), so as and Bass actually. Hope you understood what I tried to say:banghead:

Drums. Drums are nice but borrowed. Check your mixer's loudness indicators. Drums and guitars loudness pick should be in same dB. At least in my case it works great. Bass pick should be 1/2 from guitars and drums, and centered. Otherwise you'll never make it sound.. mm.. not noisy. I can't say anything specific about drums because I almost don't hear em. But I do hear long delay/reverb/feedback from snare. Cool, but it may ruin your mix. Dunno. But don't touch it for now;-)

"Belly", string, brass stuff. Again, louder then rest of your mix. why? Reverberation, incorrect freqs cut/boost and leveling. The trick is: Brass and strings(specially brasses) has a same(close) freqs diapason as guitars. So you have lot of instruments in same freqs. Reverb increases this coincidence. Bad. Cut those freqs from orchestra's reverb(at least) and listen how it'll sounds. Now Your worst enemy is Reverberation.

Someone pleas correct me if I'm wrong. Good luck with this mix Man. Hope I didn't forgot something.

As for the source.. I CAN recognize it. But I have to listen very carefully for every instrument.. So it could work after some seri..us...sire..ous..e....(fuck. I hate this word) polish. But this mix sounds like remix of your prev remix:P

If you want some help PM me.

[Garpocalypse]

I'll try to be specific.. and.. talk english(sorry, just in case).

Now I understand why I still don't hear bass. Panned Bass? In Death Metal? What? Nooo.. So this panning may also cause forcing of your guitars. Overall guitar track sounds like "delayed". I mean, no matter what you do it still on the top of the mix and sounds "everywhere"(left,right,center), so as and Bass actually. Hope you understood what I tried to say:banghead:

Drums. Drums are nice but borrowed. Check your mixer's loudness indicators. Drums and guitars loudness pick should be in same dB. At least in my case it works great. Bass pick should be 1/2 from guitars and drums, and centered. Otherwise you'll never make it sound.. mm.. not noisy. I can't say anything specific about drums because I almost don't hear em. But I do hear long delay/reverb/feedback from snare. Cool, but it may ruin your mix. Dunno. But don't touch it for now;-)

"Belly", string, brass stuff. Again, louder then rest of your mix. why? Reverberation, incorrect freqs cut/boost and leveling. The trick is: Brass and strings(specially brasses) has a same(close) freqs diapason as guitars. So you have lot of instruments in same freqs. Reverb increases this coincidence. Bad. Cut those freqs from orchestra's reverb(at least) and listen how it'll sounds. Now Your worst enemy is Reverberation.

Some really good advice mak thanks. I'm still working with novice mixing techs but after watching some people mix a piece I think i have more perspective on it now. By "pick" did you mean the attack of the note? Or Peak on the meter? Well, I guess it would be related afterall...

What i'll try to do next is get one of the rhythm guitar tracks out of center. That would probably bump me down to 2 tracks for rhythm guitar but maybe that's enough anyway.

As for the drums, I did some parallel compression on them. The reverb on the snare might be from that, otherwise its straight Steven Slate Drums.

As for the source.. I CAN recognize it. But I have to listen very carefully for every instrument.. So it could work after some seri..us...sire..ous..e....(fuck. I hate this word) polish. But this mix sounds like remix of your prev remix:P

uh oh, i've been found out. Yes this is based on my previous remix. Not a remix of a remix but the opposing side to my other one. (A- Or at least that's the way I prefer to think about it.

[Brandon Strader]

Just a couple notes based on stuff I've read in the thread:

1. Don't use compression on guitars. You could use a limiter, but I do not recommend it.

2. Highpassing guitars works, but use a subtle low shelf cut instead to maintain your low end.

3. Multiband limiters on a mastering chain can be a gift or a curse. Use it wisely. Strive for transparency.

[Garpocalypse]

Just a couple notes based on stuff I've read in the thread:

1. Don't use compression on guitars. You could use a limiter, but I do not recommend it.

2. Highpassing guitars works, but use a subtle low shelf cut instead to maintain your low end.

3. Multiband limiters on a mastering chain can be a gift or a curse. Use it wisely. Strive for transparency.

The great B.S. commented on my mix and this time didn't leave me in tears by the side of the road.

After watching some stuff from recording revolution, I realize that alot of what I have in Stereo could be more effective in mono instead. I played a bit with this one this evening and I was able to get alot of it cleaned up though I still have alot of work to do on it.

[Brandon Strader]

Well I was at the DoD listening party so I heard it on the great speaker setup that norg rented. I liked it then, in fact I enjoyed both Streets of Rage entries in the DoD. I answered as good as I could what you pmed me.

I may be honest sometimes but my intention is never to discourage people.. on the contrary. Being direct about things can be more constructive than sugar coating.