Mixing Rock Tracks

[Nabeel Ansari]

They do. I use a cheap one (though it does work and is rather nice) called JamLab. I have my friend come over and we just connect the cable from the guitar to the computer and start recording stuff (I don't play guitar myself).

1) Not a USB port on the guitar.

2) That's not a USB Cable, it's a USB interface. Not the same as a USB cable you find lying around, like you were implying before.

[Sixto]

[Garrett Williamson]

Uh, it's USB. JamLab is a converter. One side is the side where it connects to the guitar. The other side is the USB cord.

But the picture Sixto is showing there looks like pure USB.

[Nabeel Ansari]

JamLab is a converter.

Correct, it is not a cable. It's a device you have to buy.

But the picture Sixto is showing there looks like pure USB.

It's also probably not what Etherealurtz has.

[Garrett Williamson]

Most likely not, haha.

[SnappleMan]

Oh, here's something I was working on for everybody's reference:

An Instrumental Rock Track.

http://www.mediafire.com/?783t20xdaadeid8 - The original track. Everything just slapped together. No volume, panning, EQ or whatever.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0eutr4w41q0ptas - The modified track. Here are some of the modifications. The rhythms are untouched.

Bass:

Drums:

Alright, just listened. I hear a lot of problems here that have very little to do with the guitars.

Your main issue here are the drums. You've completely squashed the dynamics out of them, your snare is extremely pumpy, the kick is completely lost, the cymbals are overcompressed and sound ugly.

What you're doing wrong here is going way too heavy on the processing (I see you're using Addictive Drums). I never liked the onboard effects in AD, I think they sound crappy and only hurt the sound of the drums. If I were you I'd bus out each of the drum channels out to individual tracks from within AD and mix the drums entirely in FL (maybe use the AD saturation effect a little since it's the only one I think is decent). And it's also not smart to apply such heavy compression to your drums as a whole, it causes the loudest element (usually the snare) to dominate and duck the rest of the drum mix, resulting in awful sounding compressed cymbals. Oh and the AD presets are almost all complete garbage, don't use them.

Now on to the guitars. If you're using shreddage then you really should use any double tracked patches it may have, check the manual to see if there are any, I'm sure there would be since Zircon and Sixto know their shit. If the double tracked patches are stereo samples (meaning both left and right guitar sounds are recorded to ONE stereo sample) then make sure you set guitar rig to stereo mode and are using all stereo tracks to make sure you get that desired stereo effect. If the double tracked patches are separate (meaning you get left and right samples separately) then treat them as two individual tracks and pan accordingly. I've never used shreddage so I don't know how it works.

Overall the guitar sound is very fake sounding, I know this is the case with all samples but I've heard shreddage users get more realistic rhythm sounds than that, so work on the programming too (velocity, key switching, etc). If you're a guitar player then you understand the importance of controlling your mutes and up/down strokes so that parts are playable, so apply the same principles to how you use the samples.

If you can't find double tracked patches in shreddage then you should still pan your guitar off to one side a little bit, it'll open up your mix (pan it in the opposite direction of the hihat).

But yeah the first thing I would do here is load up a completely dry patch in AD, use the internal channel routing to route each piece out to it's own track in FL (kick, snare, toms, hihat, cymbals, overheads, room), and mix the kit with just volume till it sounds good, you want to hear that kick above all else. Then bring up your bass guitar so that it's not fighting with the kick drum and both can be heard, and then you have a good base for the mix. Don't worry about EQ and compression till after you've gotten the levels right.

[Etherealurtz]

Alright, just listened. I hear a lot of problems here that have very little to do with the guitars.

Your main issue here are the drums. You've completely squashed the dynamics out of them, your snare is extremely pumpy, the kick is completely lost, the cymbals are overcompressed and sound ugly.

What you're doing wrong here is going way too heavy on the processing (I see you're using Addictive Drums). I never liked the onboard effects in AD, I think they sound crappy and only hurt the sound of the drums. If I were you I'd bus out each of the drum channels out to individual tracks from within AD and mix the drums entirely in FL (maybe use the AD saturation effect a little since it's the only one I think is decent). And it's also not smart to apply such heavy compression to your drums as a whole, it causes the loudest element (usually the snare) to dominate and duck the rest of the drum mix, resulting in awful sounding compressed cymbals. Oh and the AD presets are almost all complete garbage, don't use them.

Now on to the guitars. If you're using shreddage then you really should use any double tracked patches it may have, check the manual to see if there are any, I'm sure there would be since Zircon and Sixto know their shit. If the double tracked patches are stereo samples (meaning both left and right guitar sounds are recorded to ONE stereo sample) then make sure you set guitar rig to stereo mode and are using all stereo tracks to make sure you get that desired stereo effect. If the double tracked patches are separate (meaning you get left and right samples separately) then treat them as two individual tracks and pan accordingly. I've never used shreddage so I don't know how it works.

Overall the guitar sound is very fake sounding, I know this is the case with all samples but I've heard shreddage users get more realistic rhythm sounds than that, so work on the programming too (velocity, key switching, etc). If you're a guitar player then you understand the importance of controlling your mutes and up/down strokes so that parts are playable, so apply the same principles to how you use the samples.

If you can't find double tracked patches in shreddage then you should still pan your guitar off to one side a little bit, it'll open up your mix (pan it in the opposite direction of the hihat).

But yeah the first thing I would do here is load up a completely dry patch in AD, use the internal channel routing to route each piece out to it's own track in FL (kick, snare, toms, hihat, cymbals, overheads, room), and mix the kit with just volume till it sounds good, you want to hear that kick above all else. Then bring up your bass guitar so that it's not fighting with the kick drum and both can be heard, and then you have a good base for the mix. Don't worry about EQ and compression till after you've gotten the levels right.

Thanks man! All right then, I'm gonna take this one step at a time and use whatever I learn from mixing this unfinished rock track as a stepping stone for future rock tracks.

Okay then, so first step would be, routing drums out individual channels right? Are you familiar with using Addictive Drums? If so, could you give me a step by step on routing the parts out individual channels and disabling its built in compressor so it doesn't affect the individually separated tracks?

P.S. Do you know any good alternatives to Shreddage for Rhythm Electric Guitars, SnappleMan?

Edited August 18, 2012 by Etherealurtz

[Nabeel Ansari]

P.S. Do you know any good alternatives to Shreddage for Rhythm Electric Guitars, SnappleMan?

He was saying he's heard people use Shreddage better, so you need to do some more work on it.

I don't think there is a good alternative to Shreddage, lol

[SnappleMan]

Yeah I think shreddage is as good as you're gonna get. They sampled things the way they should be sampled, so it all comes down to you learning the software properly.

As far as addictive drums goes, here's what you do:

1. Make sure you have all the outputs for the VST enabled in FL. I don't use FL so someone else will have to help you with that if you don't know how.

2. In AD, go to the kit loading menu and choose INITIALIZE, that'll give you a blank kit. Then load the pieces you want (preferably ones that fit well in the song) and move to the edit window.

3. In the AD edit window, look down at the channel strips and you'll see a button at the bottom of every fader labeled OUT that has a downward pointing arrow. Click that button for ever channel, that will route the output from the MASTER track to it's own individual channel.

[Garrett Williamson]

Is Shreddage, by any chance, compatible with Logic? Is it a plug-in compatible for more than just FL? If that's what you're using, it actually doesn't sound bad. Though I'd still try to get real guitar when I could.

[Etherealurtz]

Thanks for the tips so far, gonna work on mixing Addictive Drums properly.

Meanwhile, does anybody know how to make Shreddage more realistic? Shreddage, as far as I know, does not have keyswitches, so I can only rely on the modwheel and velocities as well as patches in achieving realism.

[Ivan Hakštok]

Meanwhile, does anybody know how to make Shreddage more realistic? Shreddage, as far as I know, does not have keyswitches, so I can only rely on the modwheel and velocities as well as patches in achieving realism.

zircon has some Shreddage vids on his youtube channel, check them out:

[Rozovian]

Is Shreddage, by any chance, compatible with Logic? Is it a plug-in compatible for more than just FL? If that's what you're using, it actually doesn't sound bad. Though I'd still try to get real guitar when I could.

Shreddage is a Kontakt instrument, so you need Kontakt to use it. Kontakt is a plugin and can be installed as an AU, so indirectly, the answer is yes.

Dunno what other formats are offered, so check the site for details. iirc zircon has mentioned a soundfont version, tho that's not much more useful in Logic as much of the value in Shreddage is in the Kontakt patch scripting, not just the samples.

[Garrett Williamson]

Ok. Crap Kontakt costs 70 bucks. -________-

[Moseph]

Ok. Crap Kontakt costs 70 bucks. -________-

Not sure what you're looking at, but Kontakt costs $400 (or $200 if you get it during one of NI's half-off sales).

EDIT: Derp. Oh, the version of Shreddage for Kontakt. Yeah, $70.

Edited August 20, 2012 by Moseph

[timaeus222]

Oh, here's something I was working on for everybody's reference:

An Instrumental Rock Track.

http://www.mediafire.com/?783t20xdaadeid8 - The original track. Everything just slapped together. No volume, panning, EQ or whatever.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0eutr4w41q0ptas - The modified track. Here are some of the modifications. The rhythms are untouched.

Bass:

Drums:

I took a listen to it too. Ironically I also use Shreddage and Evolution Strawberry. Here are the things I'm noticing:

The bass is creating some compression, most likely. From the image I'm looking at, the frequencies around 90-150Hz are overloaded with Scarbee. I also never use Soundgoodizer... ever. That usually just boosts the instrument WAY too much, and I prefer just using ParamEQ2 combined with volume sliders and all the conventional stuff. You might want to try using the mouse wheel more often; try rolling it while your cursor is in the ParamEQ2 window, but not touching any band tokens. You'll shift the entire EQ up and down. If you roll it while hovering over a band token, it changes the bandwidth. Personally, I EQ things out so only the necessary frequencies to make it sound full in the context of the mix are left in. Then I just shift the EQ up and down if I have no other choice to change the gain. It's a good idea to EQ out anything below 40Hz, according to various ocr users. I just put a high pass at Steep 8 to cut off everything below about 45Hz or something. Then, I'd scoop frequencies at around the 60-100Hz range just a little bit to leave room for the strongest frequencies in the kick. Try this:

- High pass at Steep 8 above 40Hz.

- Put Token 1 at about +6dB (look at the right edge of the EQ window).

- Put Token 2 at about +7dB, and about 110Hz.

- Decrease the bandwidth of Token 2 until you get a slight scoop between Token 1 and 2.

- Then just do an incline like you had in the bass picture before, but make it less steep; similar to an e^(-x) graph.

- Oh, and take out Soundgoodizer. Turn up the volume within Kontakt, or something that doesn't boost unnecessarily.

On the drums, definitely remove Soundgoodizer before doing anything. Also, remove any internal effects on the drums, because I find it best to start out with dry samples, so you can mix the reverb and stuff any way you want. This is how I usually EQ my drums, assuming you'll keep all the instruments on one mixer track (which I usually have to do on FPC for a video game soundtrack I'm working on with the project leader):

- Token 1 should be high passed at about 40Hz at Steep 8, lying at around -2dB.

- Token 2 should be at about 90Hz, +7dB, with as low band width as possible. Hover your mouse over Token 2, and roll the mouse wheel down as much as you can, then roll it up maybe twice.

- Token 3 should be at about 200Hz, +5dB, with the band width at about 2 mouse wheel rolls down.

- Token 4 should just be scooped down to about -9dB, really, and at about 800Hz, from my estimate (I'm not actually at home, I'm just trying to use your Bass picture to create an EQ in my head).

- Token 5 should be at about 3200Hz, +4dB, more or less, and about 1 mouse wheel roll down.

- Token 6 and 7 should be at about +7dB. Token 6 should be at about 5000Hz, and Token 7 should be at about 14000Hz.

I drew something up in Photoshop, so this might be easier on you:

http://i49.tinypic.com/25h1xet.png

Haha, kinda crappy, but you get the idea.

Until you fix these things, it's hard to hear what else is going on. This is roughly how the track should sound, in terms of EQ and balance. It's a recent version of a remix I made, but it'll do. It's decently realistic too. It's kind of like the type of sound you have now.

https://www.box.com/s/f624fec5d76eff707cee

Edited August 20, 2012 by timaeus222

[Etherealurtz]

I took a listen to it too. Ironically I also use Shreddage and Evolution Strawberry. Here are the things I'm noticing:

The bass is creating some compression, most likely. From the image I'm looking at, the frequencies around 90-150Hz are overloaded with Scarbee. I also never use Soundgoodizer... ever. That usually just boosts the instrument WAY too much, and I prefer just using ParamEQ2 combined with volume sliders and all the conventional stuff. You might want to try using the mouse wheel more often; try rolling it while your cursor is in the ParamEQ2 window, but not touching any band tokens. You'll shift the entire EQ up and down. If you roll it while hovering over a band token, it changes the bandwidth. Personally, I EQ things out so only the necessary frequencies to make it sound full in the context of the mix are left in. Then I just shift the EQ up and down if I have no other choice to change the gain. It's a good idea to EQ out anything below 40Hz, according to various ocr users. I just put a high pass at Steep 8 to cut off everything below about 45Hz or something. Then, I'd scoop frequencies at around the 60-100Hz range just a little bit to leave room for the strongest frequencies in the kick. Try this:

- High pass at Steep 8 above 40Hz.

- Put Token 1 at about +6dB (look at the right edge of the EQ window).

- Put Token 2 at about +7dB, and about 110Hz.

- Decrease the bandwidth of Token 2 until you get a slight scoop between Token 1 and 2.

- Then just do an incline like you had in the bass picture before, but make it less steep; similar to an e^(-x) graph.

- Oh, and take out Soundgoodizer. Turn up the volume within Kontakt, or something that doesn't boost unnecessarily.

On the drums, definitely remove Soundgoodizer before doing anything. Also, remove any internal effects on the drums, because I find it best to start out with dry samples, so you can mix the reverb and stuff any way you want. This is how I usually EQ my drums, assuming you'll keep all the instruments on one mixer track (which I usually have to do on FPC for a video game soundtrack I'm working on with the project leader):

- Token 1 should be high passed at about 40Hz at Steep 8, lying at around -2dB.

- Token 2 should be at about 90Hz, +7dB, with as low band width as possible. Hover your mouse over Token 2, and roll the mouse wheel down as much as you can, then roll it up maybe twice.

- Token 3 should be at about 200Hz, +5dB, with the band width at about 2 mouse wheel rolls down.

- Token 4 should just be scooped down to about -9dB, really, and at about 800Hz, from my estimate (I'm not actually at home, I'm just trying to use your Bass picture to create an EQ in my head).

- Token 5 should be at about 3200Hz, +4dB, more or less, and about 1 mouse wheel roll down.

- Token 6 and 7 should be at about +7dB. Token 6 should be at about 5000Hz, and Token 7 should be at about 14000Hz.

I drew something up in Photoshop, so this might be easier on you:

http://i49.tinypic.com/25h1xet.png

Haha, kinda crappy, but you get the idea.

Until you fix these things, it's hard to hear what else is going on. This is roughly how the track should sound, in terms of EQ and balance. It's a recent version of a remix I made, but it'll do. It's decently realistic too. It's kind of like the type of sound you have now.

https://www.box.com/s/f624fec5d76eff707cee

Awesome in-depth analysis! Thanks! I will be taking SnappleMan's and your advice once I'm done with my exams and stuff to do this week. I'll upload the results of EQ editing for this same track.

Essential Information: I just noticed recently, while mixing, I leave my laptop's Dolby Advanced Audio v2 feature on. Its default setting is just a flat EQ, but Dolby enhances the sound by making it louder, I'm not sure if it's compression or not. If anybody's familiar with it, do you recommend leaving it be or turning it off completely when mixing, leaving only Windows 7's default audio settings on while making music in FL Studio?

Edited August 21, 2012 by Etherealurtz

[timaeus222]

Awesome in-depth analysis! Thanks! I will be taking SnappleMan's and your advice once I'm done with my exams and stuff to do this week. I'll upload the results of EQ editing for this same track.

Essential Information: I just noticed recently, while mixing, I leave my laptop's Dolby Advanced Audio v2 feature on. Its default setting is just a flat EQ, but Dolby enhances the sound by making it louder, I'm not sure if it's compression or not. If anybody's familiar with it, do you recommend leaving it be or turning it off completely when mixing, leaving only Windows 7's default audio settings on while making music in FL Studio?

It's a good idea to make sure you're only hearing what's coming out of FL Studio, without anything else interfering with the output volume or anything like that.

[FaytxStay]

Thanks for the tips so far, gonna work on mixing Addictive Drums properly.

Meanwhile, does anybody know how to make Shreddage more realistic? Shreddage, as far as I know, does not have keyswitches, so I can only rely on the modwheel and velocities as well as patches in achieving realism.

Shreddage works pretty good to me.