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Posted by: Fingerspasm Jun 15 2009, 06:32 PM

I decided to take the leap and buy a macbook pro and some other recording equipment. I set up a little recording studio in my home office. Here is my first recording. Its my sons metalcore band. I used 6 mic's on the drums and then used a mic on the bass and the guitar. The keyboard was recorded direct. The kick was the hardest thing to get to sound right. I had to do some editing to get the sound I have so far. If anyone would care to take a listen let me know what you think about the sound and give me any advice you might have. I am open to any and all advice. I know some of you will hate the singing but its the style what can I say.
http://www.myspace.com/theselastregards

Posted by: edguy Jun 15 2009, 06:34 PM

I can't see a mp3 or something??

Posted by: Fingerspasm Jun 15 2009, 06:39 PM

Sorry about that. I have added the link.

Posted by: jafomatic Jun 15 2009, 06:41 PM

Not my favorite genre, but the quality of sound is great! Maybe the levels could be balanced a little bit differently, but perhaps that's a style difference that I'm less familiar with.

Gear sounds good, that's for sure.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 16 2009, 11:38 AM

It's too muddy if you ask me and the guys need to tighten up their playing. The song itself is very nice, but drummer is a bit out of tempo here and there. Guitar needs to be a bit more focused and possibly in stereo, I can hear it only on the right speaker. Bass is very good, and vocals are decent as well.
The kick should be more tighter and focused. It's too muddy and boomy and uses a lot of the range. Spike it up around 120Hz and cut everything else that is not needed.

Posted by: Fingerspasm Jun 16 2009, 12:50 PM

I agree with you about the Kick. I will try your suggestion. You are also correct about the guitar needing to be in Stereo. I recorded it in Mono thinking that I could just duplicated the track and pan one to the left and one to the right. I tried it and the both wanted to come out of the same speaker still. So I tried to record in stereo but it still only recorded one side. The only way it would record in stereo was if I used mic 1 and mic 2. Is this always the case if you do not record direct? Or is there a way to get stereo on one mic input?
As for how the band played...... well lets just say the drummer is 14 and my son the singer is 17 so they are kinda hard to work with I had to try and make them understand why I need the drummer to play to a metronome. So I finally got them close enough..... They are slowly figuring out that recording is much different than playing live. They realize that you can hear all the mistakes. But since they had only had very very low quality live recordings in the past they thought they sounded really great on this recording. But now after a week or two of listening to it they are starting to hear the flaws in their playing.
Thanks for your advice it is greatly appreciated.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jun 17 2009, 12:03 PM

Usually guitars are double tracked which means you record two mono tracks separately of the same guitar line. Both times the player plays the same thing and then you pan those two mono tracks left and right. The tracks will sound the same, but they will have those subtle differences that will make them different and the guitars will sound bigger when panned. The amount of panning depends on stereo balance of the whole mix, so always put components to some stereo width and try not to put them all together on one distance in the horizontal stereo line.
No point recording anything in that band in stereo, every component should get it's own mic and should be recorded on mono audio track. All those mono tracks are mixed later in DAW for stereo image. If you have two mics on some component, for example snare or guitar cab they still count as one track, you will pan them together not separately. The main reason you are recording two mics on snare or guitar cab in the first place is to get a better transient response, so you have more frequencies to work with.
If you need any more questions feel free to ask, I'll be glad to help mate. Great thing to hear the kids are rocking hard in their youth - keep them rockin