Ham_authority95 said:
BonsaiK said:
Damn I haven't even discussed mixing from a desk/computer point of view...
You should discuss it, then. I don't know anything about that anyway.
Okay then. I'm going to jump around here a lot. There is so much to cover and there is
no way I can cover it all. I'll mention a few general things, if you want more info on anything in particular, tell me.
Okay, well so you've got your 8-track. It will have either cannon (3-pin XLR, microphone style) or jack (guitar-lead style) inputs. You need as many leads as you have microphones, either XLR-to-XLR or XLR-to-jack depending on what your 8-track has.
You'll have settings on each channel called "mic/line", or a gain control that differentiates between the two. A mic input is an input from a microphone. Microphone inputs are weak and thus need to be boosted. The other setting is "line" which means a "direct line" or "direct input". This is an input from an instrument such as a keyboard or guitar. Line input is a lower gain setting because keyboards come in at higher level. If you plug something in and it makes a massive noise that blows out your ears, you probably set this setting wrong. Try and set gain settings so when you use your faders they're all hovering at around the 7 to 8 out of 10 range. That'll get you the least amount of hum etc, plus some range to play with.
When you look at channels on a desk, you'll notice that everything is in vertical strips. You should imagine the signal coming down that vertical strip from the top to the bottom where the fader is, because that's pretty much what happens.
You might also notice things like auxillary channels. This is like a split that you can take from the main signal. It's hard to explain, but think of your 8 channels in your 8 track as 8 pipes, then then join up to one big pipe later, which is the tap in your shower or something. An auxillary send is like a little pipe that comes off of those pipes at a 90 degree angle, that can send some of that water to a new location. An auxillary return is where that pipe meets back to the channel pipe. Or you can just send it to the master shower tap if you really want. The most common use: you can send something to an effects unit using an auxillary send, and then re-add it to the main mix using the auxillary returns which will then control the amount of that effect added to the main sound. The beauty of doing things this way is that the clean, non-effected signal still exists alongside the aux signal, it gives you more control. Great for adding echoes, reverbs etc. There's more complex things it can do too, like acting as a gate trigger, but I won't discuss that because you probably don't have access to gates and that's getting way technical. Talking about aux alone is probably enough of a headfuck. It's not essential for you to use, but it's there and can be useful.
Compressors. Did you know that almost all vocals on commercial recordings, in all styles of music with the exception of classical are compressed to shit? Compression is a way to even out volumes. You know when you watch a movie and it's kind of quiet with occasional loud bits, but mostly quiet. Then the ads come on and they are loud as fuck. Well, the ads aren't really any louder, they are just more compressed, they are skating closer to digital zero more of the time, whereas the action movie is only skating near zero when shit is blowing up, when the make and female lead are getting to know each other it's quieter. You can hear the same effect when you put on a classical music CD (which is usually not compressed, because classical music fans like to hear the natural dynamics) and then a pop/rock music CD (which is usually compressed to the last drop to maximise its loudness on radio broadcast). So you will want to at least learn what compressors do and maybe buy one. Guitars in heavy metal have a natural compressor - the distortion pedal. That thing evens out volumes... turn your bad-ass dictortion all the way up, play really soft. Then play really loud. Same volume, or almost, right? Now turn your amp to clean and do the same thing - way more difference. This is compression at work. So you don't need to compress guitars because chances are they already are. Bass players love compression so much that a lot of bass amps have one built in. Where compression is really your friend is with vocals. Because most vocalists suck balls at compressing themselves. Skilled vocalists know how though. Watch this video:
Look at the way she pulls the mic rapidly
away from her mouth at 1:44. And brings it closer to her lips for the quiet part. She's evening out the volumes in her natural voice, using mic positioning. From 3:00 to 3:04 you get an excellent side-on view of it. This is called mic technique, and she does it because she's an incredibly talented vocalist who knows what she's doing. And you thought all those head and arm movements were just for show. Some are but some aren't. Here's another incredibly talented vocalist:
In the verses, the microphone is close, all the time, because he's singing quieter. When the chorus comes, he pulls it back for the really loud syllables that he knows are going to distort the PA or sound lumpy. You can see that just like Mariah, he's a natural at it - he can run around the stage and give a high energy performance at the same time. Hopefully your vocalist can do this sort of thing too. If not... you're going to need a compressor to even out the volume in his voice, or you're just going to have to tell him to be mindful to sing at the same volume. Another way to tackle it is to record vocals separately on another track in Audacity or Joe Blow's Free Recording Software and then compress it yourself, either using the tools that come with the program, or yourself, manually, by waveform envelope shaping, which takes forever, but the results are worth it if it's just a demo.
You might want to compress the drums if your drummer is really uneven. Drummers who use that double-kick pedal tend to play double-kick quite softly but single-kick really loud. They also sometimes get quiet on the snare when they do blast beats. Either compress the drums or if you can't just tell the drummer to try and keep his drumming even. If that means it all gotta be soft that's okay, it'll still sound loud on the recording if you mix it high enough. Good metal drumming is all about technique not force anyway.
Equalisation is nice, but don't overdo it. Amateurs tend to crank the bass, crank the treble and cut everything else. Try to avoid the temptation to bass the shit out of the mix, it'll just sound mushy. Remember that the person playing it back in their stereo will be cranking the bass most likely, so you don't have to. Also, if you mix the guitars too deeply they'll eat the bass guitar alive and then you get a mix like "And Justice For All" and you don't want that. Remember also your cymbals are like the "air" at the top of the mix, you want to get some nice high end there. Don't be afraid to leave some midrange in the guitars or they won't come out at all through small speakers.
Speaking of which, always mix on small speakers. Most people listening back to your music will also be doing so on small speakers. If it sounds great on small speakers it'll sound
fantastic on big ones.... but if it sounds great on big speakers, it might sound shitty on someone's computer monitor speakers or iPhone headphones, and let's face it that's how most people listen to music these days, audiophiles with big hi-fis are a minority...
Once you've mixed all your thingies, you need to then put then into a 2-track format, or a master. You can do that on a computer easily, just connect your master outputs of your 8 track to your computer audio input, download something free like Audacity, press record on it, press play on your 8-track, mix away, export the result as .wav format, then you can made CDs out of it. Boo-ya.
Master at 44:1KHz by the way because that's CD format.
Any question, fire away. I think I covered a few important things but no doubt I could make this several more pages of tl;dr if I wanted to.
