twelvepoint wrote: Fri Jan 06, 2023 6:46 pm Personally I like tuning the bottom head a 4th higher than the top (though I recently reversed that, see above). For me, the perfect intervals seem to work ok if I don’t tune unison.

I had a drummer in the studio once who said his approach was just tight enough to get rid of wrinkles, then lugs in tune on top, and then crank the bottom. Probably wasn't too far off the 4th you're talking about. Sounded good.

losthighway wrote: Fri Jan 06, 2023 7:53 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Fri Jan 06, 2023 6:46 pm Personally I like tuning the bottom head a 4th higher than the top (though I recently reversed that, see above). For me, the perfect intervals seem to work ok if I don’t tune unison.

I had a drummer in the studio once who said his approach was just tight enough to get rid of wrinkles, then lugs in tune on top, and then crank the bottom. Probably wasn't too far off the 4th you're talking about. Sounded good.

Beware of just-above-wrinkle tuning though: while it may work out on a recording, the drum won't project much and the head will wear out faster. Per usual with these things, you really need to evaluate how it sounds from a distance: drums that sound boomy in a room are often tuned higher than you think.

This channel is always a good resource. Not in a preachy way, just making sure your techniques are in line with what you're trying to achieve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur007_CmppM

^ That checks out having seen the same drummer perform live with inaudible toms. That deep dead thud feels big in isolation, or with the aid of studio technology but it doesn't keep a presence.

I stand by my assertion that a drum that plays a somewhat identifiable note with a brief sustain sounds goofy in isolation but carries more impact in a mix. This is also true of kick drums. My coated emperor kick drum with a baby blanket in it sounds wimpy in comparison to the drummer in my other band's foam ring aquarian kick but "speaks" more in a mix because it has more than click and boom. Mine says "dum" his says "pt".

Agree with these last couple posts, you want the toms higher than you think you do or they just sound like you're hitting a piece of paper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl9wgXSfxew

I've been following this guy's advice... I find drum tuning difficult. To me it's a lot about being able to hear the drum tones and also reading the specific kit and drum sizes.. the room... everything.

Crazy ass Deerhoof guitar multi-amp setup - micing hollowbody guitars acoustically, running that into an amp, then it gets weirder yet.

This is in a nice studio with some $$$ gear but could be cool to rip off on a smaller scale

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqBlS8HJ8I9 ... MyMTA2M2Y=

That's a bunch of rad guitar amps, and it sounds great. This guy I was recording the other day insisted on using 3 small amps (terrible little solid state Orange, a Pro Jr. and some reissue ampeg thing) at once, but none of them sounded good so the results were super meh. He has a "more is MOAWR!" problem

"micing hollowbody guitars"

I clip Lav mics on the F hole/bridges of hollow bodies all the time.

It's the beginning of this song. We tried a bunch of acoustics, electrics, all kinds of stuff and this was the only thing that sounded adequately puny for the song. Just a Sony ECM44 clipped right to the strings behind the bridge of my Kawai hollow body that fell off the wall and was destroyed. I miss that weird guitar. I think I also ran that through a colorsound fuzz into my Epiphone amp later in the song but can't remember what it was. I think the Bass is a Fender acoustic bass with flat wounds on it direct into a Rusty box.

https://boneandbell.bandcamp.com/track/cant

Another fun thing has been adding like a kick snare, and front mic cranked and summed into a single track through a Shure M67 mono mixer and adding it to the other drum mics in the mix. THICK IT! Also the built in mic on this little micro cassette recorder is trash AF. Fun for recording piano and organ. when I dump the tape into the DAW, I give it a little shake and it gets all warbly like a broken melotron or a optigan thing. sounds cool. I'm in abasement so a mic in the open dryer is sometimes fun too.

Maybe we can start bumping this and that great mastering thread that SpaceEcho took over?

Anyways, I kind of hate mixing because I totally consider it grunt work and cleanup after the real work is done.

I know everybody knows about the preamp trick where you run your stereo buss through a pre for character. I started doing something similar that works much better for me: I am applying preamps to each bus. I use analog tape and console emulation during tracking but hardly ever intentionally *saturate* tracks, which I think sounds kind of dumb, but I do like outboard that adds character, so I’m probably ending up in a similar place at the end. I do like it when it adds a little something, just not the dumb things I see people do on youtube. So much fucking garbage.

Anyways, I basically only have Spectra and two pairs of Neve style preamps, but I feel like things cohere better when tracks go out through them, and anyways they certainly sound better than using the line gain on my mixer. Split up standard, guitars, keys, drums, acoustic, etc.

Doing this also helps keep me organized and makes creating submixes for stems easier, too. I’ve never found that necessary before, but the piece I’m working on now has something like 75 tracks for a 30 minute length and I had to start workng like this just to get a handle on it, but I feel like it’s just how I’m going to work from now on.

I’ve also been extra bouncing tracks down to stereo with my mixer and then committing to it, which has also been super nice.

I don’t plan on making music with this many tracks, but what with the preamps, the bouncing, and the track count, I am thinking that I would get a ton of use out of the Roll passive summing mixer so that I can avoid the Midas as much as possible except for monitoring.

When I was recording with J Robbins last year he always summed a multi mic'd guitar amp to a single track. I think he did the same with snare mics. I realized that when I'm looking at a stack of 6-10 guitar tracks he's mixing 2-3. Seems a lot more nimble. I'm not quite ready to buy a passive summing box, or totally reroute all my stuff, but the concept is appealing. Maybe I'm not quite ready to trust my judgment enough to commit to a blend before I absolutely have to.

Furthermore I print analog processing to separate tracks. Mostly tube compression on vocals and drum parallel compression. This practice can add in another 5-6 tracks to the screen. I mute and minimize the dry tracks that are there for insurance and backtracking only, but it's more clutter still.

This is all to say that I get the idea that piles of tracks isn't the most fun part of mixing. Ironically the most fun parts of mixing for me is analog processing: outboard boxes, pedal board, reamping; and that means printing even more tracks.

Pretty simple thing but if I double track anything, guitars, vocals... anything really. I will lo pass or shelve off a lot of the high end on one of the passes. It keeps all the chorusing down in the mid and low range and get rid of the hi phasey shit so it gets thick but not 90's acoustic guitar jangle. If it feels dull you can play with the hi of the track not Lo passed and it makes balancing the whole thing easier. Helps with uneven picking chatter a lot too.