Recording - October 2010 - 64

circumstance. That said, we would encourage Jason to add a dash of reverb to the lead vocal and then reduce it several dB in volume. Regarding the backing vocals, those sound too distant to our ears; raising them a tad would help balance out the overall mix in our opinion.
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Summary: Plenty to like here, a few tweaks will take it the rest of the way home.
Contact: Jason Burns, jason@philoking.com.

Dan Spechtenhauser
Equipment: PC with Line 6 POS Studio UX2 interface, running Sonoma Wire Works Riffworks Standard with Sonic Reality Raw Pop Rock drum loops and Line 6 POD Farm 2 guitar effects plug-ins. Fender Strat: POD Farm effects—Noise gate, Brit J-800, 4-band eq, Medium Hall Reverb. Bass Guitar: Fender Strat through POD Farm effects—Noise gate, Sub Octave, Adam and Eve, Compressor. Vocals: Audio-Technica ST90 MKII through POD Farm effects—Vetta comp, Console EQ, Tube Echo, Brite Room Reverb.

Jason Burns
Equipment: Mac Pro with M-Audio ProFire 2626 interface and M-Audio Axiom 61 USB keyboard controller/interface, running Apple Logic Studio 8, Toontrack EZDrummer with Drumkit From Hell, and Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3; RØDE NT1-A condenser mic, Yamaha HSM80 active monitors, AKG K240 headphones; Ibanez and Schecter electric guitars, Ibanez Soundgear bass, Roland TD-3 V-Drums electronic drum kit.

Music: “Blood In the Sand” is a male vocal metal track. Jason composed, programmed, played and recorded/mixed all of the project in his spare-bedroom home studio. Recording: Quite a solid effort in a genre that is often problematic for a one-person operation. Jason explains that the drums are all on separate tracks, as are a doubletracked main guitar, a melody track, clean guitar, bass, synth, cymbal track and solo track. The drums are a mix of sequenced MIDI and TD-3 V-Drums, played and then quantized. Jason tells us that his main concern with the recording centers around the vocals, and while we somewhat agree, let’s take a look at the overall track first, shall we? Right off the bat, Jason’s skill level on the guitar impressed us. We were also impressed by the tone of the electric guitars, which are thankfully free of the “buzz saw” sound that is often associated with metal. We also must give Jason his props for a nicely conceived and executed drum program. For a guitar player he did all right! (Just joking, you six-string heads). As for the lead vocal, while we agree that it could “sit” a little more snugly in the mix, we do like the fact that it was tracked free of compression/limiting artifacts. Suggestions: Vocal mixing may very well be the hardest aspect of a recordists job, and the old adage that practice makes perfect is never more appropriate than in this
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Music: “Tiresmoke and Gasoline” is a male vocal rock song. Dan was the author, artist and recordist on the track; he wrote, “It’s all mine so I will take all the blame.” Recording: Achieving the proper balance of sound sources is the key to any sucessful mix. Unfortunately, like many of our submissions, Dan’s mix has just enough balance issues to “spoil the soup,” as they say. Let’s take a look/listen and see what’s going on. First of all, there seems to be a reversal of roles concerning the drums and the melody instruments and vocals. While we can certainly appreciate the forward nature of Dan’s drum kit, we’re a bit puzzled as to why the rest of the sound sources appear to be in a totally different ambient space. The vocals sound buried and distant, ditto the guitars. Adding to the problem is the fact that there is no discernable bass guitar in the mix and the changing sound of the snare drum gets tiresome fairly quickly. Suggestions: Over the years we have listened to hundreds (if not thousands) of mixes with balance issues. The causes can vary greatly, but the most common ones concern room acoustics and monitoring. Next up would be folks who are simply unsure as to the way to achieve a sense of depth and size in a mix. Like most things in life, the latter is usually learned through trial and error, and the experience that comes along with it. As the wise man once said said, “You don’t know what you don’t know, ya know.” Given that, we would encourage Dan to take the quickest and least expensive road to redemption by simply getting into the practice of A/Bing his mixes. There are plenty of great commercial recordings that specialized in “burying” the vocals as part of their sound. Any of the early R.E.M. releases would work; after all, things turned out OK for them, didn’t they? As many of you know by now, even in our Auto-Tuned, cut and paste, plug-in world, there is still no magic “balance” button in or outside the box. This, my friends, is the skill that the engineer still brings to the table, and how it’s done determines if the meal is fast food or gourmet.
Summary: There is a reason that A and B are the first letters of the alphabet!
Contact: Dan Spechtenhauser, danspec@gmail.com.

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Recording - October 2010

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