What's your biggest producing frustration?

[fullbirdmusic]

My biggest production frustration is a great drum sound. I don't know if it's my rock oriented tastes, but I'm always mixing the snare too loud! A great bass sound is hard for me too; probably because I don't spend enough time with it. Does anyone have any tips for recording a bass DI with no cab using an amp and Palmer speaker sim? The drums will always be tough. But they were even harder without EZDrummer. I just bought Steven Slate Drums, but I'm not sure how much I like them because they're already pretty effected. I like very dry drum samples while being able to add my own compression and reverb settings. For all of that, EZD is great!

[mojobone]

Nov 5, 2009, 10:15pm, fullbirdmusic wrote:Does anyone have any tips for recording a bass DI with no cab using an amp and Palmer speaker sim? Avalon U5 direct box and no amp/speaker sim works well, too. If your snares tend to be too loud, perhaps your monitors are dipping the mids or you need to address some deficiencies in your room.

[fullbirdmusic]

Nov 6, 2009, 2:31am, mojobone wrote:Nov 5, 2009, 10:15pm, fullbirdmusic wrote:Does anyone have any tips for recording a bass DI with no cab using an amp and Palmer speaker sim? Avalon U5 direct box and no amp/speaker sim works well, too. If your snares tend to be too loud, perhaps your monitors are dipping the mids or you need to address some deficiencies in your room.So just straight from the bass to DI to interface? I'll have to try that. Maybe my recording chain is just degrading the bass - it IS a guitar rig that I'm using because I don't have anything tailor-made for a bass.Maybe it is my room, but I have pretty good acoustic treatment. I think it's my perceived loudness as well. I mix for long hours and tend to jack up the volume on the drums because I feel like they're drowning out over time. I need to keep my eye on their volume knobs all the time. Or take more breaks.

[hurican]

Over the last few days, and after gaining some experience, I'd like to add another to the former post (or posts) I had on this subject.Amateurish mistakes. This is the first time in years where I've had a band who is clued into the same goals as I, so the mixes are basically the first time I've really had to get professional results out of (semi) modern technology. So here are a couple of clodhoppers for ya!I usually double-mic the instruments and I learned never to position one of the clips/splices independently of the other. After doing exactly that, I couldn't figure out why the track sounded thin, then fat, then loud, then soft when I soloed both tracks of the instrument, until I realized that I screwed up the phase consistency of the two tracks. (Especially noticeable on bass). That set me back a couple of days.So that's one, and the other was being twitchy clicky with the mouse... being tired, and after a few beers I had saved my mix... and the next day I apparently had deleted a track from a mouse movement where I clicked in the wrong place. So I had to re-import the track from the file, and go through it all over again... ie...another couple of days.So now I think my biggest frustrations are caused by my own inexperience / inattention.

[tinozigzag]

EVERY THING!!!TINO

[mojobone]

Nov 6, 2009, 4:12am, fullbirdmusic wrote:Nov 6, 2009, 2:31am, mojobone wrote:Avalon U5 direct box and no amp/speaker sim works well, too. If your snares tend to be too loud, perhaps your monitors are dipping the mids or you need to address some deficiencies in your room.So just straight from the bass to DI to interface? I'll have to try that. Maybe my recording chain is just degrading the bass - it IS a guitar rig that I'm using because I don't have anything tailor-made for a bass.Maybe it is my room, but I have pretty good acoustic treatment. I think it's my perceived loudness as well. I mix for long hours and tend to jack up the volume on the drums because I feel like they're drowning out over time. I need to keep my eye on their volume knobs all the time. Or take more breaks.MXR's M-80 Bass DI+ is a great tool that's way cheaper than the Avalon U5. (I use the Avalon in other peoples' studios) The M-80 runs off phantom power from a mixer, (9Volt optional) so I can leave the bass rig at home when I'm jammin' out someplace, given a beefy enough monitor rig and PA. It's also good for driving a tube bass head into the burn zone, though it doesn't really do "fuzz" bass. I keep it in my gig bag in case a bass rig goes down. (There's a setting on the Avalon that sounds like an Ampeg SVT, the MXR doesn't quite get that, but my POD X3L does)

[southpaw]

the gnawing desire of perfection that, of course, there's "enough time for," which sometimes overpowers my sensitivity to just recording and displaying a great, human, performance.

[t4mh]

In reply to the whole Bass DI thing, I record bass in one of three ways, and I might add, none of which I am absolutely satisfied with but I have gotten reasonable results with.1) I have a small Ampeg Bass Combo Rig that isn't too loud that I can mic and has a Lo-Z direct out that is faithful to the preamp and tone settings. As always, putting a mic in front of an amp requires a room that sounds right. Always a problem. However, taking the mic and and the direct thru compressors and squashing those signals is pretty good for normal sounding bass guitar recording.2) I got a Sansamp Bass Driver DI Box that I can pretty much dial in almost any normal sounding bass sound that I can think of. I can then Low-Z out of the box and then run thru a compressor. Squashed again. This also works pretty good. The Sansamp is extremely quiet and I would highly recommend it in anyone's studio!3) Lastly, for the out of the ordinary bass sounds I go to my keyboard. Synth bass sounds and such, and I have some really great sounding acoustic bass sounds there. This is the easiest as far as processing the sound as everything is already compressed and sounds good. The problem here is being able to emulate real bass playing on a keyboard. Needless to say I have to work at that quite a bit.HTHKeith

[hammersmith]

Musicians and singers. There are the ones who don't return calls and emails. Worse still are the ones who initially seem gung ho, but who never follow through. Of course the few who follow through and deliver the goods give me an amazing feeling of accomplishment, so I wade through acres of swampland for the brief joy of the occasional beach.

[mojobone]

Nov 11, 2009, 6:54pm, hammersmith wrote:Musicians and singers. There are the ones who don't return calls and emails. Worse still are the ones who initially seem gung ho, but who never follow through. Of course the few who follow through and deliver the goods give me an amazing feeling of accomplishment, so I wade through acres of swampland for the brief joy of the occasional beach.Well, yeah, but I kinda thought that went without saying, heh. In these parts, we call that the Flake Factor.