I've already made arrangements to get all of the tracks he has thus far this week. I'm going to try and exercise as much control over the situation as I can at this point.
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Need some advice on current band state
- Thread starter Wolfenstein666
- Start date
I've already made arrangements to get all of the tracks he has thus far this week. I'm going to try and exercise as much control over the situation as I can at this point.
MDBass
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- Nov 7, 2012
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Exactly why I wasn't offering to do the editing on spec
I'm currently waiting on deliverables for two other mix projects and have a lull in my live performance schedule until early March, so just send me a PM if you'd like to take me up on the offer.
I don't mix in Pro Tools, so I'd just send you a Dropbox or Google Drive links to upload the raw multitracks into
mancefine
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- Jul 7, 2013
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Editing sounds good. Kinda off topic but I would strongly recommend you go outside the band for mixing and mastering. I've played in bands with great engineers but have never experienced the greatest results when they engineer, mix, and master our albums. At some point you need some outside ears, and you don't want the contention that comes with critiquing your bandmate's mixing skills.
I'm not a metal guy, but I can hear how tight this is and I respect the hell out of it. Best of luck!
Exactly why I wasn't offering to do the editing on spec
I'm currently waiting on deliverables for two other mix projects and have a lull in my live performance schedule until early March, so just send me a PM if you'd like to take me up on the offer.
I don't mix in Pro Tools, so I'd just send you a Dropbox or Google Drive links to upload the raw multitracks into
I will absolutely do this when I get the tracks myself. Thanks so much!
We are going outside of those for both. Essentially our engineer laid a rough mix over it. We liked the mix, but weren't happy with the little blurbs we heard, so we asked him for the tracks to edit them ourselves, because he didn't want to do it either.
Thanks for the compliment! It's hard to appreciate metal if you're not a huge fan, so I really appreciate that.
Not exactly my thing, but I listened to the whole song. Must be good then...
But seriously, pretty cool. Very tight. Interesting bass work. And the drummer may be slow in real life but he knows what he's doing behind the kit. Vocals are not my taste but easily ignored.
There's a distinct posdibility one or more band members are uncommitted or simply don't want to/can't gig or tour (there are such people) and the eternally delayed album mix is the excuse.
If you're the only one pushing, the problem may be bigger than just one of you.
FWIW, in my corner of the universe your drummer is not a good guy. People that do everthing exclusively on their own schedule and let everyone else wait, and don't make good on their promises are the end of the horse that doesn't chew hay. It's classic passive-aggressive behavior. Control is exerted by resistance and stalling rather than confrontation.
You don't want to be in a band with one of those. Just my tuppence.
If you're the only one pushing, the problem may be bigger than just one of you.
FWIW, in my corner of the universe your drummer is not a good guy. People that do everthing exclusively on their own schedule and let everyone else wait, and don't make good on their promises are the end of the horse that doesn't chew hay. It's classic passive-aggressive behavior. Control is exerted by resistance and stalling rather than confrontation.
You don't want to be in a band with one of those. Just my tuppence.
If you think of all the great bands, they all had one thing in common: a strong leader.
Know that in this band you are the leader, and that you will be faced with challenges like all leaders face. Great Leaders motivate and get people to do things without them knowing they are being manipulated. You are the one that plans and organizes and sets the standards. And you must lead by example: "Do as I do not as I say".
Although difficulties and stress will always arise, your roll as a leader is problem solving, and not to let frustration interfere with your goals. Since you have plans for the band, and if you want to continue to lead this band, do some research on leadership. It will make your life a lot easier. Good luck with the band, and congratulations on the recording.
Know that in this band you are the leader, and that you will be faced with challenges like all leaders face. Great Leaders motivate and get people to do things without them knowing they are being manipulated. You are the one that plans and organizes and sets the standards. And you must lead by example: "Do as I do not as I say".
Although difficulties and stress will always arise, your roll as a leader is problem solving, and not to let frustration interfere with your goals. Since you have plans for the band, and if you want to continue to lead this band, do some research on leadership. It will make your life a lot easier. Good luck with the band, and congratulations on the recording.
That very well might be true, but I have to give him benefit of the doubt because I believe he is inherently a good guy. As far as the control / passive aggressive thing, well.... I think I'd be hard pressed to argue with you on that.
I feel that I am the only one who really cares about making progress, and that's where I'm seeing the problem.
If you are going to perform live, are your sequences song to song already all rehearsed out? Has this been thought about? I don't understand the need for a pause unless you've been hashing this material out for Years.
My 1st thought on hearing the vocal was: why is he eq'd like he's going through a filter? Otherwise, good performance. I wish I heard more mids from the bass so it doesn't just sound like a shadow of the main line. Some "tone". Or is it the style to be invisible that way since they edited out that guy on those albums? even though he was really good
My 1st thought on hearing the vocal was: why is he eq'd like he's going through a filter? Otherwise, good performance. I wish I heard more mids from the bass so it doesn't just sound like a shadow of the main line. Some "tone". Or is it the style to be invisible that way since they edited out that guy on those albums? even though he was really good
Thank you for the advice.
Unfortunately it goes a little deeper than that. I'm NOT the band leader. IF I was the band leader, We would not be in this situation because I would put boots to asses and there would be no more dragging.
That is the source of my frustration. I can't force anyone to do anything because I'm not in the position to. The only thing I can do is to leave. Which I really don't want to do. So i'm trying to find a way to motivate them from a position of relatively little power.
Yes, our live show is relatively well rehearsed at this point. I don't want to pause, because I'm happiest when we're working.
Please keep in mind that this is not the final mix. This is a mix we put together for the sake of editing. Once we complete the editing we are handing it back to our engineer for the mix. So this is not what it will sound like when it's finished.
I actually managed to cop a killer tone in the studio (played a Ricky 4003), and we will be seeing more of that in the final cut. Our drummer is good at editing, put quite frankly, crap at mixing.
Oh well then, never mind. The drummers mix is almost no mix. My vocalist's mix once had no mid range frequencies at all. The vocal just sounds like he's in another room on a different floor maybe singing through an interface like a funnel and tube system for boats.
Yeah…I'm personally hoping I'm completely wrong with everything I said earlier and it all works out for you. This isn't the sort of thing I enjoy being right about. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm too far wrong having been in near identical situations myself.
What's the saying? Experience is thing that allows you to recognize a mistake after you've made it again…or something like that?
Anyway, if you're not all on the same page, it ain't gonna happen. That's why they call it a band. If you've only got a general good feeling without a goal, you don't have a band. You gave a "hang."
Which is fine - if that's fine by the participants. But I don't think it's fine by you.
Hardest lesson I ever learned was knowing when stick and when to cut my losses. But learn it I did. The hard way, just like everyone else.
Luck!
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I used edit audio books for a living and have done my fair share of editing full-band recordings. It can be tedious but if someone is "good" at it, it should not be time consuming to the point of grinding the project to a halt. People that are good at digital audio editing do each edit quickly and correctly and move on to the next. Being the drummer he is editing may be causing him to be hypercritical and edit stuff that doesn't need it, or listen to something 50 times to decide whether to edit or not. Did you record to a click? If not that will slow things down too. If it takes more than 2 or 3 hours to edit a single song, either the work is being done too slowly or the take has too many mistakes and should be scrapped.
Heh, well this is quite the story.
He is a perfectionist, which to a degree I can totally understand. We want it to be good. But someone once said "perfection is the enemy of good". I get where he's coming from, but at this point I don't think the issue is perfectionism, I think the issue is simply not putting the time in.
And as for the clicks. Well, we had to make our own because our music is not 4/4, easy timing stuff. We made all of them, practiced to them, imported them to protools, practiced to them again, and then when the day came they wouldn't upload correctly. So we had to literally record the clicks and drop them into the track. Which at the end of the day worked fine for recording, but we can't snap anything to the grid. So yeah, it takes awhile to do the songs.
Did some one say 80's technical thrash metal? Sounds good. Looking forward to hear the final mix when it's done.
Ps. TOXIK rules.
you can program complex time signatures and time signature changes into most DAWs and the click track and grid will adjust. but having the click track on an audio track should serve as a good enough visual guide to have things "snap" to.
"perfection is the enemy of the good"--good quote for sure and i see how it's relevant here. i've heard it most often in the context of government. but it definitely fits, and i think a "perfect" track--even technical metal--is often a boring track. not that mistakes make it better, but some amount of human variation in the timing makes the music groove. a band like Fear Factory is maybe the antithesis of that, but then again how long can you listen to Fear Factory before you get bored? Meshugga is a good example of a band that plays some crazily technical odd time stuff but always has a "groove". my advice would be only fix things that sound "wrong". i don't hear many/any of those in the soundcloud link you posted.
in any case good luck moving things along!
