Frustration and no meaningful answers

WhiteShadow

WhiteShadow

Active member
I've posted in here before about my problems and frustrations with recording. Feels like I've tried everything, but I don't know how others get that pro sound. When I ask how they do it, or explain my issues, I just get deer in headlights look. I've even gone to professionals who's own music they produce sounds like a million bucks, but when I try to get them recreate that production quality for me it still just sounds like the same shit I produce myself at home. It feels like that episode of spongebob where Squidward starts the art school and spongebob taps the marble with chisel and it turns into a beautiful Greek statue, but later when squidward tries to get him to recreate it for him, it just turns to dust. I ask them how do they get that pro sound on their own recordings, and again, I just get a blank stare.

The only answers I do get are the same ones that don't help - "you got to pan your guitars bro/you got to set the gain stage right bro" etc. etc...

These are not answers, and they don't help. These are basic recording 101. They have nothing to do (at least in this context) with what I'm talking about, which is how you get that pro sound that's worthy of a record. Even crappy, low effort youtube videos have better and more authentic sound than the stuff I produce in my DAW.

Often I even get people saying "There's nothing wrong with it, it sounds fine bro"... when they know full well it doesn't.

People also say "You got to get better monitors/you got to treat your room acoustically", but again, the sound I'm getting should still not be THIS bad, even with my normal room and gear. I know these guys who have virtually no money to even buy proper gear. They use free plugins and use a jerry-rigged old ipod dock as their monitors, and their stuff sounds full blown professional. It just boggles the mind.

I would've given up a long time ago if it weren't an obsession and something I'm hellbent on conquering.

It's not even my guitar tone. It's everything. Even programmed midi drums sound crappy. It's like something is crushing the sound in some way and making it sound low quality. I thought DAW settings might have something to do with it, but I've followed all the guides and I'm doing just as people say.

In conclusion, its just getting frustrating and is just holding me back. I write riffs that sound awesome when I come up with them, but they just never translate to the recording. Everything just sounds horrible.

Here's some samples. One with all instruments. One with just drums:

 
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One caveat, that sample above with the guitars I know sounds crappy bc I just mic'd up my amp and didn't do any mixing, you can hear noise and whatnot. But the point is even when I use amp sims and try to mix and master them they just sound like shit. There's almost no point to mixing or mastering my stuff becaseut the basic sound just sucks to begin with
 
Everything I've watched about how to record pro-sounding stuff just says the same irrelevant shit about "gain staging properly" or "panning your guitars" but I don't think any of that stuff has anything to do with getting a pro sound. It's like saying - "if you want to win a formula one race you got to put fuel in your car bro". It's like yeah, no shit, it won't work without that, but that has nothing to do with making the car top of the line and competitive. Everyone else seems to intuitively know this stuff and how to achieve it without even thinking about it, but it's like everything I touch turns to shit automatically. It's so damn infuriating.
 
I don't think they sound like shit tbh. I'm in no way shape or form, in the position to offer advice though. One thing I do know is that programmed Drums are all about the software that's being used. What are you using to program drums currently?
 
Sounds like you're making progress to me....I only listened to the first clip but that already sounds 100x better than the shit I was recording when I first started out doing it
 
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Apex1Rg7X said:
I don't think they sound like shit tbh. I'm in no way shape or form, in the position to offer advice though. One thing I do know is that programmed Drums are all about the software that's being used. What are you using to program drums currently?
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Dude, they do though. They DO, and you know it. They do not sound industry standard. They sound wonky and off

I use Reaper and I use MTPower kit for their beat library to find beats to start with, but after I get the drums programmed how I want them, I use Ugritone Arena Rock drums for the final sound.
 
Man I don’t know what to tell you because I’m in the same boat except you’re lightyears ahead of me. Some of the best clips I’ve heard was from my homeboy who used to post hear. Josh…aka insurrection. He had a completely primitive recording chain but was able to make killer recordings. He was basically using radio shack shit…I dunno bro..
 
The drums do sound kinda small and compressed but I'm also listening on pretty bad speakers rn because my good system got fried in a storm :(
 
It's like the squidward analogy. I will never get anything other than the puzzled deer in headlights look and "it sounds fine to me" answers. People just don't care. It's not their problem so they don't care
 
Even when I mic up my Marshall with my sm57 and folloe tutorials on proper micing and gain staging, it still sounds like shit
 
JackBootedThug said:
It sounds fine to me and honestly I don’t care. Lol…but you are one of the Rigtalk homies so if you’re upset then I’m upset…cause that’s how we roll up in here.
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Yeah just frustrated.
Devin said:
Have you tried checking out something like URM? I haven't used it personally but a friend of mine does and his production chops and knowledge have grown by leaps and bounds

https://urm.academy/
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I'm signing up!
 
WhiteShadow said:
Yeah just frustrated.

I'm signing up!
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Might be your best bet because short of having someone knowledgeable and local to you actually sit in there with you while you're working I doubt you'll get much from forums besides shit you already know


One thing that's cool about that URM thing is they send out entire projects from other big band's recordings for you to mix yourself.

That would at least eliminate the factor of your guitar/amp/mic gear

It'll also show you that these pro recordings have much more going on than you might think
 
I have reaper and audacity…I have a cheap but decent interface..was using stl amphub…have killer monitors and headphones…even bought a new computer to use for recording…and I have no fucking clue as to what I’m doing. I have posted threads about this and guys have tried to help but I have no concept. I’m an ex prison guard…I don’t have any technical background for this stuff and I literally just gave up on it. Have no idea how to do anything…so yeah you’re shit sounds pretty good to me bro…
 
Man, if you don’t think gain staging is important in the context of having your mixes NOT sound crushed, I dunno what to tell ya, but that’s absolutely the exact area I’d start in. Once you’re out of headroom, there’s no other place to go. If your master bus is pegging 0 before you even apply any mastering plug-ins, it’s DEFINITELY going to sound crushed once you add something, especially limiting.

The other thing is really know/understanding the EQ relationship between everything else and how adding/taking away frequencies on one instrument can bring the perceivable volume UP on other instruments. This was something I did not catch for years because I had subpar monitors that were incapable of reproducing all the frequencies I had in a song. I just switched from Yamaha HS5’s to HS8’s a couple months ago and basically had to come to terms with the fact that I have plenty more learning to do because all the shit I was not hearing on the 5’s is very present with the 8’s.

The best example I can make is I’ve always heard the click track in Logic just fine with the 5’s, no matter how many instruments I added and what frequencies they were taking up. With the 8’s, the click will start off at normal volume like always, but the second the other instruments kick in the click volume plummets. I was entirely unable to hear that kind of detail previously.

FWIW, almost all the bedroom mixers are using some form of Ozone for mastering these days, while the final result might sound ‘good’, I refuse to use it because I’m not learning anything of value from it and find it crushes the shit out of a mix more often than not. I give zero fucks about trying to compete with brickwalled music.
 
I think you are being too hard on yourself. I listen to several clips a day where guys are raving about the modded Marshall or vintage plexi or some other holy grail amp, and I think they sound like fizzy ass. I like your clip!

:cheers:
 
Ok, what is it EXACTLY you dont like about the first mix? Drum Sound? Guitar sound? Overall mix? Have you tried running the overall mix thru a compressor? What kind of compressor? What type of monitoring? Phones, speakers..both? What type of mix are you going for?
You have to be specific in what type of mix are you looking for. And what outboard gear you're using .... so many variables for what a "Pro sound" is. You are definitely on the right track as what you did does sound good, but you need to be exact with what you want specifically. Are there any engineers around you that you admire their work? I'm sure for a fee they will come to you and evaluate your setup and help you get the best out of what you have. Might not be cheap but you are paying for their knowledge and you get to learn, which is invaluable to helping you get to where ya want to be. Just make sure its a reputable engineer who knows what he's doing.
Cool thing is... you can go nuts.. re eq, detune... flood with verb and gates.... go nuts!!! Most of it will probably sound like ass but you WILL stumble onto that one thing that you really dig and try building from that. Just keep a cool head, forget frustration and keep focus.
 
phil b said:
Ok, what is it EXACTLY you dont like about the first mix? Drum Sound? Guitar sound? Overall mix? Have you tried running the overall mix thru a compressor? What kind of compressor? What type of monitoring? Phones, speakers..both? What type of mix are you going for?
You have to be specific in what type of mix are you looking for. And what outboard gear you're using .... so many variables for what a "Pro sound" is. You are definitely on the right track as what you did does sound good, but you need to be exact with what you want specifically. Are there any engineers around you that you admire their work? I'm sure for a fee they will come to you and evaluate your setup and help you get the best out of what you have. Might not be cheap but you are paying for their knowledge and you get to learn, which is invaluable to helping you get to where ya want to be. Just make sure its a reputable engineer who knows what he's doing.
Cool thing is... you can go nuts.. re eq, detune... flood with verb and gates.... go nuts!!! Most of it will probably sound like ass but you WILL stumble onto that one thing that you really dig and try building from that. Just keep a cool head, forget frustration and keep focus.
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I agree here. Can you give us some examples of what you want it to sound like. Can you give us a list of your outboard gear and plugins. I saw you have a 57. Talk to me about your cab, other mics and mic placement.
 
Does that drum program have where each drum is on a separate track that can be mixed?
If you can, start there. Play around with the eq and compression if you are able.
Recording guitars should be pretty easy, start with one dynamic mic and stick it right on the grill cloth where the dust cap meets the cone. If you don’t like it, move it alittle side to side till you find something you like. Make sure the cab isn’t facing directly at a wall. Get one of the SE Electronics Reflexion mic isolators if ypu think you are getting bad reflections. Those things work!

Mixing can be a pain. Don’t put too much low end in the guitar. And less gain than you think can be helpful.
 
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