Anybody here good at home recording with plugins and drum programming?

[ZEN Amps]

everyone else magically seems to make stellar sounding stuff, and it looks like it was easy when they did it.

If this is truly your opinion, you'll never excel at this I'm afraid. Excuse the sarcasm, but can you see what's wrong with this statement?

I watched Wimbledon last year, seems all those guys have a much better forehand than me. What's the secret trick, and why won't anyone tell me?

I'm not sure what the secret sauce or mojo is to that, but everyone seems to know it but me, and everyone is tight-lipped.

Saying 'everyone' can do it but you is your first (and biggest) problem you have - conspiratorial thoughts like this are ridiculously unhealthy and completely untrue. If you look around you'll find 95% of what amateurs post sounds awful, as expected.

 

[japetus]

I watched Wimbledon last year, seems all those guys have a much better forehand than me. What's the secret trick, and why won't anyone tell me?

Imagine not establishing your forehand slice at that level..

 

[VESmedic]

If this is truly your opinion, you'll never excel at this I'm afraid. Excuse the sarcasm, but can you see what's wrong with this statement?

I watched Wimbledon last year, seems all those guys have a much better forehand than me. What's the secret trick, and why won't anyone tell me?


Saying 'everyone' can do it but you is your first (and biggest) problem you have - conspiratorial thoughts like this are ridiculously unhealthy and completely untrue. If you look around you'll find 95% of what amateurs post sounds awful, as expected.

Mannnn this is so damn true I’m glad someone said it: if you think alot of stuff put out “sounds good”, you need to check your ears. Our world has become so watered down in to what “good” is. Mixes have never been more uninspiring and generically boring and safe. And I don’t by any means claim to be any different than the rest of the amateurs out there, but my god most stuff everywhere online sounds unreal horrible.

 

[PurityS.L.G]

I don't really want to post anything rn, but I'll say my biggest issues are with making things sound real, like the guitar and drums, and also with just general beat programming. Can't seem to make any groove sound natural or propel the song forward. It always seems static and robotic. Like its holding the song back. There's no momentum.

EDIT: Also just giving it that big production sound (or something close to it), I've got no clue how to do. Everything I do sound amateurish and DIY. Lots of kids on YT seem to be able to make a good video that is well-mixed and sounds pro, I'm not sure what the secret sauce or mojo is to that, but everyone seems to know it but me, and everyone is tight-lipped. You couldn't pulverize the info out of them.

Also, last big issue is that I can get things to sound "okay" on my PC speakers, but try to play it on a cell phone and turn up the volume and the whole thing just comes unglued and sound harsh, brittle, and atrocious. People will say "YoU jUsT gOtTa TrAiN yOuR eAr AnD lEaRn ThE dELiCaTe ArT oF mIxInG bRo".......... Nah, there's a trick to it, you're just not telling me.

I think I get your problem.

Drums: Are you programming your drums from scratch manually or are you using pre made MIDI tracks? These kids on YT you are speaking of are using pre made MIDI tracks from a MIDI pack they bought from Toontrack, Slate, XLN AD, etc, etc. Those packs are very useful starting points since they have a humanization element to them already recorded from a real drummer. Sounds like you are manually programming every hit which will give you the same velocity every hit and make it sound robotic.

Guitars: What amp sims are you using? More importantly, what speaker IR's are you using? I could help you more on this if I know what you're working with.

 

[japetus]

Mannnn this is so damn true I’m glad someone said it: if you think alot of stuff put out “sounds good”, you need to check your ears. Our world has become so watered down in to what “good” is. Mixes have never been more uninspiring and generically boring and safe. And I don’t by any means claim to be any different than the rest of the amateurs out there, but my god most stuff everywhere online sounds unreal horrible.

Good recordings are good, bad are bad. People fucking hate Steely Dan but if anyone can listen to this and tell me it SOUNDS like shit, they are out of their mind. And I am not some tan pants nerd, but Steely Dan is reference material for me. If you recorded metal like this, it would still sound amazing

 

[DanTravis62]

Good recordings are good, bad are bad. People fucking hate Steely Dan but if anyone can listen to this and tell me it SOUNDS like shit, they are out of their mind. And I am not some tan pants nerd, but Steely Dan is reference material for me. If you recorded metal like this, it would still sound amazing

100%

I fuckin HATE steely Dan, but you're out of your mind if you don't think that production is lush and amazing

 

[Greazygeo]

Good recordings are good, bad are bad. People fucking hate Steely Dan but if anyone can listen to this and tell me it SOUNDS like shit, they are out of their mind. And I am not some tan pants nerd, but Steely Dan is reference material for me. If you recorded metal like this, it would still sound amazing

Steely Dan is pretty cool. They would be cooler if they had a logo you can’t decipher, tuned down to Db and did more open string riffs with unintelligible screaming.

 

[NeubyWanKaneuby]

I think something important I've learned in my journey is to understand what frequency range your instruments fit in, so you can EQ things and make space for everything. Like where does the kick and snare sit, where do the bass guitar/electrics sit, where do the vocals sit, etc...

That helped me a lot, and even though I still suck at mixing, I think my stuff has gotten way better than when I started.

 

[romanianreaper]

I think people just make stuff too hard. Starting out, forget about all of the mic placement, hint of reverb, dropping 200 hrs to let the second bass string breathe, etc. F all of that. You gotta start with a simple riff and some basics, to start.

My recordings from the 90s are God awful. Lots of noise, instruments too loud in the mix, distorted from mics too loud, etc. But I learned from that and now can do pretty decent recordings just using Reaper and having some patience.

Don't try to be Eddie Kramer or Rick Rubin overnight. Just do a recording and have fun with it while keeping it basic. Does the road you can do other stuff, expand, etc. For now just keep it simple so you can learn basic stuff. I'd say do a verse or so eith some drums, bass and guitar. Let your hear it and then we can find areas to improve and tell you how to sound better.

 

[WhiteShadow]

there is no "trick" - besides probably, mixing on real monitors or room-adjusted headphones so you can actually hear everything clearly.

edit: that sounded snarky, it wasnt meant to be, I mean your PC speakers aren't going to give you a good representation of what's happening in your mix, as far as sound quality. Now, obviously that wont help with the drum programming, but it might guide you in the right direction as far as things sounding big and crisp.

I mix on real monitors, I'm just talking about checking it on my PC speakers after I mix, and other forms of speakers

 

[WhiteShadow]

There are toddlers on YouTube who can't even walk or say their ABCs yet. Probably haven't even taken their first shit yet, who seem to be able to make these amazing pro sounding mixes in their videos, and you can see the look of ease and relaxation in their face as it seems effortless to them. Meanwhile here I am working 17 hours per day trying to learn this stuff and all I can produce is idiocracy level dog shit.

 

[RaceU4her]

Damn

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Yeah that's a huge project for most of us who do this stuff in our spare time when our yelling kids go to sleep. As a drummer myself ( not a great one but a steady one) who has had to go to an E kit for my recordings, I obsess over realism so I can offer you a few tips in that regard.

As Dan said above, never try to mix software drums without some type of bleed. You need that realism and the programs already take care of most phase issues.

You need an editor. EZ drummer gives presets. You can't choose the effects on the kit. EZ3 will be better in that you will have access to the editor and this is huge. You need to go in and adjust midi hits to bring down the peaks (nobody kicks at 127 full velocity) as well as the hi hats (where a drummer would accent and have a power hand). You also need to edit the snare rolls in the same fashion to avoid machine gunning.

Bottom snare mic. Turn this down on drum plugins. This contributes to machine gun.

Extra credit - Break your drum plugin out to audio files in the daw and then run Slate Trigger over the snare. It will add yet another layer of realism for the snare and is more dynamic as you adjust it. But you have to have sorted out all the midi robot hits from the beginning.

So that's just the drums. You could be spending hours on this as is. Then you need to figure out your guitars, bass, vocals, and all plugin chains that give you something decent.

Finally, listening on monitors. How good is your room? If it isn't treated, you need to work between decent headphones AND monitors and use reference mixes. Then you need to spend time out in your car listening to your mix to see how it holds up. Many pros still do this for a reason.

End of the day, you still need good ears and have confidence in the sounds YOU want. Not the sounds Glenn Fricker or any of these other youtube personalities tell you to go for and that are essential or go to every time. Everyone dirtying up their bass all the time sounds like shit to me. I want a bass that cuts. Try to copy the tones that you like from the albums you love. Tons of experimenting and trial and error. That can't be taught, you have to experience it. Once you do all that, you will see why most of us never finish a damn song and that's the truth. If you watch videos on youtube, you will notice that a lot of old time producers don't talk about exact formulas, they speak more generally about things you can do. They will always tell you it is dependent on style and vibe. If you follow a flow chart, you will end up being cookie cutter like everything else is these days.

My two cents.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

As Dan said, watch warren huart

He's great but even he gets way more technical because of these huge productions he does. He layers things with samples, does all this shit with multiple verbs etc... I think a person can get overwhelmed listening to some of his videos. I also think that a lot of his stuff ends up sounding over produced once has added all the layers. I guess that's great for the time and he has kept up with the trends to be successful though but I tend to prefer more raw over overly polished.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Fucking a right.

My go-to plugins are as follows:

Ambience (yes, the ancient one)
Scheps omni-strip
waves CLA-76
reaEQ (yes, the one that comes with reaper)
Serum
SSL- native drum strip

I almost never use ANYTHING else. Nothing fancy or even remotely expensive. Anything random I use stock fucking free reaper plug ins

There's no magic plug in that's going to magically make everything sound "good." You have to put blood, sweat, tears, and time into it.

As @VESmedic says, learning how compression actually works, and getting good performances/sources is literally 90% of it. Were not joking.

Some hardware helped me figure things out too. Went to a few hardware comps and then my console EQ for half the stuff and can easily find usable EQ after from old plugins, reaEQ, Lindell, or Scheps omni. Don't buy too many plugins, you will never go back to anything!

But the best tip of all is to fix it first during tracking. Weak hits, weak playing.. be the human compressor before using the compressors.

Tons of great insight in this thread though.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Also Spectre sound studio has a class from Henning Pauly for about 100 bucks and it's very very thorough. It goes through the process from start to finish.

https://spectredigital.com/

You'd have to pay ME 100$ to sit through Henning talk about anything for any length of time .

 

[DanTravis62]

the best tip of all is to fix it first during tracking. Weak hits, weak playing.. be the human compressor before using the compressors.

Tons of great insight in this thread though.

Yes, that's literally what medic and I mean by "source."

If your tracks aren't fantastically played to begin with, it's NEVER going to sound great in a full mix.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Yes, that's literally what medic and I mean by "source."

If your tracks aren't fantastically played to begin with, it's NEVER going to sound great in a full mix.

I learned that years ago when tracking my own live drums. There were a few things I thought I could do with my daw. I will just cut this here and move that there, add notes to a fill etc.. ended up screwing up my room mic and messing with phase and then I had all these snare hits cancelled out. Drove me insane. What I should have done is just get back on the kit and do a bunch of fills. I never would have learned that if I didn't f_ck it up first.

Oh in defence of Glenn Fricker. I don't like the way he yells or his cookie cutter mixing rules BUT at least his recordings do sound good at times when he has quality musicians playing on the tracks. He is good at getting "that" sound if you are going for that. But that too goes back to what you just said... source, source, source.

 

[Dimebag11]

Fucking a right.

My go-to plugins are as follows:

Ambience (yes, the ancient one)
Scheps omni-strip
waves CLA-76
reaEQ (yes, the one that comes with reaper)
Serum
SSL- native drum strip

I almost never use ANYTHING else. Nothing fancy or even remotely expensive. Anything random I use stock fucking free reaper plug ins

There's no magic plug in that's going to magically make everything sound "good." You have to put blood, sweat, tears, and time into it.

As @VESmedic says, learning how compression actually works, and getting good performances/sources is literally 90% of it. Were not joking.

Scheps is good shit!

 

[RevDrucifer]

Yes, that's literally what medic and I mean by "source."

If your tracks aren't fantastically played to begin with, it's NEVER going to sound great in a full mix.

This can’t be stated enough because it’s not just drum tracks it applies to, it’s the whole fuckin’ thing.

I got so frustrated with other people deciding how my recordings were going to sound I quit my last band over it and started buying studio gear. It took me 5-6 years before I finished a mix, brought it to my truck and went “Holy shit, that actually sounds like I want it to.”

The biggest contributor to that was getting the right sounds going into my DAW. The unfortunate side of that is that it takes time to learn what “right” means in the context of recording and fitting with all the other instruments. What sounds great in the room without a mic on it may very well indeed sound like shit with a 57 in front going into a DAW.

Devin Townsend offered some amazing advice that applies here, even though he was discussing it in regards to writing; finish EVERYTHING. OP said he’s got a bunch of unfinished projects he abandoned because he thought they sucked; how do you know they suck if they aren’t finished? Maybe it’s finishing the project that makes it not suck, ya know?

Until you start going through the whole process and learning what works and what doesn’t work, no amount of compression/EQ tips are going to help. Every mix is different (hopefully) and while there are some tried and true things you can stick with, at the end of the day, if it sounds good, it is good.

FWIW, my best mixes utilize barely any post-EQ and minimal automation. The *only* things that are the same from mix to mix is I use parallel compression on the whole drum kit and often send the snare to it’s own aux bus so I can automate a reverb depending on the section. I try not to use any EQ on the guitars but often find I dial my tones in a little darker than I should and have to add just a pinch of high’s to get them standing out more, but I never known that until all the synths/strings are in place.