In the studio

drummingman

Gold Member
So Ive been in the studio for the last 2 days with my metal band working on our new ep. We are a 3 member band, bass, guitar/singer, and myself. The bass player actually considers himself a guitar player who plays bass.

So the last few days I've been in the struggle of not getting buried in the mix. Since the other guys both consider themselves guitar players they want the guitar tracks to be on 10, as well as the vocals, and the drums to be on 4. I keep telling them that if you do that the music is going to suffer and lack power. But they think that I'm just saying that because I'm the drummer.

The Tom's and kick were both mixed super low on the first drafts. They loved it, I did not. So after going back and forth we took the tom's and kick up, as well as the guitar and vocals again. Some of the toms on some of the songs are a bit loud. And I'm cool with bringing them down a bit. But the bass player wants to slash the volume of all the drums and cymbals in half (the guitar/singer will probably feel the same. I have not talked to him about it yet).

We have rough mixes of the songs as is that we have to decide which mix of each we like. We are able to do some remixing if we want, but not full remixes. The bass player currently hates them all. He is used to listening to nothing but extreme metal so any mix that is not every drum triggered sounding like a type writer he hates. But that's not my sound or style of playing.

This is an original metal band that I put together from scratch. Even though I formed this band I don't try to use that to say "I'm the leader" or anything like that. But being that it is a band where we are all equal I also am not cool with allowing myself to get buried in the mix after all the time and effort I've put into this band.

I know that mixing is always tough. I've been in the situation before where the guitar player and singer always want to be louder then everyone else. That seems to be a normal thing for all those guys. And I honestly hate how they try to make the drummer and bass player feel like jerks because we want to be heard as well as them. Since both my guys consider themselves guitar players I don't have a guy that considers himself a bass player to back me up that it's not good to bury the drums!

So who knows what's going to happen when we meet up on Tuesday night to have to decide on which one of the mixes of each song we are going to keep. I know the bass player already hates the mixes, and I won't be surprised at all if the guitar player/singer feels the same. But my goal is to somehow try to make them happy without the drum tracks disappearing in the mix.

I know I'm not being unreasonable or a jerk by wanting to be heard clearly like they are. But I have a feeling they are gonna try to make me feel like one (at least to some degree). But we shall see.
 
The best way might be to find some recordings in your style that have a great mix, then compare your sound with that. Presuming you're right, the other players will hear the difference and realise what's missing.

The difficult thing will be getting them to listen to the entire mix and not just focusing on their own instrument, but with some guidance you should be able to point out the differences in the overall mix.
 
I've already tried that. They keep putting on the same kinds of mixes from only extreme metal bands. And I also like that stuff as well. But we are more of a death meets groove metal type band. And they know that I like drums to sound like actual drums with dynamics. The bass player wants a triggered no dynamics drum sound. Just all one level all the time. With everything much lower then the guitar.

I had to do sample replacement on the tom's because of the floor Tom mic being messed up when we recorded and not catching it till after all the tracks were finished. But I made sure that the samples matched my actual drumming dynamics and timing to try to make it as organic as possible. The kick and snare and cymbals are just eqing, gating, stuff like that. But the bass player hates the fact that the kick has dynamics and all the hits are not the same exact volume all the time. I've told him that is what a real drum sounds like when a real person plays it and not a machine. But 100 percent of what he likes drum wise is triggered or programed with no dynamics
 
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That's a tough one. Have you thought of showing them remastered stuff, and comparing them to the original mixes? Like taking the old Death CDs and comparing them to the remastered versions? I don't know if those would be helpful, but that's just off the top of my head. They probably don't have sound replacement, but the kicks may have been triggered depending on which cd you use.

I guess I can count myself as lucky that when my bands recorded, we all looked at the whole picture and made sure that we could hear everything that needed to be heard was at an appropriate level. My band is currently mixing a full length, so I can feel your pain.
 
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That's a tough one. Have you thought of showing them remastered stuff, and comparing them to the original mixes? Like taking the old Death CDs and comparing them to the remastered versions? I don't know if those would be helpful, but that's just off the top of my head. They probably don't have sound replacement, but the kicks may have been triggered depending on which cd you use.

I guess I can count myself as lucky that when my bands recorded, we all looked at the whole picture and made sure that we could hear everything that needed to be heard was at an appropriate level. My band is currently mixing a full length, so I can feel your pain.

The guy doing the mixing has already told them that if you can hear everything and nothing is getting buried by the drums they are not too loud. But they did not really pay any attention to what he said. I've told them many times that I just want a balanced powerful sound for all of us. But I'm sure they think that I'm only concerned about the drums, even though I've said a few times that the guitar needed to come up. I say that because it's been the drums that were buried a bunch and I've had to ask for them to come up every song (the Tom's and kick. The snare and cymbles sounded fine almost every track).
 
With three instruments, how in the heck do you have a mix that buries any of the other two without sounding like some teenage festival of auditory onanism?

Police...Cream...Hendrix...Nirvana...Blink-182...heaps of sonic space, all with famous drummers alongside other players, room for everybody
 
The bass player actually considers himself a guitar player who plays bass.
Red flag #1 right there.

I don't know what to offer as advice, because speaking candidly, their approach & focus is a long way from professional in this regard. It's cool & right for a player to invest in the sound of their instrument, but levels are really someone else's job. You're creating music, not orchestrating a pissing contest.

I feel for you - it's a tough one if other band members don't "get" it.
 
Red flag #1 right there.

I don't know what to offer as advice, because speaking candidly, their approach & focus is a long way from professional in this regard. It's cool & right for a player to invest in the sound of their instrument, but levels are really someone else's job. You're creating music, not orchestrating a pissing contest.

I feel for you - it's a tough one if other band members don't "get" it.


The guy doing the mixing would do a rough draft and burn it on a CD so we could do a car test as well as hearing it in the studio to see what we thought about the mix. Every time I said the kick and Tom's need to come up I would get looks like I was crazy from my band even though they were very low in the mix. Me and the guitar player/singer actually had a bit of a tiff yesterday because he kept wanting me to come down more and more on my kick. He suggested changing my bass drum sound to a sound that I don't like, tuning wise, so there would be no low end and just click. I said no because I don't like that sound for my kick.

I think a lot of this comes from the fact that the vast majority of string players in metal now days think of triggered sounds with no bottom end and no dynamics when they think of drums. So when they hear drums with either or both it sounds "wrong" to them. My bass player said it sounds like a 6 year old did the mixing because the bass drum has dynamics! I was like "what!?!?'. I also think drummers fighting guitar players and singers to not get buried in the mix has been a thing since recording started lol.
 
There's a really obvious way to cure this. Pay someone who knows what they're doing and doesn't give a hoot about stepping on anybody's ego. If the bassist has a problem give him a colouring in book and tell him to sit in the corner. If you're paying at the moment, the other two guys are costing you a fortune!

Problem with sampled drums is everyone in metal is using them and it defeats the idea of even having a drummer.

Your bassist sounds like he doesn't know the difference between his arse and his elbow. (which would explain why he's a failed guitarist aka metal bassist because you never hear them) The drums and bass should be tight and locked in to build a solid foundation for everything else to work around. Works in every genre EVER!

Sounds like you're battling with egos here. Without even hearing the songs if everything is turned up to 11 it's gonna sound shit. Problem with metal is you're all fighting for the same space sonically and everything gets lost.
 
Do you like the songs you’re playing? Do you enjoy being in this band? Are they making you money? This may be a “A HA” moment, this may not be the band for you.
 
Perhaps you can mix the bass and guitar first without drums, and when those guys are happy with the end result, lay them over the drum track and mix then.

Sounds to me like they want to feel important. Remove yourself from the situation and let them fight amongst themselves. When they are satisfied, tell them to get lost while you get yourself dialed in.

I know this is backwards, but sounds to me like they are too flakey for everyone to get on the same page.
 
With three instruments, how in the heck do you have a mix that buries any of the other two without sounding like some teenage festival of auditory onanism?

Right? 3 piece is about as easy as it gets.

How? Ego of course.

Perhaps everybody can take a copy and mix it down the way they want. Don't compare, that would be a pissing match. Everybody gets their own mix to distribute.

Sounds fair to me.
 
Perhaps everybody can take a copy and mix it down the way they want. Don't compare, that would be a pissing match. Everybody gets their own mix to distribute.

Sounds like an interesting marketing campaign. Put up promo snippets of all three mixes back to back, then let the buyers choose. It will be like a poll. Then whoever gets the lowest sales after a month will STFU (if there ever is) in the next mixing session. Hahahahahaha.
 
Both the bass player and guitar player want the drums to be low in our mix. But I'm fighting to make sure they are balanced. I even told them today that I'm willing to back the Tom's down a bit if they want because they are now pretty up front. The bass player also wants the same for the kick but that one I'm gonna fight for because it sounds really good as is.

I just spoke with the drummer from my bass players other band (he does play guitar in that band). The other drummer told me that my bass player is always saying things like "the drums are just placeholders" and "the drums don't really matter that much" and "metal is guitar driven" implying that it's the most important instrument and that "the drums are too loud" in that band as well. He has said things like that to me as well about drums and albums that we both like. I love the dude but I honestly don't think he understands the role of the different instruments in a metal band. He has been playing guitar for like 25 years. I don't say this to put him down in any way. I just think that he has always had tunnel vision on nothing but the guitar because that's all he pays attention to when he listens to music (he's told me that as well). So in his mind nothing else in the music really matters that much.

He's a great guy and will give you the shirt off his back. But when it comes to some basic music things his concepts are upside-down.
 
Then next time he shares riff ideas only play 4/4 straight time under it. See how he feels about drums just being place holders then.
 
Not the biggest fan of extreme metal, but to me the best bands in that genre have the best drummers. It no accident that we know the names of Chris Adler, Derrick Roddy, Gene Hoglan, George Kollias, Thomas Hakke, etc. These guys arnt just placeholders. Its the really generic bands that have guys just running in place on their pedals.

The problem really seems to be that your other members are OK with sounding like other bands. Instead of trying to create new sounds and new music, they want to be safe and use old formulas that have already been done. Creating great art means taking chances. I would say that you guys find an engineer whose mixes you all like, and agree to just go with whatever he does. None of you appear to be professional recording engineers, so find a pro and let him do his job.
 
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