23 Days to an Album

I discovered a few things today. One - I really like the way everything is sound when I mix down to stereo. For first run mixes, they are pretty good. Two - I think the snare drum is suffering from the same issues as the kick did. SO, back to the samples track. I really haven't taken a look at the snare sample since back in May when we recorded them. So I had three mic on each snare we recorded (we ultimately ended up liking the sound of the Tama snare the best), Top, bottom and middle of the shell. I bussed them all to a group and applied corrective EQ where necessary. You can see from the screenshot that there was only a slight dip in the low end and brightened up the top with a high shelf. Now from here on out, I messed around with all different variations of the samples. I did some with and without compression, adjusted the balance of top, bottom and mid mics, and readjusted the EQs. After each variation, I found myself liking the original the best. Listening back to some other metal records, I found that the most important characteristic is the impact, followed by the air and decay of the snare. Where I have the snare balance at now isn't bad, it just sometimes gets stepped on by the kick. I think what needs to be done is not just correcting the EQ for the drum itself, but also to play nice with the kick so the complement each other and don't fight for the same space. In the mean time, take a listen to where the track is at now with the original snare sample.



The goal for tomorrow? Get some more tracks ready with these presets and gain some more ground on this kick / snare issue.