During the last week, the band were reluctant to post any of the content that I suggest they upload, so this seems to have made an impact on the amount of likes that they have garnered over the past week. I personally do not understand why they have chosen not to follow the schedule that I created for them and I believe that I could have organised it in another way so that perhaps I was an admin on their page and could post for them as the band. I have a feeling this may negatively impact the amount of hype around the EP and will likely affect sales, however, I can’t give quantifiable proof of that.
There are many things I would have done differently if I were to take on the role of promoter again, which I will discuss in my reflective summary.
My main goal when mixing the drums is to make sure the frequencies that need to be heard are the ones that are left in and heard in the mix. I don’t like to mess around with the sound of the drum kit as I like the original sound of the kit and so does the drummer of Dead Rooster.
I tend to start off by EQing the overheads of the drums to cut out some of the low-end and brighten the cymbals, I also like to add some size to the drum kit and make sure it doesn’t sound like it is in the drum room so I add a slight reverb to the overheads. I will then just go through each of the drums individually and EQ them to get rid of some of the sounds that just don’t need to be in the recording, such as the bleed from other drums. The kick drum is the drum I tend to spend the most time working on as I want it to be able to cut through the sound of the bass, so I tend to cut in the EQ and raise certain areas so that it is present in the entire mix.
In terms of how loud the drums are in the mix, they tend to be quite high as both me and the band like to be able to hear the drums, especially as in a couple of the songs there are small drum solos that need to cut through the rest of the instruments.
As inspiration for the drums I look mainly to Royal Blood as their album has a very clean drum sound and it is very present in the mix and is very punchy. I specifically looked at a song called ‘Better Strangers’ as the song starts with drums and it just fits right into the song.
The bass was probably the most annoying part of mixing as the performance was at times, subpar. However, I did my best to try and make it work within the context of the three songs I mixed. The process for mixing the bass was fairly simple for me, I just EQ’ed the frequencies that were just not needed, most of the high end was cut off with a low-pass filter so that the lead guitar would have more space to work in. I also cut out some of the lower frequencies that the kick drum was situated in so that they both came through in the mix.
The bass levels were often brought up when i gave rough mixes to the band and it it took a few mixes for me to get the level right within the mix, however after a few attempts I believe that it sits well within the song without being too obtrusive.
I just had a multitude of references for the bass guitar, I mainly focussed on bands that the band had said were inspirations for them and they included:
Arctic Monkeys – When The Sun Goes Down
Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Any song of theirs – very bass heavy.
I chose these songs as the bass is fairly prevalent in the song (especially in the RHCP songs), they don’t seem very processed which is a sound i like in the bass and it sits well in the song.
One of my major goals when mixing the guitars was to make sure that the lead and rhythm guitars were easy to distinguish between, the two guitars were somewhat the same tonally. The way that the lead guitar was tracked made it easier for me to add effects to separate parts of the song, as the lead was recorded once with the verse parts and then recorded the solos and chorus parts as they have a different tone and required different settings on the amp and pedals.
I started with the rhythm guitar as that is playing through the majority of the songs from start to finish. I ran the track through the Eleven-lite amp plug-in to give it more of a bite and a cleaner sound as I found that it helped to cut through the rest of the music and made it stand out against the lead. I avoided adding any reverb to the rhythm guitar as I had added reverb to the other guitars and didn’t want it to become cluttered and messy.
For the lead parts that weren’t solos or choruses, I left them alone mostly apart from some basic EQ to cut out some of the low-end and also add more clarity and brightness to the guitar sound. For the solos, I ran it through the same amp plug-in as I did with the rhythm guitar but instead made the high-end frequencies stand out more and cut out some of the low-end to give it clarity. I added some reverb to both of the lead tracks as I believe it added some presence to the mix and also cut out some of the harsher sounding parts.
I aimed to make the guitars sound like classic rock guitars, some of which were included in the inspirations playlist i mentioned near the start of the blog posts. I used these as inspiration as they have guitars that vary in frequency ranges, the leads tend to be rather high and the rhythm, mid to low range. They included songs such as:
The Darkness – I Believe In A Thing Called Love
Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child Of Mine
The more traditional way of selling your music is in a physical form such as CD’s or even vinyl, which is currently making a resurgence in the market. There are a lot of benefits to distributing your music this way, however, there are a lot of drawbacks as well.
Pros of Physical Distribution:
Having a physical product that you can give to people tends to mean more to people than just giving them a download code as it is something they can keep and store.
You take all the profit from the sale of the CDs, depending on how you sell them (at a gig).
People tend to pay more for physical media as it is a physical product.
It can be a more personal experience as you tend to sell them at concerts and it can create a connection meaning they may buy your music later down the line.
CD’s and Vinyl tend to be higher fidelity as online stores only tend to supply the user with MP3 downloads of the tracks.
Cons of Physical Distribution:
It can cost a lot to create physical media as you have to buy CD’s and if you want to print sleeves and cases, it can cost even more. It also takes a long time to burn disks and organise everything.
If you don’t sell the CD’s you will not be making a profit and can often lose money by making them.
You can’t sell to a lot of people as it is based on where you are able to sell them and sending things across the world will make it more expensive for the fan.
If you are a signed artist your production company and distributor will take a cut of the profits.
I believe that with Dead Rooster we will be creating a small batch of CD’s for them to sell at their gigs over the coming months and this will allow them to get their name out there. I personally believe that online distribution and streaming is the best way to go in terms of getting them noticed but in terms of making money, CD’s would be the best direction.
