Strange Mixing Issues

Sup Yea Forums,

so I'm mixing the shitty demo we recorded with my shitty band and I've encountered a strange phenomenon. But first, the setup:

I've recorded the drums with 8 separate microphones (bassdrum, snare, tom 1, tom 2, hihat, ride, overhead left, overhead right). After that, we've recorded two tracks for guitar (two separate microphones) and two bass tracks (microphone and line out of the amp).
I use FL Studio für recording and mixing, since I'm used to and comfortable with the UI. I've been using FL Studio since version 7.0 (it was called Fruity Loops back then) and I think it's come a long way since then. Although so far I've only used it for electronic music projects and recording drum computers, synthesizers and so on, so recording and mixing live 'rock' instruments is a new experience for me.

So now I'm trying to mix everything together. So far, I've adjusted the individual track volumes and added some equalizers to the drum channels to give them a bit more punch.

The strange part is: I've had a very disruptive sound experience, some songs felt like they had some strong sort of tremolo effect going on, especially on faster parts. After a while I found out, that the bassdrum is fading out my guitar recordings. When I listen to only the bassdrum and guitar tracks, it's like there's a tiny fadeout on the guitar track every time the there is a bassdrum kick.
I've tried tinkering with the bassdrum equalizer but so far, the only way I could prevent this phenomenon was to mute the bassdrum track. Which, of course isn't a viable option.

Anybody got an idea what this could be or better yet a suggestion how to resolve this issue? I'm thinking about muting the bassdrum and adding a synthetic one instead, but that would only be my last resort option, since I think it wouldn't blend very well with the sound of the recordings.

Pic related, it's our practice room with the recording setup.

Thanks anons and take care.

Attached: dat mix.jpg (1496x842, 141K)

sounds like you've got compression on the guitar, sidechained to the drum level.

Well I haven't added anything to the guitar tracks yet. No compression, equalizer, noise gate and so on. It's just the raw recordings right now.

How deep is your guitar? Is it drop tuned? Bass heavy tone?
Is this embedded in the guitar recording? I mean - Do you hear this fade-out when the guitar is solo'd?
Does it occur when the guitar is panned away from the kick?

Tuning of guitar and bass are Drop B and C# Standard.

I can't hear the fade out when I solo the guitar ot mute the bassdrum, so it's not embedded in the recording (thank god). But we were recording individual anyways.

Panning is something I havent tried yet, but I could try it tonight.

it sounds like a phase issue. don't listen to these nerds who don't know shit.

in simple terms your bass drum signal is pushing while your guitar signal is pulling.

invert the phase of one of the signals and see if you encounter this same issue

i would guess .... a phase issue? the amplitudes in a certain frequency are oposite

Thanks man, I will try this tonight!

Your guitar being that deep means it is fighting the kick drum to occupy the same frequency space, and the kick is winning.
I think if you pan the guitars away from the center where the kick is then they will be occupying a different place in the Stereo field and will therefore not need to compete for space.
Instruments can occupy the same physical space if they are occupying different frequency ranges, if they occypy the same frequency range then they should be separated by physical space so they don't get muddy trying to fight for dominance

Aren't phase issues only a problem when it's the same signal? Like 2 mics recording the same thing at 2 distances?

yeah.... by mixing u are trying to make "many signals-one"

Thanks user, I'll try this as well.

Everything gets sent to the master bus, phasing issues can occur with any signal that has amplitude in opposite polarities to another

This is simply misinformation.

In standard tuning an electric guitar can be expected to have a fundamental frequency as low as 82hz, detuning to drop B can lower this to 62hz.

A kick drum is expected to be most prominent in the 20hz - 100hz band.

There is overlap in both situations

Stereo imaging is a solution to this problem, but they double tracked the guitar so you can already expect them to be in different areas in the stereo image, if not hard panned to the sides.

OP didn't talk about "muddiness," but a volume problem. If it was a misdiagnosis of the problem I can understand that, but if the volume of the individual tracks is getting fucked up, its a phase issue. If it's muddiness, my first recommendation would be to mix with less gain, and from there to then go into stereo imaging techniques to fix things.

OP here. Like I said I haven't touched the stereo panning yet, but I was planning on spliiting guitar and bass to left and right anyways. So maybe this will already resolve my issue.

that's a phase cancellation issue. check your phasings. take a close zoom to your stems to the point you can see the samples and try to align the tracks that are conflicting. sometimes it can make a hollow instrument sound instead of the tremolo effect.

dont try to fix your shit with panning if the problem is still there when you test it in mono. always check your mixes in mono.

also let me hear your band recording and maybe let me try to mix them [email protected]

sound radix auto align if all else fails

the guitar gets picked up by the kick mic and vice versa

Are you peaking your master level. The kind of ducking you're talking about happens when you overload any audio buss, e.g. if you have a constant tone going into a buss nearly hitting the maximum level, and then you run a loud kick (or anything with a ton of energy - lower frequencies have more energy, so usually something low, like a kick would do it more easily) into that channel also at a high level, the buss will overload and you'll get the kind of ducking you're talking about. If it's ducking but not distorting audibly, there's probably some kind of built in limiter or compressor on the master output of whatever software you're using. Turn everything down (probably a lot, like 12 db or something) before it goes to the master (or whatever track you're summing on) and it should stop.

well some daws dont have a built in master limiter. that wouldnt happen in reaper for example.

Yes I'll check that in a few hours when I get home, thanks!

I'll check them out in mono after I tried the provided solutions!

That can happen, but not in my case, since we recorded individually, not all at once.

Okay the term ducking is new to me. It definitively isn't distorted so ducking may be the case.
So far I wasn't hitting peak levels while recording or during playback - no red indicators anywhere. But I'll check that tonight as well.