metal guitar sounds

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hollowidolrec
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metal guitar sounds

Post by hollowidolrec » Mon Apr 27, 2015 1:33 pm

looking for that "up in your face" guitar sound for metal recordings. using ua 2108 pre and soundcraft ghost plus pro vla and rnc compressors. is all of this done during mastering? or can I get pretty close during tracking/mix? thank for the help

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joninc
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Post by joninc » Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:04 pm

what's your guitar/amp/mic?

lot of rock dudes are into multi miking - condenser(top end definitiion and maybe
low sub depending on mic) with dynamic (meat of tone) and maybe a ribbon
if the amp isn't insanely loud.
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losthighway
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Post by losthighway » Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:56 pm

Yeah, choice of guitar/amp/settings and or pedal will get things in the ballpark more than the mic choice.

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JWL
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Post by JWL » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:45 pm

Key is to get the sound right in the room, imho. Right guitar, right strings, right pick, right player, into the right amp. Set the tone controls and gain where they should be (you might need less gain than you think), with an amp volume just loud enough to get some cabinet resonance.

Then, miking it up will be simpler. Hard to go wrong with a 57 6-12" away, slightly angled.... I've had much better luck with that than with the mic right up on the grille.

Multi-miking can be good too..... a dynamic + a ribbon can be great.

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Post by Recycled_Brains » Tue Apr 28, 2015 9:15 am

JWL wrote:Key is to get the sound right in the room, imho. Right guitar, right strings, right pick, right player, into the right amp. Set the tone controls and gain where they should be (you might need less gain than you think), with an amp volume just loud enough to get some cabinet resonance.

Then, miking it up will be simpler. Hard to go wrong with a 57 6-12" away, slightly angled.... I've had much better luck with that than with the mic right up on the grille.

Multi-miking can be good too..... a dynamic + a ribbon can be great.
Less gain goes a long way here for sure. I always think that overly distorted, messy sounds sound less up front. You lose note definition and punch. I would say all this advice is good. The only caveat being that maybe you'd want to mic it right up close to the grill cloth for a closer sound. I generally prefer micing a few inches back, but that generally works better in a deader space, IMO.
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Recycled_Brains
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Post by Recycled_Brains » Tue Apr 28, 2015 10:16 am

this is interesting, and seems relevant... I generally mic straight on for heavy stuff. You can really hear the more off axis approaches affecting the perceived distance of the sound.

https://reverb.com/blog/10-ways-to-mic- ... mp?_aid=fb
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vvv
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Post by vvv » Tue Apr 28, 2015 11:09 am

Cool vid, and good to see Mr. Deck, lo, these many years later (did a demo with him at Idful in the early 90's.)
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I'm Painting Again
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Post by I'm Painting Again » Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:57 pm

put brand new strings on if you are not doing that already..

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Post by The Scum » Tue Apr 28, 2015 11:45 pm

Where's the endless slipperman tale of metal guitar when we need it?

Over here.

Print it and put it under your pillow. The screenplay is 100+ pages.
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I'm Painting Again
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Post by I'm Painting Again » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:38 am

awesome

knobtwirler
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Post by knobtwirler » Mon Jun 01, 2015 8:18 pm

Metal guitar sounds are already compressed down to a saturated range for the tone of the amp and guitar. I've heard the best and classic distorted guitar tones with no more than an SM57, a mic pre, and some minimal eq. To answer your question, it doesn't need mastering to be achieved.

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Recycled_Brains
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Post by Recycled_Brains » Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:22 pm

I've been mixing a hardcore record for the past 3 days, and therefore messing around with some really heavy sounding guitars. We recorded through the 1st generation 5150s (marshall cab and mesa cab)...

One thing I've been messing around with to get more focus out of the sounds, is to use the Digi 7-band EQ plug to find the ringing frequencies in the high mids and highs... so for example... taking the high-mid band with the Q at its highest, and sweeping it until I find a terrible peaky, offensive ringing sound, then cutting that a few db... do the same with the low mid band and then using the high shelving band to cut just a db or 2 at like 5-6khz and up to tame some of that white-noise hissy kinda shit that's always up top on high gain guitar sounds. What started as me fucking around for my own edification actually resulted in what seems like a much more focused and punchy/up front sound. Could maybe be because it seems to allow me to turn the guitars up more, without having too much nasty fizz and high end in the overall mix... and I also think it's allowing for more cymbal definition, which is cool.

I also usually use my API 4-band EQ plug to do a cut with the shelving filter at like 50hz... taking 6 db or so off that super deep bottom that is actually pretty useless with high gain guitars anyway seems to bring more overall focus as well. That's not all I'm doing, but it seems like some effective problem solving kind of eq'ing.

I thought it was interesting at the very least. Obviously, I mention those EQs cause that's all I have, but I'm sure anything similar will produce the same effect.
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Post by RoyMatthews » Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:49 pm

The Scum wrote:Where's the endless slipperman tale of metal guitar when we need it?

Over here.

Print it and put it under your pillow. The screenplay is 100+ pages.
I instantly thought about Slipperman once I read the thread title.
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Post by GooberNumber9 » Sun Jun 07, 2015 9:26 am

I like taking a DI right off the guitar alongside the distorted sound so if there's too much dirt and no articulation, I can compress and EQ the DI track and bring it up behind the main track to "bring back the notes". And definitely less distortion is more. As a guitarist I'm constantly re-learning that when I'm trying to get a really heavy sound, I always have to turn the gain down at some point before i nail it.

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Post by vvv » Sun Jun 07, 2015 9:57 am

A similar trick is to mic the guitar acoustically and bring that up from under to highlight articulation.

(Thanx to Dale Meiners who taught me that back in the 90's.)
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