Recording a death metal band

[metanoiastudios]

Hey guys,

I will be recording a death metal band (10-11 songs) very soon. While I have an idea of how I want everything to sound, I wanted to know if any of you have had experience in this genre, and what are some of your favorite tips/approaches.

Here's what I'm gonna use for this session:

Kel Audio HM-1 mics x 2
M-Audio Pulsar overhead mics x 2
Shure SM57 + GT Convertible Mic
AT-4040
Groove Tubes Gt57
Cascade Fat Head II
ELECTROVOICE N/D 408 x 2
Blue Kickball (will probably sound-replace if used for kick drum)

Will use a Firestudio Project Interface, Summit Audio preamp, and RNC compressor.

Any suggestions, tips, tricks, whatever, would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

[Mane1234]

I always try to get as much tracking done with everyone at the same time since it helps keep everyone in the groove especially if there's a lot of tempo change ups. It seems to help keep the energy at nice level too. Other than that I do as much pre-production as possible to make sure everyone knows the songs and their parts and all. Try and keep the beer and weed intake to reasonable levels. Good luck and let us hear it.

[rwc]

Get as much boom in the kick as you can without it being sloppy, muddy, or back/inaudible in the mix.

Too much death metal with clicks for a kick. It's a "safe" choice since it'll be heard in the mix, but I'm not a fan of it. You can have both. It can still sound somewhat like a kick drum. :]

[GooberNumber9]

I'd say get BOTH boom and click in the kick. Probably the cause of too much click is that the band is going to demand click (or at least the drummer) and so I think many people mic for click only and neglect the boom. If you can record a trigger track for the click as well as some meaty-sounding mic an inch or more away from the resonator head, you should be good to go for anything at mix time. If you can't get a trigger track try to get a mic way in the kick next to the beater head and another mic outside an inch or more away. That should get you the best of both worlds. I usually mix the drums with the clicky kick track in first, then I bring up the boom until it sounds a little like thunder. Neglect the click part and I predict the drummer will be annnoyed that everyone can't hear how amazingly fast he/she is playing.

Spend a lot of time getting the overheads to sound as good as possible. Try to get a usable drum sound with just two kick tracks and a stereo pair of overheads. If the overheads are that good, it will really help a lot in the end.

+1 on making sure everyone is extremely well rehearsed.

Make sure the room where the amps are is big enough, or the amps are quiet enough, that there's no low-end buildup or standing waves. I might go with a brighter condensor on the guitars rather than a 57 to help them be crisp and not get muddy. As with everything, the sounds coming out the amps will make a big difference in terms of how well everything fits together. I find death metal to be the tightest squeeze I've had to deal with in terms of mixing it all together. I like the bass DI track best to keep it from being boomy.

Be prepared to get some spit on stuff during vocal recordings. Get a dedicated pop filter or ball end for whatever mic. I've let one guy scream down at a KSM 44 with good results, so really whatever works, I'd say.

My overall experience with death metal is that I have no idea how it's supposed to sound, so I put my trust in my gut and the band's feedback. If you're a fan, then at least you'll have a leg up on me in terms of getting the best sounds.

Todd Wilcox

[metanoiastudios]

Hey guys. Thanks for the comments! yeah, there is an insane amount of time-sig changes, so I'm sure we'll spend a day or two setting up click tracks first.

I am definitely going for both the boom and the click. I do want the kick drum to actually sound like one. GooberNumber9, I will take your advice on the overheads and kick method.

Would you guys recomment I use ORTF or an X-Y config. on the overheads? I'd like to get a wide (not exaggerated, but I'd like to have a rather big sound) stereo image. Would you also recomment I use a spaced pair with both overheads looking down on the kit? I've seen this setup before but I cannot say I've had experience with it. I know that I want the cymbals and crashes to be relatively dark, in other words, more emphasis to the body of the kit.

As far as the amps go, I have a Tech 21 amp that they really like w/ an XLR out running through a speaker emulator. Haven't tried it yet, but I was thinking I can do that AND mic the amp to get a bigger tone. What do you guys think?

[GooberNumber9]

Hey guys. Thanks for the comments! yeah, there is an insane amount of time-sig changes, so I'm sure we'll spend a day or two setting up click tracks first.

I'm still working on my most recent death metal project. They had tons of tempo and time signature changes, and they wanted to record the guitars before the drums (!!)

So we spent A DAY on EACH song doing click tracks. When the guitarists came in to lay down their tracks to the click, they just played their songs straight through exactly in time with the click. Totally blew me away. I don't think we did more than four takes of guitar for any part. We did some comping, yeah, but it wasn't that bad. These guys totally amaze me.

I went spaced pair on the overheads, but I'm not sure if that was really the best way to go because I feel like the middle areas of the kit are a bit lacking. Their drummer has like 15 cymbals including three hats and two rides, so I kinda went spaced pair just so I could get it all in. I was just happy that the drummer was very tight and nailed his stuff just like the guitar players.

Overall I have been going for the cleanest sound with the most bandwidth possible so I have plenty of room to squeeze everything in. That makes sense in my head at least. I wrote that becuase I think you should consider carefully about making the cymbals deliberately dark. I'm not such a good mixer, so I like to have as many options as I can at mix time because if I cripple myself during recording I don't think I can recover. That means I want a lot of high-end and low end in everything, especially the drums, so I can EQ stuff in the middle to make room for instruments that have no high or low end like vocals and guitars.

That's just me, though.

Todd Wilcox

[GooberNumber9]

As far as the amps go, I have a Tech 21 amp that they really like w/ an XLR out running through a speaker emulator. Haven't tried it yet, but I was thinking I can do that AND mic the amp to get a bigger tone. What do you guys think?

I think that sounds awesome, and don't be afraid to throw out the "real" track and just use the Tech 21 when it comes down to mixing. The dirty little secret about the band I'm working with is that all of the guitars are recorded straight out of a Vox Tonelab SE set on their rectifier-style patch. I got DI tracks of all the guitars in case we want to re-amp, but so far it hasn't come to that and the guys are happy with the sound of the rough mixes.

Depending on how many different guitar parts are being played at once, you might find the biggest tone is the one with the least number of tracks involved. If there's only one guitar part playing, I might put both the Tech 21 and the mic track in the mix, but if there are three or more performances at the same time, I would only give a single track to each performance. Too many guitar tracks often sounds smaller to me. Less is more.

Todd Wilcox

[metanoiastudios]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I will more than likely only blend in the guitar signals during the bigger parts, and keep only 1 track for each guitar for the less-aggressive passages, that way it'll create real dynamics for the guitars. If it doesn't work i can always use only the "real" signal.

As far as the spaced pair, it's not a massive metal kit: snare, kick, 5 cymbals i think, 2 toms, so it may work. I can try it. Are there any guidelines I need to follow to use this method, other than keep the overheads equidistant from the snare? I will still close-mic the snare and toms in case I end up losing some of the mid-range tone...that way I can always bring it back. ORTF could work too. X-Y is ok but I never get the wide-stereo sound I want with it.

Any other tips guys??

[stuntbutt]

"there is an insane amount of time-sig changes, so I'm sure we'll spend a day or two setting up click tracks first"

Red flag. The drummer should have already been practicing to the click for weeks if not months.

[Ryan Silva]

"there is an insane amount of time-sig changes, so I'm sure we'll spend a day or two setting up click tracks first"

Red flag. The drummer should have already been practicing to the click for weeks if not months.

Yep, drummers can make or break these kind of recordings (or any other) unless you plan to do complete drum griding I would ride his ass like a lawnmower, until he stays on the click.

[greatmagnet]

One simple thing I will say is that I see you have a GT convertible in your arsenal, and I did some experiments with using diffferent mics on a metal guitar sound recently (using a solid-state Randall GT-100 with boost on the input a-la Dimebag), and the GT Convertible was the hands-down winner for capturing the crunch. Fast on the transients, aggressive midrange, lots of detail. Right up on the grill. Had a ribbon further back for the low end.

Also a lot of times when you see studio pics of thrash drummers mic-ing their kits, you'll see that they forego worries about how a pair of overheads will capture their huge fucking arsenal of cymbals...they simply close-mic every single damn cymbal in the kit with a SDC and call it good. That requires having a shitload of good condensers, though...

Metal is a total close-micing-athon compared to most styles of rock. There's just so damn much going on it's just a good way to keep the mix from crowding up. Hence also the sound replacing of kick and snare and the bass DI'ing that is so prevalent in that genre.

[metanoiastudios]

I did some experiments with using different mics on a metal guitar sound recently (using a solid-state Randall GT-100 with boost on the input a-la Dimebag), and the GT Convertible was the hands-down winner for capturing the crunch. Fast on the transients, aggressive midrange, lots of detail. Right up on the grill. Had a ribbon further back for the low end.

Wow, the GT Convertible? sweet. I haven't used it much, really. Tried it once on a rock session, and in comparison to the 57 it had more body, but I felt like it had an over-emphasis on the midrange, but this is a different genre and might be more suitable this time.

That's a good idea about the ribbon too. The amp (or one of them) I'm planning on using has an open back, so I may use a ribbon to capture a smooth, tight bottom end and mix with the crunch of the GT.

[ashcat_lt]

If it doesn't work i can always use only the "real" signal.

Use the signal that sounds best. Nobody (outside this and a few other forums) really cares if it's a mic'd cab or an amp sim.

Metal is a total close-micing-athon

At this point I wonder why do you not just go trigger pads and a good drum synth. The massively multi-sampled drum packages out there (BFD, EZDrummer, Addictive Drums, et al.) will sound better, faster, than fucking around with an SDC on each cymbal. Somebody's already done the hard part of buying and positioning a great mic, running it through a high quality (and expensive) pre, and recording it. Again, only a small number of people* in the world will know, let alone care, that you used "fake drums".

Edit - fixed a hanging tag.

* aside from the drummer himself, who doesn't count.

[greatmagnet]

Wow, the GT Convertible? sweet. I haven't used it much, really. Tried it once on a rock session, and in comparison to the 57 it had more body, but I felt like it had an over-emphasis on the midrange, but this is a different genre and might be more suitable this time.

Yeah it's funny I actually WON that mic at the last TapeOp conference and didn't really expect much return on it but it does have some nice qualities for electric guitars in particular. Acoustic guitars...not so much. Too honky.

Like you said, the mids are pretty randy so it's maybe not your only mic on a 4 x 12 but it's good for the "attack" in a crunch situation.

And like others have already said keep a DI take for everything and then you can squirrel around with emulators later which can sound really tight for that kinda music as well...and maybe your final guitar sound is a BLEND of "real" and "fake" amp tone.

Ditto that as others have also said for your drum sounds. You can blend "real" vs. "triggered" depending on how much or little body you end up needing in the final mix. I've become a HUGE Drumagog devotee recently for that stuff. You can use your own samples (or theirs), use 'em as triggers and then blend the samples into the "live" mic signal on-the-fly right from the plugin. So, you can start a sesh by asking the drummer to give you a single hit from kick, snare, etc. , slice that stuff up and use those as your trigger samples. Which is cool because maybe you don't want so much bleed from the rest of your kit in that kick and/or snare mic, but you STILL want it to have the sound of having come from the same studio, the same session as everything else.

[Brett Siler]

A trick I like to do for metal kick drums is have a mic inside the kick and outside. I like to get the inside mic pretty close to the head pointed right at where the beater is hitting it. Then later in mixing do some extreme HP filtering and so you pretty much only have attack. I'll you the outside mic for the meat. Find the spot where the kick sounds the thickest and put the mic there. I probably won't do a lot of EQing to this one just a little here and there if it needs it. Then blend to two together to taste. The results have plenty of "click and boom".

The overheads ORTF would probably give you results you are looking for before XY would. Most of the time I just use a stereo mic bar and have the two mics pointing straight down and when panned it usually sounds wide enough to me. Overheads might end up getting hi-passed, especially if there is lots of fast playing.