Arch Enemy
- Anthems of Rebellion - vocals - Amek 9098 and Neuman 149 , also Alan Smart compressor.
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Arch Enemy - Doomsday Machine - Drum Reverb - DVerb in Pro Tools, same verb on snare and toms.
Toms: Natural, no triggers.
Finished kick on the album was (Andy Sneap's) dw24 triggered with drumagog, about 3 to 4 good samples . The two drum triggers per kick were so daniel could monitor with the brain whilst playing and recording the trigger also.
Guitar - Chris was using the JSX peavey with the same cabs
Bass- an ESP, + he has his usual retro pedal selection
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Arch Enemy - Wages of Sin - guitar is (mainly) Engl savage 120 + 2 tracks of 5150.
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Carcass
- Exhume to Consume -
" My first encounter with the band! -I loved it right away!
on 'Exhume', the whole thing was recorded and mixed the same day. It was for a compliation album if I recall correctly, Earache records. It was our first encounter, and there was no producer, just the three band members and me. They stayed quietly and nervously huddled in the back corner of the room (this was in the old "Amazon" studios building in Kirkby) and occasionally huddled together and usually a shy 'delegate' was prodded forward to ask for changes to the mix. I generally tried to relax them and joke about things, but they were generally very nervous and didn;t ask for much.
At one point, the band asked if it was possible to lower the pitch of the 'vocals'. I put it through a harmonizer, and set it to about a fifth down.
-"How's that?"
"not bad… can it go any lower?"
"yeah, it can go down a full octave, but it'd be pretty growly… here…" (and I punched in 0.500 for the pitch ratio… this was on an AMS DMX15-80S). "-How's that?"
"Ah. Better."
[pause]
"er…. can it go any lower?"
"Hmmmm… well one octave is as far as the AMS units go down… further than that and it gets a bit unintelligible…. I can patch it back through the second channel and re-transpose it down even further, I suppose…" (and this I did…) -"How's that"
"Ah…. MUCH better!!"
And with that they returned to the huddle, apparently satisfied.
Now this had had a pretty ruinous effect on the intelligibility of the vocals, which already sounded like they had been sung by the Cookie Monster, so I was now faced with something sounding like glitchy subsonic rumble to get over the "wall of doom" guitar sounds! -I set about hunting with an Equaliser to see if there was anything that might return it to making some kind of sense… after a while, the frowns returned, a huddle was resumed, and finally another delegate was assigned the task of making a request of me… (I found this all a little worrying, but in hindsight, very amusing!)
"Ummmmm….. we were just wondering about the vocal sound…. we were wondering about being able to make out the words…?"
"Yeah, … wow. -Er… see with this harmoniser it's making it really difficult to make out the words, so I've been trying to bring out the diction or something… I think this EQ is helping a bit, but there's only so much that I can really do without bringing the pitch back up a bit… if you guys wouldn't mind…."
"Oh… you've been trying to make it more audible?"
"yeah…. I mean… of course…."
"Ah.. -can you take the EQ out and see what it sounds like?"
"sure [click]…"
[together]"Ahhh… MUCH better!!!"
"Howzabout if I go the other way with it?"
"Ah… Perfect!!!"
-I shrugged, and just did what they wanted after that…"
Source -Keith, SSLtech, http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2
Carcass - Heartwork - guitar - 5150 mixed with a (little bit of) 12 wt marshall practice amp.
" Can you share a little info about this recording ? Maybe which mics you used ? Amps ? I would appreciate everything you still know about this session.
Okay… the album was recorded at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool. Take a look at the link. At the time I was chief engineer there, after Peter Coghlan and I had teched the place from the ground up. The 4-studio 'Amazon Studios" complex had relocated there to the city centre after starting out in Kirkby, north of the city. http://www.parrstreet.co.uk/
The recording was started in studio 2, on the Neve VR. There are some layout pics on the Parr Street site, studio 2 has excellent visibility from teh control room into the main area (25-feet ceiling height, 2000 square feet inthe main room, plus various acouostic iso rooms) and each of the iso rooms (Stone, Wood and Dead) are 'fanned out' in such a manner that there is direct visibility with the main room.
Drums were cut with the drummer's back to the main control room window, with the usual mic complement, plus the doors to the wood and stone rooms (which he faced) opened to lengthen and 'shape the tone of' the ambience. Parr Street has permanently-mounted stereo PZMs on the walls of all the various acoustic iso areas, so there's easy access to blending the room sound… the mics normal to high-numbered mic inputs on the Neve (49-60)
The session was recorded to 2" (Studer A827) with no NR, at 30ips.
the drummer wore lead velcro'ed-on leg weights to help with some of the faster double-kick parts, and had an assortment of different weights, chosen and switched-out as and when each section required. There was a fair amount of punching in, and the fashion at the time was for 'clicky' kicks (the dreaded "typewriter" kick drum sound!) cutting through the mush of thickly-distorted detuned guitars.
I don't remember much about the Bass guitar, and sadly my assistant -Dave Buchanan- was killed in a car accident a couple of years ago, so there's only myself and perhaps Colin Richardson who might remember and for the time being I don't remember much at all.
The band had demoed some stuff in studio 3 at Parr Street -not many tunes, but a couple- and were happy with the sound inthe small demo room. It had an Allen & Heath 'Saber' console. When it came to the guitar sounds, things ground to a halt. the drums had been cut with 'guide' guitars, just to steer the tune, but when we got to print them for real, we knew there was some work to do.
Bill Steer (guitar) was bothered all the way through the backing tracks that the guide guitar (through his beloved marshall) had been too scratchy sounding. We tried moving the pickup height. We tried different amps (Soldano, 5150, various Marshalls, Dual rectifier, many, many amps!) then we tried different cabs… Nothing sounded as good as the demo sound. We had started with the same combo as the demo, but that was the "scratchy" sound that was annoying Bill… then I had an idea.
This was like making a resonant kick drum by putting two kicks back-to back with no heads in between. I took two Marshall 4x12 cabs. We took the backs of both of them. We took the speakers out of the second one, and we blocked off the holes with plywood and corrugated cardboard, as the closest thing we could find to a 'seal'. This was definately getting boomy, and quite interesting, but Bill still didn't like the top end. It was sandpapery and irritating to him.
As a last resort (after 4 days of trying things out, double-tracking things, seeing if things got better or worse after layering… then erasing everything right away!) we went up to the demo room (studio 3) and took our "Frankencabinet" up with us. We miced up the cab and brought it up on the Allen & Heath. There was our sound. Was it the room? -probably at least partly, but we'd tried 5 or 6 completely different areas in studio 2… ord knows there's no shortage of acoustic spaces there… or was it the Allen & Heath Mic preamps? -Who Knows? Who Cares? -I'm wheeling the Studer upstairs, and we're booking some time in studio 3!!!
The cab was miked as was my custom at the time: Two SM57's, right against the speaker cloth, but one on the center of a cone, one at the edge of a different cone. The two were combined and maybe shifted slightly for maximum summing, or smoothest top end, but that's usually a good starting point. Don't ask me why it works, I've tried to riddle it out, but it works.
Colin Richardson is a twiddler. He likes to fiddle with EQs every now and then. This was a great case in point. We ended up taking a Massenberg Eq and EQing the combined 2-mic signal. The band had initially wanted Bill Steer and Mike Amott to just do one track each, to get away from the "Wall of Thick, mushy guitar", but we ended up doing 2 tracks of each player. olin wanted there to be a differentiation betwen the two players, other than just slight playing style or inflections, so he put the Massenberg EQ -both channels cascaded in series- across teh buss insert, and he set up two variations that made him happy, which we labelled "Mike and Bill" and we switched one in and the other out as we alternated players. Then we basically went into "factory" mode and printed guitar tracks, 2 of each player per tune.
That was the big part of the album. The rest was just vocals (Trying not to sound too much like the cookie monster!) and mixing in studio 1, which has a 64-input SSL 4000, with my own 'AAD' (Amazon Audio Developments) Equalisers replacing the original SSL 82E02 cards.
I love the band. There was a conscious effort on 'Heartwork' to make the sound more 'expensive' without making "selling-out". Reference stuff was Pantera, Alice in Chains and a few other artists who have names which always have -and always will- make me laugh… like "Fudge Tunnel"…
Source -Keith, SSLtech, http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2
from Guitar World, August, 1994
"Death Lives", p. 54
Guitar World: How do you define death metal? Can you explain what makes it different from other extreme forms of metal such as thrash and speed?
Bill Steer: As a player who's supposedly involved in death metal, I'm probably one of the worst people to comment on it. We don't even use that terminology. We accept that nine out of 10 people see us as a death metal band because you have to call music something, and we sound closer to death metal than any other genre—mainly because of the way Jeff [Walker] sings. As far as we're concerned, though, that whole scene is more or less dead now. We feel that it peaked in the late Eighties. So it's a bit weird to be approaching the mid-Nineties and find that the major press has just caught up on it.
GW: What bands played a major role in the creation of death metal?
Steer: It really does depend on what period you're talking about. The groups that really kindled the flames were people like Death or Possessedthe kind of bands that took their cue from the first couple of Slayer records but were initially just releasing demo tapes. Although Slayer was never a death band, they had a lot to do with starting it up. It's been said a million times but Reign in Blood is a very strong record, and there are still a lot of groups that strive to match just 10 percent of that aggression. I must stress that when the scene first started it was made up of people who were just music enthusiasts. There was none of this crap about how crazy you are or what you believed in and so onit was purely musical. All the other rubbish associated with the genre came about much later.
GW: A great many death metal bands, including Obituary, tune their guitars down to D [D, G, C, F, A, D, low to high]. In fact, some, like Carcass, even go lower. Is detuning essential to play this style of music?
Mike Hickey: Carcass tunes down to B. By that I mean we take a normally tuned guitar and then drop each string down two-and-a-half steps, so they go: B, E, A, D, F#, B, low to high. To counteract the string slackness created by this tuning, we use pretty heavy gauges.012 to .056, I can't remember the ones in the middle, but the G string's a plain .022. B isn't the most practical tuning in the world, but it's probably the heaviest, and we're stuck with it whether we like it or not!
Steer: It's like playing something that's almost halfway between a guitar and bass, actually. We've tuned this low ever since the band started, because it's so crushingthere's nothing else quite like it. Having said that, it has a lot of shortcomings in terms of tone because it's a very unrealistic tuning; we've really had to struggle to make it work. Since we've been doing it so long we can just about pull it off, but to be brutally honest, I think D, or, at a push C# [C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#, low to high], are the best tunings.
GW: What gear and settings do you guys use to get your tone?
Steer: Just for simplicity, I only use one amp livea Peavy 5150 with a Marshall Guv'nor pedal in front of it to beef up the overdrive just that little bit extra. In the studio, though, it's a different matter; I use several different ampsa selection of Marshalls and the 5150.
Hickey: One of the amps Bill used on Heartwork was a Marshall 30th Anniversary head that's really fierce, and he also used a tiny Marshall stack on pretty much every track to add some extra high end.
[Note: Mike didn't join Carcass until after the Heartwork album was recorded.]
Steer: Yeah, if I remember correctly, almost all of the guitar tracks were done with at least two amps going at onceone of them being a large amp, like the Anniversary [on channel two], a Marshall SL-X 100 watt or the 5150, and then also more often than not, my 10-watt [Marshall] Valvestate micro-stack for extra texture.
Unlike a lot of other bands who do the kind of stuff that we do, we tend to use a lot of mids. I don't think some people realize how important middle is to a guitar sound.
Hickey: Absolutely, mids are essential in a solowithout 'em your tone is real thin. My current backline setup is a Marshall SL-X 100-watt head and a Peavey 5150. I suck the mids out of the Marshall but not out the Peavey. I started the Heartwork world tour using a Guv'nor pedal too, but I just got tired of stage divers stepping on my shit!
GW: Describe how you write your material.
Steer: Aggression is woven into what we do, whether we like it or not. It's just such an accepted part of our musical vocabulary that we don't even think about it. When we play together, we don't force ourselves to play something intensethat's just the way it is; we're not really capable of playing in any other style. We're not subtle players.
Carcass has developed by doing things unconsciously. We find ourselves shying away from certain things and leaning towards others, without really knowing why. So, the way we tend to write and phrase our riffs is just what we like to hearwe never think in terms of intervals, time signatures or tempos. That's how my guitar style has developed, too. I'm not a disciplined enough person to practice, so I just play and do the things I like hearing and feel most comfortable with. One of the most important things for people to learn is that some of the most respected guitarists out there are absolutely riddled with idiosyncrasies that, going by the rule book, are incorrect. And often it's the stuff that's missing that actually makes them great—they have a recognizable style that leaves a thumbprint on whatever they do.
Capdown
- Pound For The Sound - Guitar: head in the control room, long speaker cable to a 900 4x12 marshall cab (modern celestions inside) and a rivera 4x12 (vintage celestions). SM57 just off centre of cone of one of marshall's speakers, sennheisser 421 off axis central to one of vintage cones. Both very near the cloth - distance adjusted to eliminate phasing between mics. Used mainly the 57 with the 421 mixed in to add some colour to the mids. Then adjusted the sound on the amp, being able to hear it throught the studio monitors. Focusrite platinum pre-amps were used, and very mild compression from a tubetec compressor - more adding warmth of the tubes rather than doing much on the dynamics.
Mix-wise, the dipping that you are hearing is from the mastering rather than the mix. I arely use side-chaining, only if there is a particular problem which needs to be dealt with.
In the mastering, I used Maxim limiting plug in, and Finalizer plus, to bring the level up to commercial volume, and if done well you end up with the guitars ducking the drums nicely resulting in more life and excitement in the final result. (if done baddly it can be hard to listen too!)
I usually mix with a rough mastering set up in place, and then take out the compression at the last minute before putting the music down. That way I can here how things are going to sound after the mastering process, and not be surprised later! source- dave chang
EXODUS
- Shovel Headed Killing Machine - Guitar -2 tracks of peavey xxx
Tempo of the Damned- guitar - his grey esp v with emg hz into a Marshall JCM800 modded by Tod Langner into Marshall cab with standard 75's celestions., 2 tracks.
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Fear Factory
- Demanufacture - guitar :modded Jcm 800
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Kreator
" We originally tracked it with the boogie but it just kept sounding to fizzy and over gained in the mix so I reamped it. We've done just 2 rhythm tracks and its given it a great mid range with the 5150."
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Killswitch Engage
- The End of Heartache -guitar: Framus amps.
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Korn
- Word Up (producer T.Lord Alge) - "Well, first he said that the first thing he does when he gets the Pro Tools session is transfer and consolidate everything and print to the Sony 3348 machine (16 bit/48K!!!). That's the source he does the final mix from.
As far as drums, on this song at least he had about 3 different kick drums going. There was the one supplied by Korn, then there were two more that were samples Tom added in, each with its own sound and character. The three together comprised the final kick "sound".
For snare, he kept the original snare (he said he always keeps the original snare, since there is usually stick drags, ghost notes, etc.), and again augmented with his own snare samples for the smack. Not sure if he compressed each individually or all as one, since he had printed back to the 3348 most of his processing already.
Overheads were pretty well compressed, and the room tracks were positively crushed to hell, which, once he put those in, all of the sudden there was all the ambience and bigness for the kit. I don't think any outboard or artificial reverb was used, it was all room mic ambience.
Korn had included a drum loop from the original recording of "Word Up", which Tom EQ'd to have a midrangey, loopy sound. He also spanked the hell out of it withcompression and keyed the input of the compressor with the kick drum from the drums, so that each time the kick drum hit, it would severely duck (basically mute) the loop's kick so there was no flamming between the loop and the kick drum.
The bass came up on one fader, and was compressed pretty hard, so that it just sat right there in the mix, around 40ms attack and 80ms release. I asked him about the rumour that he liked to roll off the low end with a high pass filter to about 130Hz or so, and dial the lows back in with a sharp bell bump around 90Hz or so, and he was non-committal about the answer.
There were a bunch of guitar tracks, all with varying tones and EQ's. Some sounded out of place by themselves with odd EQ's, but put all together it created a really huge ound.
The vocal was so compressed, I can't begin to describe it to you. Even Tom commented how massively compressed he had it when he brought it up by itself. We didn't get the full chain, but it appeared he had at least two, maybe three compressors in series on the vocal. However, when he brought up his vocal effects, which he had printed to two tracks on the 3348, all of the sudden it sounded just right. It was a combination of delay and reverb, and Tom said usually off the bat when he pulls up a mix he'll calculate 1/4 note and 1/8 note triplet delays to have available for various elements.
He said he usually uses the Red 3 for a few db of compression on the stereo mix with a low atio 1.5:1, although for this mix he had gone back to the SSL bus compressor. And finally, he prints to 1/2" analog tape for the final mix, which gives him some additional compression.
Zach Ziskin "
"He didn't do any master fader rides that I was aware of, but plenty of automation stuff. The vocal alone required lots of moves, just to duck the breaths, since they were super loud after being so massively compressed.
A couple other things of note. There is this really high pitched divebomb sound that was originally buried later in the song, and Tom decided to fly it over to the solo ection to make the section more interesting. That's one thing he said he does all the time, which is try rearranging elements or sections if he thinks it will add something to the song. He said when someone hires him to do a mix, they're going to have to hear his mix first (i.e. what he envisioned), and then if they don't like the changes he's done they can have whatever mix they want with the original parts and arrangement.
He also said when sending ref mixes to the label mooks, he'll run the mix through a Finalizer for a pseudo homebrew mastering job so that it will be nice and loud for the mooks, and that way they don't call back saying it doesn't sound as "loud" as their other CD's and requesting unnecessary changes.
Tom also mentioned that in general he rolls off everything below 40Hz on basically every track, as there's no need for any of the info down there which will just eat up headroom. And of course he never uses any plugins, only hardware outboard gear, unless there was something very specific that the client printed as an effect or special sound from Pro Tools.
He still monitors mainly using NS-10's coupled with a single subwoofer, and feels that if he can get the mix sounding great on those, he's got it made.
And finally, there is one secret weapon he uses on drums, particularly snare, that can instantly get the sound he likes, and that is the SPL Transient Designer. Countdown to ebay price explosion, 3, 2, 1….
______
Zach Ziskin"
Machine Head
- The More Things Change - guitar - was 5150 into marshall 30 watt vintage cab, 2 421's, tube screamer ,Telefunken mic pre's and GML 8200 EQ + SSL on mix down.
the mics in relation to the cab? - both pretty much on axis straight on.
SSL = Solid State Logic, we used a 96 input G+ at Larrabee in LA to mix.
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Metallica
- master of puppets - to the guitars: they had recorded six track of rythm guitar. They were panned: one hard left, the second one (playing the same riffs) to about 11 o'clock. The other two main tracks (playing slightly different riffs than the left side) where panned the same way to the right side, one full the other to about 2 o'clock. Then there were two tracks chugging just the low E string on the actual "chunks" and those were panned hard left and right as well and were responsible for all the low end of the guitars. No compression (a guitar amp compresses enough IMO) and just a little short room from a Quantec QRS Room Simulator.
Here are the ADA settings:
Overdrive 1 : 4.0 dist
Overdrive 2 : 5.5 dist
Master Gain : 7.5 dist
Bass : 12
Mid : 6
Treb : 6
Pres : 12
Voicing : .tube
FX loop : off
From the ADA MP-1 (BTW, I still have version 1.0 software in the ADA. I changed it to version 2.x and it was quieter but wasn't quite as dynamic, so I changed it back to 1.0.)it went into the McIntosh 2100 (transistor) poweramp and from there into a vintage Marshall 4x12 cab with the original G12H inside. At that time I normally used Fostex M11RP ribbon mics and Countryman Lavalier mics through a John Hardy M1 to record guitar.
Source: Michael Wagener (via Gearslutz.com), moc.renegawleahcim|wm#moc.renegawleahcim|wm, http://www.michaelwagener.com
The following is a post by Flemming Rasmussen… a little about the vocal recordings on Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets.
Both those albums were recorded on my Trident A range desk from 1976. (I still have it), and I used the mic-preamp in the desk, and the eq as well.
The signal was then send to a Urei 1176 Compressor and straight to tape. Both albums recorded on 2" ampex tape.
I cant remember what mike i used, but I will check that out for You.
It was probably a Neumann U 87, but Im not shure.
Flemming Rasmussen
This is the Jamez Guitar EQs for Battery rtm gtrs.
The Amp is Jamex Boogie into 2 Marshal cabs. Inserted in the loop on the amp,
is a B&B Audio (Aphex) parametric EQ EQF-1 as show on the left side of the pic.
The mics used are:
1 SM57 Shure in the center of the cone on one of the lower speakers.
1 B&K (DPA) 4006 omni on another speaker centercone.
1 AKG gold-tube in a 45 degree angle to the side edge of the cab. aprox 4 feet away.
Miking is identical for both cabs.
The settings on the top is the amp settings including the Graf EQ on the Amp.
Mid Right is the EQF-1 loop eq settings.
Bottom is the EQ on the Desk a Trident A-range.
far left SM 57 it means
5K=-2 10K=+3, 150hz=+9, 1K=-3, 50hz lowcut(hipass) Fader=-10.
Hope this is understandable.
Enjoy
Flemming Rasmussen
As I could not put a picture here U get a Link instead.
http://www.sweetsilence.com/GearSlutzNotes.htm
Source: Flemming Rasmussen (via Gearslutz.com)
Nasum
- Helvete - read all about it on the official Nasum site on the Helvete page, which also has loads of pictures etc. The following text is a summary. R.I.P. Mieszko Talarczyk
"The Making of "Helvete" - Quite a few people have over time asked me numerous questions about my recording techniques, equipment we use on Nasum albums and recording/sound tips. This column is for those who are interested in a more in depth look at a Nasum/Soundlab recording session. I'm not going to explain how different equipment works so if you're confused/bored by words like "eq" or "pre-amp" you should probably stop reading right now.
Just so you know, this is not at all a guide to how an album should be recorded. This is just how I (we) did it; I've probably made countless mistakes along the way that would most likely annoy the shit out of a properly schooled engineer, but hey, I couldn't care less. I'll probably start hating the sound on "Helvete" in six months or so anyway… but here it goes.
Drums
Just a few weeks before entering the studio Anders bought a cool DW kit which really sounds killer. We used coated Genera2 Evans heads on the toms (12" & 16") a Remo Coated Ambassador on the snare. The snare is a Pearl Chad Smith (!) Signature (first time in a long time I used a metal snare, I think…). The kick is a DW though, size 24". The head we used for that one was an Evans EQ2 Batter. Anders plays with plastic DW beaters.
The drums were all tuned by Per Lindberg who's a tuning expert I use from time to time. He came in and re-tuned the drums every now and then between takes. Remarkably the toms kept a pretty steady tone, probably thanks to the Evans heads and Anders steady hands.
This is the microphone setup for the whole kit:
Kick drum 24" - Sennheiser e602 inside and an AKG D112 in the hole.
Snare 14" top - Sennheiser TGX-10
Snare bottom - Shure Beta 57
Rack Tom 12" - Sennheiser MD 421
Floor Tom - Audio-Technica ATM 25
Kit Overhead - a pair AKG 414 B-ULS
Ride Cymbal - AKG SE300B with a hypercardoid capsule
China Cymbal - a custom made condenser from Finland
Ambience Room - a pair of Shure SM 94
Hi-hat - Neumann TLM 103
The placement of the microphones is pretty standard. The reason I used the Finish microphone on the china instead of the hi-hat (for instance) was that the snare made it clip. The china however gave it no problems. The reason I used the TLM 103 on the hi-hat ("what a waste!" I hear you say…) is simply because I didn't have anything else to put there except some crappy old SM57's or stuff like that. I just wanted a condenser on the hats, that's all. I do regret the choice of ambience/room mic's. I usually have the 414's on the room and they work great but I wanted a better close cymbal sound this time than what the Shure SM94's were capable of producing, so I made a switch; 414 on the overhead and the SM94's on the room. Looking back, it wasn't the best switch but it came out ok. The room sounded a bit muddy at first but some eq: ing and compressing made it all fit in nicely. The Soundlab main studio room is an oddly shaped area of 40sqm with the ceiling 3.5 meters at its' highest and 2.4 meters at its' lowest. The drums were placed with maximum space between the cymbals and the ceiling. I put the ambience microphones about 60cm off the floor 3m from the kit and 3-4m apart from each other, pointing at the snare.
That was it. Everything going straight in to the mic preamps and then directly in to Pro-tools. I don't have a cool old school analogue soundboard to record things through, so I've gathered a stack of decent dedicated microphone preamps instead. Some are tube preamps and some are solid-state class A stuff. Whatever pre-amp I use, I always go directly to the "tape machine" (be it pro-tools, adat, or analogue).
So with everything recorded straight without any eq or dynamic changes done, we pretty much altered the sound by moving the mic's around until we achieved the sound we wanted. Well inside Pro-tools I used some eq's and compressors and a few other tricks as well, of course. The idea has always been to keep the sound "alive". The listener should have a sense of almost being in the room with the musicians and no single instrument or effect should sound "synthetic". Keep in mind that I don't put to much weight on how things are played or performed - it may well be artificial, as long as it doesn't sound artificial. The kick and the snare are backed up by "triggered" sounds (we used Soundreplacer, a Pro-tools plug-in FYI), we blended the sampled sounds with the originals, about 60/40. For the kick we actually sampled Anders's 24" DW kick drum. The Pearl snare was blended together with a Sonor snare I got of a sample cd.
Guitars
We have always used the same configuration for our guitar sound. It's simple; Fender Dual Showman Reverb Guitar Amp + BOSS DS-1 Distortion through a Marshall 4x12. This setup has always worked for me; muddy & raw and without the possibility to sound weak no matter what note/string you strike. It sounds close to the Boss Heavy Metal pedal, but not quite so Entombed-ish… This time however I wanted something different, not to completely leave what we had used before but to have the same kind of sound with more clarity and tone. We all felt that the new riffs deserved a bit more clarity. So I tried several combinations of heads/cabinets and ended up with a Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier and a Mesa Boogie Pre-amp. I like the distortion in the Rectifier but I just don't think it fits our sound. It's too neat. The Mesa pre-amp however, had just the right kind of distortion. So I ran it through the clean channel of the Rectifier, it may seem like a waste to some but this setup delivered just the sound we were looking for. The cabinet I used was a Marshall 4x12 from 1982. The guitar was a BC Rich Mockingbird.
Microphones on the cabinet:
Neumann TLM 103
Audiotechnica ATM 25
Sennheiser MD 421
The cabinet and the mics were covered by a heavy canvas to prevent ambience "leakage". Mic pre-amp used for guitars was a Focusrite Octopre. All mics were blended nicely within Pro-tools and recorded to 1 track. Oh, and I recorded everything in 44.1 kHz 24 bit.
This was the first time we really wanted to have 4 rhythm guitar tracks per song. I've never used more than 2 before. And for that we needed a sound that would fit in with the "Mesa + Mesa" sound. This came to be a BOSS HM-2 through the clean channel of the Rectifier (again). Same microphone setup as for the first 2 guitar tracks with a slight balance change between the mics.
All additional guitars (there weren't that many to be honest) were recorded with the natural sound of the Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier.
Bass
The bass amp was a Mesa Boogie BASS 400+ run through a Trace Elliot 4x10. For distortion I used the crunch channel on the Mesa pre-amp (same as for the guitars). The microphone I used was a good old Sennheiser MD 421 which ran through a TLA pre-amp. The mic signal was blended with the processed signal from a Tech21 Sans-Amp Bass Driver. There was really nothing more to it. I had a Triple-C compressor working on the bass frequencies as well as some annoying mids and sometimes I over distorted the sound inside pro-tools but all in all the bass setup was pretty simple and painless. The bass used was an Ernie Ball Music Man.
Vocals
Again, it came down to the AKG 414. I tried the Neumann TLM 103 but it just didn't work on my vocals. Too many S's and it highlighted frequencies in my voice that weren't meant to be heard. The pre-amp used this time was a Mindprint En-voice. And this time around I did eq and I did compress the sound before recording it. No de-esser was needed though. As I recorded almost all of my vocals by myself I had to sing in the control room. Having never tried that before I was worried that the ambience of the room might have a negative impact on the vocal sound. Luckily the Soundlab control room is pretty "dead" ambience-wise, so it worked just fine.
Some of the vocals were dubbed, to be honest almost every "chorus" is dubbed once. The purpose of this was to give the vocals an extra dimension in those parts, so they wouldn't sound flat and boring as constant screaming in 35 minutes can do, and often does. There really isn't anything else to the vocals. Occasional delays and some reverbs were added at times but it's mostly pretty dry.
Mix
Mix is really all about taste. Some people like their vocals well over the music and some like them hidden way, way back. Some like their drums hidden behind guitars and vocals and some like it when the kick is so loud you can barely hear the riffs. What I like for Nasum you can hear on "Helvete". At least this is what I liked during the mix. Now I sometimes hate myself for not bringing this or that up or for not cutting this or that word out of that song. There are countless things I'd like to redo. The one thing that I didn't think I'd have trouble with actually gave me the most trouble during the mix; the kick drum. While the drum in it self sounds great it didn't really come through as I wanted it to in the grind parts and the fast d-beat parts. In the slow parts however it came through perfectly. This had nothing to do with how hard/soft Anders was playing the kick, mind you he really "kicks hard" at all times. But I felt that the kick didn't have time to "respond" with full tone in the fast parts. Perhaps because it was a 24" sized drum? Maybe those larger kicks aren't very suitable for faster play? I might be wrong and I hope I am. Either way, we solved that problem with the help of some clever software and some clever use of eq and compressors.
So there you have it. I hope this has stilled your curiosity somewhat, and again; this is how WE did it. You do not have to do the same. Do your own thing and keep grinding.
Cheers. / Mieszko
Nevermore
- Vocals: Shure SM7 into 9098 into distressor then cranesong A to D's, Processing: reverb one, digi delay, bit of pitch shift -9+9 either side, compression was renaisance compressor with PT and waves De esser just to keep him in check.
Nevermore (Self Titled):
Solid State Head Unit (Exact Model Unknown - Owned by Jeff at the Time)
Solid State Preamp w/Peavey Power Amp
Unknown 4X12 Cab with Celestion Speakers (Exact Model Unkown)
This album was composed of two demos recorded sepeartely on the different rigs mentioned above.
In Memory EP:
Mesa Boogie Mark IV Head Unit
Marshall 1960B 4X12 Cab (w/Celestion G12T-75 Speakers)
This EP was recorded during the same sessions as the "Politics of Ecstacy" album using the same rig. It was released 3 months prior to "Politics."
Politics of Ecstacy:
Mesa Boogie Mark IV Head Unit
Marshall 1960B 4X12 Cab (w/Celestion G12T-75 Speakers)
Dreaming Neon Black:
Mesa Boogie Triaxis Preamp
Mesa Boogie 2:90 Simul-Class Power Amp
Mesa Recto 4X12 Cab (Armor Plated Model w/Celestion Vintage 30 Speakers)
On all the albums with Neil Kernon, there were 4 tracks of rhythm recorded, and primarily a Shure SM-57 or Sennheiser 421 was used.
"I was pleased with the way the album came out. Personally I think it was my best work with the band, and I really liked the material a lot.
As with ASU, POE and IM, we did the album down in West Texas, at Village Productions (the name would of course change to Sonic Ranch a few years later). By then I was living in TX, so for several years I was doing all my work there. The album was a bit rushed though as the budget ended up being reduced from that for POE for some reason. I think we did the entire thing in 17 days, from top to bottom, including the mix, which I think I got 3 days for. Still, I remember we had a lot of fun doing the record. I always enjoyed working with Nevermore - great bunch of lads. Lots of wacky zany fun with the NM chasps.
As far as the end result, I don't have any issues with it, because as yet I've never encountered the problems others have mentioned on any of my systems. The album was mastered in HDCD which potentially is a louder mastering process than the normal 16 bit process, so I can only presume that some systems couldn't handle the extra volume generated by the 24 bit mastering process, producing some weird distortion or something.
As far as recording techniques, I don't think I did anything particularly out of the ordinary on that album. Also, as we had less time to make the record than on POE I can certainly remember putting in longer days on DNB just so we could get it all done. That said, it's still MY favourite of the four releases that I produced for the guys.
Neil K."Source: Neil Kernon on his http://www.ultimatemetal.com
DEAD HEART IN A DEAD WORLD:
Custom Built 7 String Guitar loaded with EMG 707 pickups. The guitars were routed into a Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer that was used as a signal boost. The settings on the TS-9 were:
Drive: 9 O'Clock
Tone: 10 O'Clock
Level: 12 O'Clock
This was fed into the amp that was used on all of the rhythm and leads. The amp used was a Mesa Boogie (2 Channel) Dual Rectifier that was straight from the box. The Mesa Recto was routed into a Marshall 1960B 4X12 Cab with the stock 75 Celestions they have. Settings on the Mesa Recto were:
Silicon Diode Setting
Bold Setting
Red (Modern) Channel
Treble: 11.30
Mids: 10 O'Clock
Bass: 11.30
Gain: 12:30
Presence: 12.30
Master: 10 O'Clock
There were 4 tracks of rhythm, with 2 tracks being panned 100% left and right, and the other set being panned 80% left and right. There was no compression, limiting, etc…only a slight touch of EQ used. Two Shure SM-57's were used for recording, one on the center of the cone about an inch away. This was the approximate's denoted by Andy Sneap previously.
ENEMIES OF REALITY:
7 String guitars loaded with EMG 707 pickups
Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-9 (Se Similar to Above)
Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier
3 (rhythm) guitar tracks
Source: Andy Sneap (and Silverwulf) on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
The Godless Endevour
Guitars: 2 tracks each of Mesa Boogie Dual rect and Krank Revolution1. Both with OD820 infront, into a Mesa cabinet.
Source: Andy Sneap (and Silverwulf) on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Nile - Annihilation Of The Wicked
For guitars we used several types of Marshall heads and cabs, miced with Shure SM 57s. Bass..hmm…I used an RE20 and a Sennheiser 421 - no DI. I forget what type of amp it was though. It wasn't very reliable though..it had all sorts of noises and crackles that took a while to troubleshoot, but when it worked it did sound very good.
We did quad track the gtrs on Nile. Quite a job, but it worked great.
I used a single 57 on the gtrs.
No compression or EQ (I prefer to use the amp for all the colouration if at all possible)
The Marshall was one of the high gain heads, 2000 I think is the model.
I used an Avalon tube mic pre/EQ/compressor on the vocals. This one:http://www.avalondesign.com/vt737sp.html
The Nile guys were a lot of fun to work with. Great work ethic. Hard working, very bright guys. We were doing 16 hour days for weeks and it just flew by. A blast!
Drums: I used a D112 on kick, 57 on snare, 421's on toms, and a variety of overheads (all condenser). No compression on the drums or guitars. I used one of my homemade kick samples, but decided not to use a sample on the snare. I just felt it blurred too many of the nuances of what George was doing on the real snare, and he has a great touch.
The only thing I usually compress as I record it (and the amount varies according to the performer of course) is bass and vocals. I usually do this just to even stuff out a bit, and if it's a digital recording, to avoid any nasty irreparable overs on the vocals etc.
To be honest, it was one of the toughest mixes I've ever had to do, as there's so much going on most of the time. The faster songs are up there..250bpm, and one of them is at 265!. So that made my job quite a bit tougher, particularly in trying to keep everything as clear as possible. That all being said, I'm extremely pleased with the end result. There are a couple of things I might do slightly differently if I had the opportunity again, but all in all I think it's a good representation of the band.
The guitars are tuned in Drop A, so I really didn't have much of an opportunity to filter them at all if I wanted the low end power. Both guys have massive palm muting techniques so it was important for me to keep as much oomph as possible.
The kick is massive. It's a sample I made for the album, and has lots of click but loads of low power as well. I built the Nile sample in Pro Tools from about 10 different kicks I liked different things about. Mixing them in PT allowed me to get them all nicely phase coherent, removing flams etc. and get the most out of all the components. As they used to say when I was working on reggae sessions back in London "Maximum bass at all frequencies man".
The bass is fitted in somewhere in between the kick and the low end of the gtrs. Heh..
The gtr sound was a 57 on a Marshall amp/cab. Standard positioning really. Sorry, I didn't take any pics..never do really.
I think the gtr reverb is probably a combination of delay and Lexicon 480L, if I remember correctly.
The only thing I did use on the mix for the gtrs were 32 band graphics. I often use those for that though, so that's nothing new for me.
The album was recorded into my Pro Tools HD system, on the road in South Carolina, and was mixed in Chicago on an SSL 4000 series, with 16 E modules and 32 G modules.
Source: Neil Kernon on his http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Obituary
- James Murphy's gear - "on obituary i used my old marshall jcm 800 head with a ts-9 and a charvel i borrowed from Mike from Nocturnus."
Primus - Frizzle Fry -
Kick - single 421
Snare - SM57
No bottom snare mic
Toms 421's
Floor tom U87
Little tiny toms (8 of them) - 57's in each one pre mixed to 2 tracks
Overheads - 414's
Bass was Direct through a ADA gtr preamp.
421 on cab was not used because Les loves Direct stuff.
Guitar was two 57's.
All vocals were done on the SM7.
All tracked and mixed through the same SSL "G" (if I remember right).
I remember wanting an 1176 and the assistant said "why, you have the best compressors built right into the console".
They didn't have any outboard pre's or comps, just tons of reverbs!
I struggled to say the least.
That record was tracked and mixed in two weeks.
Somewhere in there I spilled the bong water into the SSL like the sleeve says. .
"a lot of it was live with punches.
Quite a few passes usually to get a decent take from everyone.
The vocals went down live with punches as well.
There's still a couple really bad mistakes in there, but that's kinda what made it cool (at least that's what we thought at the time).
Les was in the iso (hallway) singing and playing, with his bass rig and Larry's amps baffled in the live room.
I just made sure they could see each other and let them do their thing.
There was some overdubs left out in the mix stage, so it would sound more like the live show.
I remember thinking "Are people really going to listen to this crazy s**t?"
I guess they were.
That's about it other than it was was all analog (Studer+SSL).
I'll also add that Les has really great timing.
He sort of drums on the bass, actually he's pretty dang good on drums too."
"And yep, Sailing and Pork were ADAT.
I did a couple things on Sailing (played guitar and accordian) during breaks from recording another record.
I remember thinking the kick sounded just like a basketball and there was way too much bad reverb on everything."
Source: Winey, Gearslutz forum
QOTSA
- Lullabies to Paralyze - (producer Joe Barresi ) "It was cut completely live (2 guitars, bass and drums)….sometimes with 2 drummers (josh and Joey). Yes the cymbals were overdubed (something Josh has done since Rated R), but regardless, its a pretty cool drum sound. Protools was used strictly as a tape machine when I ran out of tracks on the Studer A800 (for vocals mainly, horns,etc). No auto tune, no grid editing, no nonsense. Each song was intended to have its own sound……some reminiscent of the first record (Medication, Insane), and some completely unique. Different than anything out there.
…..as far as overdubbing cymbals goes…….it is a technique that allows you to mic drums at a distance and capture the sounds of the drums themselves with no "high end" leakage ie, cymbals, hat,etc. Toms can be miked from a foot away to really capture the low end and body, and they can be turned way up in the mix without overbearing wash. Rooms can be just that too……a drum room sound. Compression applied compresses only drums and not cymbals. It is a tough technique for drummers to do, and I think Joey Castillo rose to the challenge and kicked its ass. Some songs we had the equivalent of a rubber pad to hit (as a hat, ride, etc) so he could keep time on that. Some songs we had a "V" drum set-up that actually triggered the sound so we could all hear it when needed. Cymbals were done later in the reverse fashion. Fake kick/snare and real cymbals miked up, with Joey hitting his leg or other objects on snare/tom hits as he played along to the drums. NO CLICK track used or needed. the man is an animal.
……we used many mics on the record for vocals……brauner, sm57, m49, u87, the list goes on. it varied section to section as well sometimes. all had to do with how it was sung and what sound we were after. Cymbals are intentionally low….Joey C rehearsed with a full kit, but the overdub drums just lent a new quality to the drum sound….not any production changes. The only prod call would be the songs with 2 drummers on it..namely I Never Came, and Broken Box. Cut live as well, as seen in the DVD. as far as guitars go, cant go wrong with a 57 or a 421. 2 desert island mics.
…..ah clipping…………..an artform these days. sometimes it comes from mastering in the attempt to make things as loud as a deaf A&R man can handle, sometimes it comes from mixing….levels way hot on tape or god forbid +12 in tools, and it distorts the input of the mixing desk. sometimes its the sheer amout of tracks all piling on one another to destroy the stereo bus, sometimes its the digital distortion no one seems to hear while they are recording, being amplified by lots of compression and eq later, sometimes its the shitting duplication at the pressing plant. there are so many things in the path. I don't know what happens. All I can say on a personal level is that any distortion I hear (unless its intentional) I try to get rid of. Sometimes its a result of my excess levels and compression, and I cant control it. sometimes its a matter of sacrificing punch by lowering all levels to just under the point of breakup and making up for it elsewhere. getting things louder than everything else while still being clean and clear is something i have not yet mastered. And what happens after i approve the mastering and turn it in is a mystery to me."
-Joe Barresi
Ozzy
- Ozzmosis: "on the "original" recordings/mixes of Ozzmosis Zakk used a stock Marshall 800 and with a stock 800 cab and his LesPaul with EMG pickups. No pedals, just crancked up until the distortion was right. We recorded two separate rhythm tracks and I panned them hard left and right. The solos where also doubled (in one take, might I add) but panned on top each other."
No More Tears - "Well, I didn't record "No More Tears" just mixed it. During the mix I used a UREI 530 (my fav EQ for guitar) and …err…a BBE 802, no compression. Rooms/reverb came out of the 480L can't remember the settings on that one. I did work with Zakk on the recording of the next project (very similar guitar sound) and we used a stock Marshall 800 with a stock 800 cabinet. Microphones: SM57 right in the center of the cone, Fostex M11RP (ribbon) also middle of the cone of another speaker about a 1.5" away, and a Beyer M88 slightly off to the side of yet another speaker, all in the same cabinet and phase aligned. Mic pres were all Hardy M-1s. The amp was cranked and (as you know) Zakk was using a LesPaul with EMG Humbucker pickups. BTW Zakk is hands down one of the best gittaar players I have worked with. He would ask me to cycle the tape around the solo part for five minutes while he came up with a guitar solo. After about 5 minutes he asked me to record an did the solo in one take. Then he wanted to double the solo and I thought "Yeah right", but he doubled it in ONE take, pretty amazing.
______
Michael Wagener
Source: Michael Wagener (via Gearslutz.com), moc.renegawleahcim|wm#moc.renegawleahcim|wm, http://www.michaelwagener.com
Spiral Architect
- A Sceptic's Universe. Guitar - We used a Soldano preamp into the power amp input of a Soldano integrated tube amplifier. We did that because the integrated amp didn't have the gain we needed and the separate pre did. The guitar used was a Paul Reid Smith owned by Steinar
Source: Neil Kernon on his http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Stuck Mojo
- Guitar (Rich Ward) 74 Gibson les Paul Standard with Duncan Parallel Axis Pick Up, into 50Wt Marshall JCM800 with 6550 mod and Soldano Hot Mod. Greenback Marshall Cab with 1 57, into API pre.
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
Stampin' Ground
- A New Darkness Upon Us - 5150 and Boogie into a Marshall cab with 30 wt celestions. The kit was actually a Pearl Export with emperor heads. My Sandberg bullet bass into the sans amp plug in and also a peavey Firebass 700 I think
Testament
- The Gathering - guitar - Dean gtr with seymours, Boogie Triple rectifier and boogie cab with vintage 30's (shure beta 57).
Recording: Adats and soundcraft Ghost!! We hired some outboard stuff, a couple of neves, Tube tech, SSL and GML8200, but no automation, mixed down onto 2 tracks of the last adat, dropping in on sections I wanted different.
Drums: toms are totally triggered
Mix: SSL comp across the whole mix, and a finalizer also a tiny bit.
Source: Andy Sneap on his forum at http://www.ultimatemetal.com
