02-12-2014, 02:18 AM
Manuke, in many ways, this is a great mix. It's loud as hell for one thing (usually not a bonus for me, but this IS metal), but transient definition for the most part doesn't seem to suffer much from the compression involved... that suggests disciplined gain staging and careful compression on the mix buss as well as the channel by channel compression. The low end in the center lane is pretty open, which is absolutely essential with all the kick rolls going on, but I think you'll find that clearing everything beneath 125 out of the sides will focus the kick even more and make it a lot easier to balance with the bass. I do that in almost every mix regardless of genre, even if there's nothing audible in that range on the sides... the more headroom the better, especially when you're going for loudness... and if you can't hear it, you don't need it. Personally I use a mid/side equalizer on the main mix buss and highpass the sides channel, 12 db per octave, at 125, but there are plugins like Basslane that will sum everything from a user specified range to mono if you prefer... though this can smear the guitars toward the center if you're not careful. If you choose to process the sides with an equalizer or stereo shaper, it's absolutely critical that the EQ plugin is before the mix-buss compressor in the FX chain or you'll lose half the benefit.
A couple quick things I noticed that might help you improve future mixes: During the bridge there are silences between the spurts of power chords... TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THOSE because they're one of your only opportunities for striking dynamics in music like this. In the raw tracks, the guitars note tails aren't dampened enough and extend into the silence, and compression will increase the sustain of the tails until those spaces are mostly filled... get your scissors tool out and trim those tails down, keep the stops symmetrical from left to right, and you're going to wind up with some seriously striking dynamic contrast during the bridge, and that is ALWAYS a good thing, regardless of genre. Things like that are part of the difference between a good home studio mix and an outstanding professional mix, and metal-heads LOVE it.... it makes the loud and raucous stuff feel even louder and more raucous! Contrast is key to emotional engagement.
For me, the guitars are a little too bright and consequently bury the vocals a bit here and there throughout the mix. The opposite is true of punk rock or screamo, but for black metal I'd say the body of the guitar is more important than the noisy thrash in the high mids, so I'd emphasize the chugga-chugga going on from 500 hz to 1000 hz personally. It would give them a more muscular sound and free up the vocal... although I wouldn't have any illusions as to improving the intelligibility of the lyrics
. The vocal performance is raw, committed and powerful, so regardless of whether or not you can understand a flying thing he's singing about, I'd do everything I could to keep the guitars out of the way of such a vividly emotional part of the track. A high shelving cut on guitars 1 and 2, just a few db, from 3000 up did the trick for me.
Could the bass cut through a bit more in the mids? Matter of taste more than anything else, but I can feel it much more than I can actively hear it's contribution.
A final note... the toms need some gating. In my opinion all you really need out of the toms is the attack and main body of the tone, but the low end and sustained note tails aren't doing anything but eating up precious headroom and fogging up the mix. If hard gating isn't your style, a high ratio expander would sound a little more natural and still do the trick.
Anyway, hope some of that helps and isn't way off base. It's not one of my preferred genres, but the technical stuff doesn't change from tune to tune, so give it a whirl and see if it helps.
A couple quick things I noticed that might help you improve future mixes: During the bridge there are silences between the spurts of power chords... TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THOSE because they're one of your only opportunities for striking dynamics in music like this. In the raw tracks, the guitars note tails aren't dampened enough and extend into the silence, and compression will increase the sustain of the tails until those spaces are mostly filled... get your scissors tool out and trim those tails down, keep the stops symmetrical from left to right, and you're going to wind up with some seriously striking dynamic contrast during the bridge, and that is ALWAYS a good thing, regardless of genre. Things like that are part of the difference between a good home studio mix and an outstanding professional mix, and metal-heads LOVE it.... it makes the loud and raucous stuff feel even louder and more raucous! Contrast is key to emotional engagement.
For me, the guitars are a little too bright and consequently bury the vocals a bit here and there throughout the mix. The opposite is true of punk rock or screamo, but for black metal I'd say the body of the guitar is more important than the noisy thrash in the high mids, so I'd emphasize the chugga-chugga going on from 500 hz to 1000 hz personally. It would give them a more muscular sound and free up the vocal... although I wouldn't have any illusions as to improving the intelligibility of the lyrics
. The vocal performance is raw, committed and powerful, so regardless of whether or not you can understand a flying thing he's singing about, I'd do everything I could to keep the guitars out of the way of such a vividly emotional part of the track. A high shelving cut on guitars 1 and 2, just a few db, from 3000 up did the trick for me.Could the bass cut through a bit more in the mids? Matter of taste more than anything else, but I can feel it much more than I can actively hear it's contribution.
A final note... the toms need some gating. In my opinion all you really need out of the toms is the attack and main body of the tone, but the low end and sustained note tails aren't doing anything but eating up precious headroom and fogging up the mix. If hard gating isn't your style, a high ratio expander would sound a little more natural and still do the trick.
Anyway, hope some of that helps and isn't way off base. It's not one of my preferred genres, but the technical stuff doesn't change from tune to tune, so give it a whirl and see if it helps.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!