Entirely free Production

[Peppermark]

Nice to see someone else giving the SSD Free Rock Kit some love (the cymbal velocity curves in that plugin made me hate EZDrummer 2 Metal Machine for any sort of swell) and same with TSE B.O.D.

Thanks man, I stopped using Metal Machine because of that too. The kick and Tom sounds are great tho.

My only gripes are pretty minor things, the cymbals don't have a lot of definition on the attack and sound washy when the mix gets more intense (it's been awhile since I used the SSD 5 kit because it's been acting weird with my setup lately so I'm not sure if that's just how those cymbals sound), maybe blending in some of those DFH cymbals could help you out there.

This is one of my preocupations when finishing this mix. Lately I'm focusing on extracting the most of snare body I can from the Overheads and Room Mics, because that gives me A LOT of consistency and agrression from the snare. At the end of the day, I'm never using crazy amounts of compression on the snare to get it really punchy.

But just like you said, adding a tiny amount of DFH's Overhead mic added that extra high-end needed. Also took down some dB in 5k"ish" region but added a high shelf @7k or so in the Room Mics to get that sizzle back. Thanks for the tip!

While the separation between all the instruments is done quite well, through certain sections where the double kick is playing it feels like it dominates the bass and gives that "And Justice For All" feel to the mix and leaves the rhythm guitar feeling a touch wimpy. During those sections I'd automate the kick down a few dB just till the rhythm guitar, bass and kick feel like one unit.

That's exactly what I'm gonna do!

Lastly, during the first instance of the choir synths and bells they're being completely drowned out, that's our first real point of deviation from the rhythm section plus leads in the whole track, the synths there need to be more present along with the leads to break up the monotony of the track, since the rhythm guitar is just sustaining the same chords as the bass and synths, drop the level on the rhythm and bring up the bells and the choir so they're just underneath the lead.

Checked if there was any automation on that part, and I really forgot to do that! #2 is fixed.

Overall I like how your mix is sounding and it proves that knowing your tools is half the battle when achieving a quality mix.

Exactly! Using paid plugins is really cool, but when we, as producers, focus entirely on the equipment rather than what comes out of the speakers, we're forgetting what it takes to produce good music at the end of the day.


Thanks!