A few questions on heavy metal mixing.

Dedsin

New Metal Member
Apr 11, 2013
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I'm currently mixing a speed metal old school band.
First of all, I'm a beginner at mixing and I'd like some tips on hard rock mixing in generally.
Second of all, I got in trouble with the speedy double kicks. Somehow, when the kicks are singles it sounds perfect, when there are 1/16 feels it's still OK but when it turns into a 30 second 1/16 double bass part, it gets muddy and really weak. What can I do about it?
Third of all, each rhythm guitar is recorded twice, yet it's not "heavy" enough, it doesn't make a "wall of guitars". Any help with that? How can I add some balls to it?
Thanks!:devil:
 
For the guitars you can copy and paste the recorded tracks into new tracks, play with panning, move some tracks with 20-30ms delay, applying on some tracks extra saturation with vst softwares...
For the bass drum, if it's muddy, try to play with the EQ to find the muddy frequencies, and to make cuts in bass drum and bass drums frequencies so they don't sit in the same place
 
I'd recommend not copying/pasting the guitars, but instead quad-tracking the guitars.

Also, the secret to a good guitar tone is in the bass tone mixing with it.

and +1 for EQ'ing the kick to more appropriate for sonic room. Also, shortening the decay on your kick may help. A quick, punchy kick with a little "clicky" high end for presence should be all you need.

EDIT:

Have you looked into the Andy Sneap sub-forums here? Its all about mixing and tones?

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy-sneap-151/