David Castillo - Ghostward studio question and answer

[Castillo]

No problem, just answered the low end questions

+1 to the low-end question... thanks for taking the time to post here!

 

[Castillo]

Answers below...

Great question, the kick punch is brilliant and really drives the music forward.

In the interview you told your opinion about drum sampling etc. Where there drum replacement/augmentation on Dead End Kings and how it was used, if any?

I never replaced any drums but I added a kick and snare sample from my own library (drums recorded by me) to some of the songs and again it's differs from song to song.

Thanks a lot for doing this, you're quickly becoming one of my favourite engineers! Seems like a lot of mixes I've been liking lately have been coming from Sweden, go figure.. I guess I was born at the wrong side of the gulf...

haha..thanks man! Make sure you like my facebook page for more news/info.

facebook.com/ghostwardstudio

 

[Castillo]

...

How have you felt being a live engineer has helped your studio work? Any philosophies you carry over from one to the other?

If you are talking about the technical side of things I brought my way of thinking over to the live scene way more than the other way around. And I think I learned how to get a better feel for a great performance doing all of these live shows and also how to work fast.

Do you approach a mix that you've been involved with in the tracking stage differently from one that you are only mixing on?

Yes, I do - with fresh ears If I track an album I'm also producing it, 99 times out of 100 at least. So I do a lot of the production stuff going to "tape" and I know where I want the mix to end up while tracking. When I only mix an album I have to add all of these things in the mix to give it my specific sound.

 

[Castillo]

...

David,
Can you tell us about the chain for the bass on The Fathomless Mastery? Was it one clean channel and one dirty? Was it recorded with a guitar amp? That bass tone is one of my favs as far as death metal goes.
Thanks

I'm glad you like it. I tend to spend a lot of time with bass sounds, so I'm glad someone noticed it...hehe.

It was a long time ago and my memory is not the best I'm sure that I didn't use any guitar amp for the bass. And I'm pretty sure it's a D.I mixed together with one clean bass amp and one distorted amp.

 

[Castillo]

...

This!
Can you tell us anything about the guitar tone aswell? I know there is a HM-2 involved (read something about a Peavey Bandit too), but the rest seems top secret.

Yeah, the band have told me to keep this as a secret:Spin:

But I can tell you that we used the HM-2 and no Peavey Bandit. We had the Bandit in the studio at the time but it didn't make it all the way to the album. To be honest I don't think it made it very far at all.

 

[Castillo]

...

David,

On Dead End Kings how much post processing did you need to do to make the keys fit into the mix? My band has a lot of keys and sometimes its a struggle getting everything to blend nicely.

It varies, it can range from nothing at all to A LOT - with the latter being true in the most cases.

But bare in mind that a lot comes down to arrange and produce the song and the keyboards the right way. Every sound and element need a thought behind it.

 

[Castillo]

...

Noticed you also use the Focusrite Liquid Mix.... they seem to be going cheap on ebay these days and I didn't realise they had a distressor emulation. Worth getting then?

Yeah, that thing is a beast. I use the Pro tools HD version though. It's worth getting just for the distressor alone

 

[Manicompression]

Do you have any favorite delays or verbs for vocals that you return to often?

I use my M5000 a lot and for delays I love tape delays.

Do you have any tips for making multiple vocal tracks gel together and sound singular rather than a collection of disparate performances?

Do you mean for doubles or harmonies?

Do you tend to favor Halls or Plates or ... what would your general starting point sound like ? I meant for doubles in regards to the vocal cohesion question.

 

[Capitancambarro]

...

Liquidmix is definitely the most underrated piece of software in history. I am using it since ages as well and I sold the hardware and went with the HD plugin (which I bought for like 50$ or something) as well and it's stable as hell and has almost no latency whatsoever. It's an absolute must-have plugin for me. The distressor rules on that plug. Lives on my snare channels.

 

[Castillo]

Do you tend to favor Halls or Plates or ... what would your general starting point sound like ? I meant for doubles in regards to the vocal cohesion question.

Plates for sure. I tend to use Halls more for "FX's" than for normal reverbs and rooms.

To create the kind of doubles I often like (which are super tight and perhaps not the traditional way of doing a double) comes down to being super picky when you track them. Make sure the timing and pitch is perfect. And if that wouldn't work out, just edit the hell out of it

 

[Castillo]

Liquidmix is definitely the most underrated piece of software in history. I am using it since ages as well and I sold the hardware and went with the HD plugin (which I bought for like 50$ or something) as well and it's stable as hell and has almost no latency whatsoever. It's an absolute must-have plugin for me. The distressor rules on that plug. Lives on my snare channels.

I'll second that

 

[Trevoire520]

This has got me really tempted to grab a liquid mix now, I've seen the LM16's go for £25 on ebay!

Anyone successfully using the Liquid Mix on Pro Tools 10 & OXS 10.8? Looking at grabbing one as they're so cheap now but it doesn't look like it's compatible :-/

 

[Daniel Morales]

Hi David,

Again, Excellent job.
About the J. Renske's vocal arrangement. Is there any Melodyne work or something like involved? In particular with the harmonics.

Best regards!
Dani

 

[Castillo]

Hi David,

Again, Excellent job.
About the J. Renske's vocal arrangement. Is there any Melodyne work or something like involved? In particular with the harmonics.

Best regards!
Dani

Thanks!

I never use Melodyne but sometimes Autotune. Always in the graph mode though.

 

[Rhorschack]

The drumsound on DEK is super tight, defined and punchy. I guess there must be a little trigging going on at least on the kick.

Do you often use drumsamples and for what specific use (reinforcement, punch, consistence) ?

Do you send them in your snare bus or keep them on a bus of their own ?

 

[Castillo]

The drumsound on DEK is super tight, defined and punchy. I guess there must be a little trigging going on at least on the kick.

Do you often use drumsamples and for what specific use (reinforcement, punch, consistence) ?

Do you send them in your snare bus or keep them on a bus of their own ?

On DEK it varies a lot from song to song actually. But overall on the album you can find drum samples, yes.

The reason why I use them also varies a lot. It depends on who the drummer is, where and how the drums were tracked. And also what you want to achieve with your end result. I see drum samples as a reverb or a delay on a guitar for example. Try to be tasteful and not overuse it. Always start mixing the song without samples and then if you can find any use for it just add it in.

Yeah, I always send all my snare tracks to a bus even when I don't use any samples.

 

[Klosure]

Hello again!


One aspect of Katatonia and the way I feel they sound on the latest albums (specially the last main album Dead End Kings) is the "filtered" nature of the sound. I assume some of this is done is arrangement and sound choice. But I would also assume this has to do with how you approach your mids.

Your vocal chain from your interview is:

SSL EQ, LA2A, UAD Pultec, Waves Q4, Waves R-DeEsser

The settings are probably very interesting ... but in this case I was more wondering how do these get used. For me the first EQ is usually to cut. Then I would normally compress maybe boost with a character EQ ie SSL and compress a bit more. I see you use the Pultec - is that typical. And again the Q4 - I usually would use this to cut.

Thanks for taking the time to answer this David, as I improve my questions will too hopefully