Heavy, low-tuned production I did this weekend (Ultrabrootz, F# content)

[Nolly]

Hey dudes,

Just wanted to share a track I produced, mixed and mastered this weekend with a client - RUIN. It was pretty tricky to work with the F# tuning (with bass down the octave lower), but I'm really happy with how it came out.



Fairly standard recording procedure - Axe FX 2 guitars, Darkglass B7K into Chandler Germanium for bass, SM7b to Audient MiCO for vocals, and Toontrack drums.
Any questions, feel free to ask!

Cheers!

 

[shredder10]

Not available :C

 

[Nolly]

Fixed, there was a space in there somewhere!

 

[blue_fAng]

is it the final mix? everything sounds very good, the guitars are too fizzy for me, but very nice mix. the song is great too.

 

[shredder10]

I actually like the guitars like this
Great job!
i feel i've heard the dude on the box before lol
Is that a TTrack kick??

 

[medic999]

SICK! any advice on how you achieved such good separation? the drums are so clear and stand out very well

 

[Nolly]

is it the final mix? everything sounds very good, the guitars are too fizzy for me, but very nice mix. the song is great too.

Cheers! Yep, it's the final mix

I actually like the guitars like this
Great job!
i feel i've heard the dude on the box before lol
Is that a TTrack kick??

Thanks dude, indeed it is - it's the default Toontrack Metal Machine kick

SICK! any advice on how you achieved such good separation? the drums are so clear and stand out very well

Thanks! I guess the separation just comes down to frequency management, and also I've found that using Slate's VCC plugin on every mixer track can be very good at dialling that in too - depending how you set it you can glue everything together into a wall of sound or separate them out. For the drums, loads of parallel compression to give the shells more sustain works for me

 

[HollowmanPL]

Sounds nice Nolly!

 

[giubis]

So good Nolly!
Is that a Toontrack Metal Machine snare?

Giuseppe [giubis]

 

[Nolly]

Cheers! Yep, that's the Black Beauty snare from Metal Machine

 

[Shinozoku]

Nolly, are you the same Nolly from the BKP forums?

The mix kills... I love that this band, though using 8 strings (?) which I grew sick of a week after they first became popular, are actually doing something different with them, It's simpler, not trying to be djenty... There's shades of deathcore in the breakdown (plus the Meshuggah-y ambient leads), but they really saved the song by not just chugging on the same note. There was actually a riff in there, and the following one ruled.

I love the separation, the clarity in everything. Did you have to do any pitch correction to some of those guitar parts where the strings went sharp and fell back to the fundamental? It's a very purposeful effect, and I would personally be shitting my pants worrying about having to fix the tuning.

Did you do the track on their Facebook page, too? It has the same killer separation... Good lord... The bass/kick interplay in the verse is demonic!

 

[Nolly]

Nolly, are you the same Nolly from the BKP forums?

The mix kills... I love that this band, though using 8 strings (?) which I grew sick of a week after they first became popular, are actually doing something different with them, It's simpler, not trying to be djenty... There's shades of deathcore in the breakdown (plus the Meshuggah-y ambient leads), but they really saved the song by not just chugging on the same note. There was actually a riff in there, and the following one ruled.

I love the separation, the clarity in everything. Did you have to do any pitch correction to some of those guitar parts where the strings went sharp and fell back to the fundamental? It's a very purposeful effect, and I would personally be shitting my pants worrying about having to fix the tuning.

Did you do the track on their Facebook page, too? It has the same killer separation... Good lord... The bass/kick interplay in the verse is demonic!

Hey yep that's me, but I didn't record the band's other track, just this one!

Glad you dug the mix. I don't use pitch-correction on guitar tracks, I just do a lot of tuning by ear for the low string so that it sounds right for the various sections. There are a couple of spots where we wanted the strings to do the whole going sharp thing - to me it can sound really aggressive and intense in the right places, but most of the time I have the guitarist track with a light pick (anywhere between a .50 and .73) to keep the strings sounding very in tune at all times.