In which order do you approach your metal mixes and why?

[Ermz]

Overheads, rest of drums, guitars, vox, keys/misc, bass.

 

[RiF]

Overheads...

I heard a lot of times that people start with the overheads and do not go further unless they good a good drum sound just out of them. Everything else (drum-wise) just supports those. Makes sense to me.
Don't know if this applies to metal as well, though. Metal drums seem to have less overheads nor room sound at all sometimes... not that I like it that way, but it sounds like this.

 

[ahjteam]

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/8065710-post6.html

 

[Jevil]

1. Panning Drums -> Inserts on Drums -> Vols On Drums
2. Inserts on bass -> Vol on Bass
3. Panning Rythm Guitars -> Inserts* -> Vols On Rythm
4. Panning Leads And Solos -> Inserts -> Vols On Lead and Solos

5. Sends to everything -> Vols

6. Pan Vox -> Insert on Vox -> Sends to Vox

7. Vols on All.

 

[Trevoire520]

I heard a lot of times that people start with the overheads and do not go further unless they good a good drum sound just out of them. Everything else (drum-wise) just supports those. Makes sense to me.
Don't know if this applies to metal as well, though. Metal drums seem to have less overheads nor room sound at all sometimes... not that I like it that way, but it sounds like this.

This is more a tracking than a mixing thing, but yeah in metal because of the amount of sample replacement going on you'll find most people are just going for cymbals in OH's rather than getting their drum sound from them.

Personally I always start with OH's when tracking, trying to get a decent picture of the whole kit in them before I get my spot mic's up.
I've even done a drum session where I went Brendan 'O Brian style and started out with a single room mic and then built the rest of the setup referencing to that.

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

Pretty much start with the foundation of the mix which is drums.

So,

Kick
Snare
OHs
Toms
Bass
Guitars
Keys
Strings
Leads/Solos
Vox

 

[VH1]

Drums>Guitars>Bass>Vox

+1

 

[sprack]

Rhythm guitars to click -> drums -> leads -> bass -> vox.

 

[P-E]

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/8065710-post6.html

This.

 

[colonel kurtz]

for rock/metal i always start with drums, because they're the force behind the music. then i bring in the guitars, then add the bass after that to fill in the low end...after that is synth/vox/whatever

 

[ze kink]

I started typing all kinds of shit and I realized that I don't really have an order I usually follow, I tend to go with what my intuition tells me. I like to start with drums and that's about it. I might start out with a soloed kick, or then a stereo room while bringing the other tracks up or... If I lose my "flow", I might end up scrapping everything and starting again in a very different way.

But yeah, mostly I'll just put the faders up somehow and listen until I just intuitively start somewhere.

 

[Charles J]

Overheads, rest of drums, guitars, vox, keys/misc, bass.

exactly how I approach it, too! Except I usually get a rough sound on the bass before working on gtrs..

 

[Ermz]

Fair point man. Doing the bass last came as taking a pointer from one of the major label mixers who mentioned that she always found the bass wanted to eat up all the room in a mix, and as a result is one of the hardest things to tame. So I tend to like sculpting my mix first, making sure the guitars are nice and thin on their own, and then just seating the bass to fill the gaps. Doesn't always work exactly that way, but I suppose that's the idea behind it!

Doing guitars/vox together is crucial IMO. The way they eat up the same space in the midrange makes balancing one impossible without the other. The high mids are especially dangerous, because that's where all the vocal clarity lies.

 

[Soundlurker]

I think that once you get the vocals to sound natural and the guitars to sound balanced, there isn't a big clash going on, especially when you consider the manner in which the two are panned. Yes, their core is pretty similar frequency-wise, but they should complete each other and fill the stereo image nicely.