Need advices for mixing Orchestra with Death Metal

[Yass_Saracens]

Hey everyones,
After many months of watching tutorials, learning how to produce Metal music and practicing, i finally started recording my own album (a personal project started with Demo on 2009 and now i'm working on an album composed since more than 2 years). It's a kind of mixture between Death Metal, Symphonic Metal and Oriental Metal

It was a real hard work and a baffling problem because most of the tutorials that i found talk only about guitars, bass and drums, and few ones talk about orchestra and how to mix it properly.
Anyway i tried my best, especially to find compromise in EQing between guitars/strings and drums/ethnic percussion, and here is a preview of one of the songs (without vocals).
I will be very grateful if you give it a listen and give me some advices to advance and to get a good quality (For the guitars focus only on the sound please, it's not the final recording and of course there is some mistakes).

I'm sorry if my English sucks, it is not my mother language.
Thank you guys and stay Metal \m/

Greetings from Paris.

(Preview deleted)

 

[inertia]

It's very difficult to answer your question. A lot of people come here and throw up a song and say "how is my mix?" Well how do you want your mix to be? Do you want it dark and gloomy or bright and clean? Without any direction from what you expect the sound to be how can anyone give advice? If you have no expectations for your mix no one can critically say if you have succeeded or failed.

Sure, I can give my subjective opinion on what I think your mix should sound like but is that helpful? It is helpful to get 20 different replies all contradicting each other or making recommendations based on how someone else wants to hear your mix?

When mixing in orchestra I think the important distinction is to use instruments in the frequency range not used by the bass and guitars. Therefore, you probably want to look at frequency ranges of each orchestral instrument and try to avoid clashes.

 

[Yass_Saracens]

Thank you for your answer Inertia, i was about to give some references but i saw that in most threads those who post their work for feedbacks don't give any direction for the sound expected.
Anyway, my question was: is it correct? I means without looking for any references, can we hear all the instrumens and is it a good balance? And if i should give a reference it will be Epica - The Obsessive Devotion*: http://youtu.be/2B5TA5oerk8

And to help you there is:
- 2 guitars (one left and one right) and in some riffs they are both duplicated for more power
- A bass track with double effect (pod x3 live) one of them is distorted
- The drums are from Superior Drummer 2 with my personal preset (a lot of EQing and other stuffs in this plugin before start mixing)
- Full strings track
- Low strings with some low brass track
- Staccato string track
- Horns and trumpet section track
- Wood section track
- Harp track
- Flute Track
- Timpani track
- Darbuka track (ethnic percussion)
- Choir track
- Some samples and effects


Finally i want something bright and clean with a little bit of darkness and quite powerful and punchy.

Thank you guys for eventual feedbacks.

 

[inertia]

Most people are lazy or don't really know what they are asking.

I can't give a deeper analysis since I am at the office on cheap speakers. I can say that your guitars probably want a low cut up to maybe or above 100hz to help make room for the bass instruments and give more clarity to the guitar. I am having trouble discerning your kick drum in certain places but that could be the speakers. Oh i hear it now...forget that.

I can hear most instruments , so I guess your mix is adequate in terms of balance.

 

[Yass_Saracens]

Thank you again.
If you didn't hear the kick drum correctly from the beginnig it means that something is going wrong on the mix, i'll give it some boost between 2 and 3kHz for more presence.
And by the way i have a question, after programming the midi drums i export each element on a single WAV tracks then i add those WAV tracks to my mix project. My question is: should i export those elements on mono or stereo, or it depend (for exemple toms and overheads on stereo, kick and snare on mono)? I still feeling that my drum need more punch and i don't know what to do, it's already EQed and limited with some saturation for boost.

 

[Yass_Saracens]

I made some corrections and i changed the file uploaded on the first post.
I added some punch to the drums especially the kick drums and little bit more saturation, i changed the guitar lead with another version made by flute and horns. But i didn't add a low cut for guitars on 100kHz as you suggested cuz it's already on 110kHz.
I changed a little bit the global EQing on mastering too.

 

[newamerikangospel]

Don't worry about writing low strings. You should write a symphonic piece with the idea in mind that your guitars will be a cello section and the bass guitar the bass/contrabass. If you start packing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th octaves with information, it will either need to be supportive (everything plays the same notes) or it will become impossible to mix everything without being cloudy or sterile/tinny. I do a lot of symphonic metal and am writing a symphonic death EP. I rarely touch my string bass library, and cellos are used for supportive obstinatos and/or root supports and only for effect. Low brass can be the downfall in your mix if you aren't careful. It sounds massive in an orchestral context because of how unpredictable/varied the tone itself is (the warbling, chorusy like) and the overtones it creates, but is very unruly in a tight aggressive modern metal mix

One of the Septicflesh "Prometheus" releases had several orchestral isolated tracks, which shows how they eq'ex everything as well as how the guitars and bass are written wih the orchestra. I would recommend listening to that and trim from there. Just like in a regular mix, the mix sounds massive because everything is working together, not because everything is massive sounding by itself.

 

[Yass_Saracens]

Yes i listened to the last album of Septicflesh before starting mixing but what i don't like with their mixing (excellent by the way) is that the all sound very dark, i even watched all the making of of this album and they said that their aim was to get the most darkest sound, things that can't fit with my music.

 

[inertia]

And by the way i have a question, after programming the midi drums i export each element on a single WAV tracks then i add those WAV tracks to my mix project. My question is: should i export those elements on mono or stereo, or it depend (for exemple toms and overheads on stereo, kick and snare on mono)? I still feeling that my drum need more punch and i don't know what to do, it's already EQed and limited with some saturation for boost.

What are you creating your drums in and why do you need to import them to a mix project? Don't you have a VSTi already in your mix project?

Depending on how your drums are setup (I use Slate Drums 4) i have the group outputs set like this

kick : mono
snare : mono
toms : stereo
overheads : stereo
hat : stereo
room : stereo
ride , splash, crash : stereo

Since only the kick and snare are truly centred in the mix then all other output busses need to be stereo. I would assume the same is true for your own mix.

If you are exporting each drum as an invidiual track that requires no stereo information then you can use mono tracks and pan them as you wish. If your VSTi is grouping your drums and panning them then retain that with stereo tracks.

 

[Yass_Saracens]

What are you creating your drums in and why do you need to import them to a mix project? Don't you have a VSTi already in your mix project?

I do that to avoid using a lot of CPU on my project and to be able to add VST effect plugins for mixing, so in my project there is only WAVE tracks with their plugins effect and there is no VSTi at all.
The VSTi that i use and especially Superior Drummer "eat" so much ressources and if i just try to put them on a full project with more than 20 tracks (each track with a lot of plugins) my computer will simply crash.

Anyway my mixing is getting more and more better, i will post a new version soon

 

[Alex_M]

Hi man!
If you take Epica's song like a reference just try to analyze how it sounds, where is the place for every instrument in the mix.
Drums sounds like typical VST drums, kick and snare-nothing special just readable in the mix, no extra low end on the kick, overheads just clean and clear (not too loud, not too high).
Bass does all lowend work and has a bite of overdrive on the top.
Guitars has low cut somewhere around 80-100 hz and high cut at 6-7 khz and they also pretty dry, no reverb.
All orchestration focused in middle-high range when all instruments playing together, all low end for bass and kick.
Also try to listen some modern Dimmu Borgir records, in my opinion they sounds much better but shows similar approach.
All the best

 

[Yass_Saracens]

I just uploaded a new version of my mixing and mastering work, but this time with another song from the upcoming album.

I'm more satisfied with this sound but still need the opinion of the experts here.

Drums sounds like typical VST drums, kick and snare-nothing special just readable in the mix, no extra low end on the kick, overheads just clean and clear (not too loud, not too high).

Thank you Alex for replying but i'm confused here, are analysing my drums sound or the one of Epica?

Also try to listen some modern Dimmu Borgir records, in my opinion they sounds much better but shows similar approach.
All the best

It's done

 

[Alex_M]

Thank you Alex for replying but i'm confused here, are analysing my drums sound or the one of Epica?

You're welcome! All what I wrote was about Epica sound, their drums, guitars, bass etc.

 

[Yass_Saracens]

You're welcome! All what I wrote was about Epica sound, their drums, guitars, bass etc.

Thank you Alex, but i'm not sure that the drums of Epica are made by midi and VSTi.
Anyway, i deleted the preview cuz i've found the sound that i was looking for.
Stay tuned for the full album soon