TGCD - Impressive?

myownsilence

myownsilence

The Influenced
Jan 10, 2007
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www.myspace.com
Ive really grown to love this album to bits, its by far the best tut the production of the album theyve produced.

Ive also managed to learn a hell of a lot album and just wondered if anyone else has used it in this way.

I got some great production techniques if anyones interersed to reach close to the sound?
 
Ok..

Well I'll put one thing down at a time, tell me your views etc.. oh and Anders (or any other band member who can put their labido to one side for a moment) please comment if I am of line here.


1st. Mix into a buss compressor, Like the Waves SSL 4000 buss comp. I use a duende which basically give you a very similar compressor to that of the album - they mix into an SSL mixing desk, however the real thing will set you back more than you possibly earn in 10 years. Set it to pump a bit, some experimentation is required to not have the mix going wild.

Many alternative freebies, see whats around the net.


I'll tell you about the bass next....


By the way...

Ive become a bit of a rogue engineer, I'm getting pissed of with every musician being so caught up in their fame and profesionalism. Since working in IT for 4 years its seems to me the music industry has one big problem. Its up its own arse so far its actually a joke. I would love to work with bands like Katatonia, but no more than I like a Geforce grafixs card (hey no offence Katatonia the musics great, but my sanity is waiving). Its good stuff but why does it have to be so hard to actually work in it like a job. The fame aside, I love sound , and I love music, but this image crap has to end. Personality kills good music (except if your last names Jackson then it kills a career... ok ok sorry that was uncalled for hehe!)
 
2nd Bass Check out sidechaining. Bass!!ically you need a compressor on the bass guitar to accept a sidechain on the input from the kick drum. This causes the bass to duck under te kick creating even more pump. Its a great technique used on dance music and works well in metal/rock as well. Check out Reaper which is a great recording program like cubase only a lot cheaper that has great sidechaining built in.


Next Guitar
 
Sorry, but what's so special about using a sum compressor in the mastering or sidechaining bass with kickdrum? Its stuff that pretty everyone uses.
Of course the SSL has a special sound, the eq's and the compressor... and the slight pumping really could be the SSL 2-Bus compressor.
But its a bit like saying, they used a bit of stereo-widening in the mastering or the added some reverb and delay to the vocals. Normal stuff, right?

I wonder what you will write about the guitars.
"the rhythm guitars are recorded through a tube amp and quad tracked"?

I'd say TGCD sounds good because they used high quality mics, preamps, effect units, and took their time with tuning drums, micing drums, and choosing the right placement of room mics.
 
Um..

The sidechaining might be obvious to some mate but no to others...


but obviously you didn't pick up on the guitars.


The guitars are done in a M+S style.


Record one guitar, and pan in centrally.

Record another guitar in stereo. This can be done by recording the guitar and copying itself onto another track and panning the two copies left and right.

Now the key to the next bit is to Phase invert one of the guitars, tis can usually be done by pressing the phase invert button in your sequencer. Now playing with the center volume on the first guitar you can "play" with the stereo mix of the guitars widening the sound without killing the sound.

So you see a bit more than quad tube bollocks (wtf was that about??)

Quality is important but its also very little to do with the sound in this case. The microphone on Jonas voice is an AKG solidtube - they ditched the £1200 neumann for a £400 mic that I use myself. Yes a great mic but its not quality on kit, its quality of skill. It doesn't matter how much you spend on your kit, trust me, if you can mix it with the skills it will sound worse than shit kit mixed well.


Now if you wanna add some critisism to what I am saying I encourage it as I am also learning as I go so please bring it on.

But don't diss the SSL buss compressor, it changes a mix far more than you can imagine (and I know for a fact that they used it).

If this stuff is obvious to some of you thats cool, I just felt that many would not realise it. Go for it get a stereo compressor and put it over your mix (use ezdrummer or something in cubase or reaper and jam along to it with a stereo comrpessor on the whole mix. Set the release and attack times low. Put the threshold around -2 and the ratio around 1:2. Let me know whether you feel it makes a difference.


ohh and play with the M+S trick.
 
When they were recording the album they posted up a pic of blakkheim recording guitars.. specifically mentioning him quad-tracking the rhythms. I take it you are only learning, but try not to be so condescending. What you've said about the guitars is not correct. Here's why: If you simply copy a track and pan it left and right it will sound the same as if it was mono. To have any thickening of the sound you would need to delay one of those tracks (hass effect, etc), however recording separate takes as tight as possible and panning l+r it preferable to this (if you want to know why I suggest trying it yourself..). Also... if you have to copies of a track and invert the phase of one, what you will hear is silence. That's basic audio theory, as the opposite wave-forms cancel each other out.

Its fun to learn though... good luck with actually doing some of that...
 
Fair enough about the quad tracking, Jens Bogren (the engineer of the album) confirmed this information for me.

However also jens informed me that the quad tracking is a layering of amp sound, swapping the amp heads to create te right balace, this will not give you the depth of sound!


However please understand I have been doing this for some time now so i am not that new at it - just not as experienced as Jens!

The phase inversion will cancel out the instruments however this will only occur in mono (hense why this idea is popular as a lot of people listen on single mono speakers -ie Radio and you will notice the center however always remains) - so when you pan left and right the sound is not canceled out, only it becomes odd to the ear, hense why you need a second guitar in the center.

By placing a second guitar into the center of the mix you create what is known as a Mid + Side recording, a classic trick that I would love to go into but do not have quite that much time.

Sorry you have nt heard of this technique but it is popular, more infor can be found here:

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=596976&Main=593413

To be fair my technique is a quick fix for this to work, after all mid (center) = left plus right, side = Left+inverted right, so a mono center + a phase inverted left or right on a stereo pair will produce a simar result.


For the rest of you just try it! Confirm it. If I am wrong and the guitars are normal and just paneed left and rigt then the volume should increase if you play a track of the new album in mono left +right guitar = twice as much guitar volume. However if they are phase inverted with a guitar in the center, only the center guitar remains, with the 2 outside guitar cancelling each other out.


Anyhow no condasending ment, I just wanted to share some advice. It is pretty much correct, but this is due to some assistance along the way.
 
I know the M/S technique, and I used it on Violin and acoustic guitar.
It's good for room information, and you can adjust the "wideness" of the stereo like you want in the mix, but it wouldn't make much sense on rhythm guitars. Maybe if you use a M/S as a roommic for the guitars...

And I worked on an SSL 4000 console, so I know its benefits.
I never dissed the SSL bus compressor... btw. how can you say how to put the threshold, when you don't know which level my signal has?

You're right, many people don't know the sidechaining effect, but what I wanted to say is that if you know the trick, it doesn't give you the bass-sound Mattias has on TGCD.
If you want to achieve this sound in the first place you should find out which Bass guitar and amp he used.

The Solidtube is also a quality mic in my opinion, and its the engineers ear that will you make choose one mic over another.
That demands some experience.
 
ok..

M+S is very popular on guitars, I've tried this trick recently and its worked really well on my own recordings.

According to Jens who engineered the latest album sidechaining is the key to bass sound.

The Buss settings that I provided are usually the right starting point, but again they were also suggested by Jens.

There are many more tricks that were actually passed onto me. Use a multiband compressor to get that kick drum pumping the buss compressor. Waves C4 is the one used on the album, set it to bypass all the high stuff and to work around 80hz.

Unicorn - I am sure you are very competant at using this kit, you sound like you've worked on some nice kit but you are arguing some tried and tested techniques some of which I have confirmed are the ones used on the album, thats why I wished to share them with other fans who may also be curious.

Of course Jens would have mixed this adding the effects and flavour to suit as he went along, so approaching this from the other end, ie applying these tricks has to be done to suit the track, but they are all usefully start points.

The only reason I was a bit dismissive of the quad guitar parts was that it was more to creat the sound of the guitar not the actual separation of it in the mix - you'd need the exact same amp setup to get the sound. If you have multiple amps/heads thats the way Anders would have had his guitars recorded to build up layered sound. However it does not allow it to have the depth of M+S, only the type of sound used the M+S is the trick to great big walls of guitar sound. I tend to have to use a combination of Demonzer, and pure amp to achieve something similar as I dont have an array of amps heads.
 
The majority of my recordings on my myspace site were done when I was 18-21 years old, I'm now 28, I have become so picky that very little of my new stuff has been used.
 
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