Old school death metal big drums, wide guitar?

G

Goreliscious

New member
Hello all,

I recently recorded my band's EP, very DIY and tiny amount of gear but good results thanks to great advice from users of this forum! Thankfully a mate who knows what they're doing has offered to mix the recordings for us but for my own personal interest I'd like to have an understanding of how to achieve the sound we're after.

Can anyone explain to me/link me to a video that explains how to get the guitar spread and big drum sound like this? ‪Entombed - Wolverine Blues‬‏ - YouTube
Obviously I recorded everything in a way to best help achieve this sound and I completely understand that a DIY recording will never come close to this, but I'd be pretty chuffed if we could get something remotely similar. I'll be giving this album to my mate who's gunna mix our recordings as a reference point for the vibe of what we're after. B.T.W, we have 1 guitarist.

Cheers
 
Goreliscious said:
Hello all,

I recently recorded my band's EP, very DIY and tiny amount of gear but good results thanks to great advice from users of this forum! Thankfully a mate who knows what they're doing has offered to mix the recordings for us but for my own personal interest I'd like to have an understanding of how to achieve the sound we're after.



Can anyone explain to me/link me to a video that explains how to get the guitar spread and big drum sound like this? ‪Entombed - Wolverine Blues‬‏ - YouTube
Obviously I recorded everything in a way to best help achieve this sound and I completely understand that a DIY recording will never come close to this, but I'd be pretty chuffed if we could get something remotely similar. I'll be giving this album to my mate who's gunna mix our recordings as a reference point for the vibe of what we're after. B.T.W, we have 1 guitarist.

Cheers
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The sound of Entombed, & early Immolation are very similiar...
That is a whole lot of guitar layering...and panning.
I'm sure there was plenty of reverb used to make that HUGE death metal sound of the 90's too.
They (alot of death metal bands in the 90's) also used the Yamaha SPX effects series at time also.
I have an old VHS tape that explains this sound you speak of.
I personally like the sound (tone) on Entombed's "Left Hand Path".
 
B.T.W I watched a decent youtube video a while back that explained that just copying and pasting the guitar track left and right makes no difference to having one track up the middle cos you get the same thing coming out the speakers. They did go onto some phase cancellation stuff but I wasn't interested in that.
 
Sounded thin, just didn't like the sound of it.

I've read that you can double track guitars by duplicating the track, nudgeing it 10ms out of time, then panning 1 hard left and 1 hard right, (but they always add the caviat of it sounds crap and you shouldn't do it), but I gave it a go just to see what it sounds like. It sounds big but I can hear a bit of phase cancellation thinness. Got that "being played backwards through a vacuum sound" slightly. Aside from recording a 2nd guitar track, how do you double track without phase cancellation?
 
Goreliscious said:
I've read that you can double track guitars by duplicating the track, nudgeing it 10ms out of time, then panning 1 hard left and 1 hard right, (but they always add the caviat of it sounds crap and you shouldn't do it),
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I always thought this was a viable solution if you didn't have two separately recorded guitar tracks, but recently I've been reading threads mentioning the 'haas effect' which basically says because of the way your ears use the subtle delay in the time sounds take to reach each ear to work out which direction sound is coming from, if you delay one guitar slightly and hard pan it, it will always sound like it coming slightly more from the guitar track without the delay on it and sound lob-sided. Any thoughts anyone? Solutions?
 
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benage said:
I always thought this was a viable solution if you didn't have two separately recorded guitar tracks, but recently I've been reading threads mentioning the 'haas effect' which basically says because of the way your ears use the subtle delay in the time sounds take to reach each ear to work out which direction sound is coming from, if you delay one guitar slightly and hard pan it, it will always sound like it coming slightly more from the guitar track without the delay on it and sound lob-sided. Any thoughts anyone? Solutions?
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If not done correctly this will give a reverb-like effect and often sounds muddy. I would just double track the guitars (2 left, 2 right) edit them tight as fuck and then blend them together. I usually pan one wide and one hard on each side. You may run into phase issues but these usually work themselves out during the timewarp when editiing. If not just flip the phase on one track.
 
benage said:
if you delay one guitar slightly and hard pan it, it will always sound like it coming slightly more from the guitar track without the delay on it and sound lob-sided. Any thoughts anyone? Solutions?
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Thoughts - if you have to read about it to know about it, it's not something you're noticing anyway, and if you're not noticing it anyway, does it matter? I know where you're coming from though, I'm just playing devils advocate.

2 left, 2 right - do you mean record 4 tracks or duplicate the original track 3 times and pan it to varying positions?
 
rfahey86 said:
If not done correctly this will give a reverb-like effect and often sounds muddy. I would just double track the guitars (2 left, 2 right) edit them tight as fuck and then blend them together. I usually pan one wide and one hard on each side. You may run into phase issues but these usually work themselves out during the timewarp when editiing. If not just flip the phase on one track.
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Thanks, yeah The thing is I don't actually play the guitar and tend to use samples or amp sims, and I was wondering about spreading synths and trying to work our different ways of widening them.

My computers down at the moment and have several things I was going to try, The problem I find with choruses and spreaders is they always seem to 'wander' from left to right, like there's a signal within the sound moving back and forth which changes speed when I adjust the rate knob but never goes ( maybe I'm doing it wrong)

I was thinking of the pitch shift thing but dont like the idea of if someone is listening to just one headphone it would be out by a bit. I thought maybe if I use the 'analog' button on the synth it would vary the pitch randomly which might work.

The main way though seems to be delaying one side by 10 milliseconds(ish) but now I've heard about this 'haas effect' I'm a bit worried about that, although I've heard this technique recomended several times so not sure what to believe.

Thought about using the humanise function to vary the timing slightly at random, but If there were long notes maybe it would still lean then.
 
Goreliscious said:
Thoughts - if you have to read about it to know about it, it's not something you're noticing anyway, and if you're not noticing it anyway, does it matter? I know where you're coming from though, I'm just playing devils advocate.

2 left, 2 right - do you mean record 4 tracks or duplicate the original track 3 times and pan it to varying positions?
Click to expand...

I didn't notice it when I played some of my old mixes, but then thought of switching my headphones round and sure enough it's leaning, must have just got used to it, maybe increasing the volume slightly on the delayed side might compensate this, I'll try that.

Yeah its not the end of the world but I'd prefer it if it didn't.
 
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