What do you think of this tone?

philbagg

philbagg

Just Killing Time
The guitar tone (in other words, forget the MIDI bass and MIDI drums).

I'm gonna get back into recording some metal, and I've been listening to Iced
Earth a lot lately, and am in love with the tone. I don't want to match it
completely but it's an idea of where I want to go.

I'd like to hear some opinions :D

My recording.

Iced Earths

Oh, and FYI, the song is based on The Divine Comedy (Dante's Inferno), for
anyone who thinks they're just singing about Satan for a laugh :D
 
Sounds great Phill, enough balance in all frequencies and a nice low end. Would be a keeper for me.;)

Joey :):):):)
 
Yea, I like it too. Great job spreading out the sound. This is like a good ol'e dose of ROCK slathered on a piece of bread and spread around like crunchy peanut butter, I love it.
 
I think it sounds pretty good. Jon Schaffer is probably my favorite rhythm guitarist and has a sound that I have tried many times (unsuccessfully) to emulate. I think guitar tone wise, you are pretty close (I'd imagine you don't want to be too close), but I think a lot of the way his guitar sounds is from the way he plays it and the way the bass and drums play along with him.
 
joeym said:
Sounds great Phill, enough balance in all frequencies and a nice low end. Would be a keeper for me.;)

Joey :):):):)
Click to expand...

Thanks Joey :) I'm still tweaking it slightly. A tiny bit of verb just to push it
back slightly and a slight cut in the low mids. Hopefully it'll work :D Not to
mention I recorded that on a Les Paul that was NOT made for distortion,
especially of the metal kind. A better guitar should work wonders ;)

onestu3 said:
Yea, I like it too. Great job spreading out the sound. This is like a good ol'e dose of ROCK slathered on a piece of bread and spread around like crunchy peanut butter, I love it.
Click to expand...

This.. I love :laughings:

FoulPhil said:
Not too bad. Good start you just need a screaming guitar solo and some suitable vocals :D
Click to expand...

I wholeheartedly agree :D and it's definitely on the cards with my own music ;)

Although if you're basing that on Iced Earth's sound, screaming guitar solos
were never really their forté. They also rarely had complex drums, or complex
bass lines. If you listen to some stuff from the Burnt Offerings album (which
is what that clip is from), most of the drum sound is kick and snare, with
very little overhead blend. You also get the occasional tom hits, doused in
reverb. I think it works perfectly though. They're all about vocals and riffing,
and Matt Barlow and Jon Schaffer are the only two men for the job.

bozmillar said:
I think it sounds pretty good. Jon Schaffer is probably my favorite rhythm guitarist and has a sound that I have tried many times (unsuccessfully) to emulate. I think guitar tone wise, you are pretty close (I'd imagine you don't want to be too close), but I think a lot of the way his guitar sounds is from the way he plays it and the way the bass and drums play along with him.
Click to expand...

Thanks d00d :D I agree about Schaffer... The right-hand rhythm of God himself.
I think one of the main things about his sound is the palm-muted chugging.
It's the best kind I've heard from any guitarist. The guitar never sounds muddy
or fizzy. But when he starts palm muting (and at that speed), you just get
this WOOMF!! from around 150Hz or whatever. Amazing.
 
Nah not comparing it to any band LOL

I would like it more if it had those things because I like screaming solos and vocals that fit the music. I hate when the music sounds good but the vocal style sounds gay. It's just an opinion, but most bands have weak sounding vocalists that don't really fit too well with the music in today's heavy metal.

I don't like too much HIGH pitched vocal I like more mid range. Judas Priest has a good balance of mid range with the occasional high. I dig JP :D

And does every song have to start with some clean tone shit? LOL

Burnt Offerings doesn't have so much high screaming.
 
FoulPhil said:
Nah not comparing it to any band LOL

I would like it more if it had those things because I like screaming solos and vocals that fit the music. I hate when the music sounds good but the vocal style sounds gay. It's just an opinion, but most bands have weak sounding vocalists that don't really fit too well with the music in today's heavy metal.

I don't like too much HIGH pitched vocal I like more mid range. Judas Priest has a good balance of mid range with the occasional high. I dig JP :D

And does every song have to start with some clean tone shit? LOL

Burnt Offerings doesn't have so much high screaming.
Click to expand...

[video=youtube;<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="https://www.youtube.com/v/9oLVJhok0e0&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="https://www.youtube.com/v/9oLVJhok0e0&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
]video[/video]

Go to 4:50 :D That was the first thing I thought of when you said that. But
yeah, for most of it, they're pretty ballsy vocals. Barlow's one of my favourite
singers of all time, Tim Owens' downfall is that he joins bands where he cannot
compare to the previous vocalist, like Matt Barlow and Rob Halford.

You also reminded me of this:
[video=youtube;<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="https://www.youtube.com/v/XbqicjEboHc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="https://www.youtube.com/v/XbqicjEboHc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>]video[/video]

Hilarious :laughings:

So, anyway. Now that I'm getting pretty close to the guitar tone I want, I
started work earlier on by programming some drums. I quickly came to realise,
that for a lot of styles of music I can get away with it. For metal, I probably
can't. Double bass drumming = machine gun sound. And the fast snare hits
sound awful.

Somebody wanna play drums for me? :D
 
I know what you mean. I like EzDrummer and all, but places that I wanted to use a blast beat or a fast double bass had to always be replaced with a slayerish thrash style beat instead.

Kind of sucks, but I always made it work anyway. I haven't met anyone who knew it was a fake drums because I learned a few tricks.

Anyhow, the drum machines are good for arranging songs and having them in a really tight time. You can use the guitar track as a throw away just to have something for a real drummer to play to that you know for a fact is on time. It helps a lot in song writing as well.
 
I was using Reason Drum Kits 2.0, and made my own "kit". Have it set up so it's
kind of realistic. Some of the drums will split and pass through an EQ and take
some stuff out, add a bit of room reverb and get the pans to match and you've
got your overheads. Similar things can be done for stereo room micing, and
there's a little spill of some drums onto other "mics" etc. It sounds phenomenal
for some slower stuff, or even faster stuff as long as it's not 16 kicks per bar
and a metronome-like snare.

Soon as I put the double bass drum beat in, it sounded like a machine in
operation. A lot of "noise" (in this case, the beater) in the higher frequencies,
and just a constant rumble/set of frequencies in the low end. So I tried setting
the decay of the drum very quick. It sounded a lot better, at the price of the
balls of the drum. I'm left with a click drum, not a kick drum.

I might just use em as rough tracks to record some stuff down to. Maybe I
might find someone here who fancies doing the drums for a few songs or an
album. I don't have the equipment or facilities to record drums in my place.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top