Mic placement for death metal

  • Thread starter Thread starter Necromaniac
  • Start date Start date
N

Necromaniac

New member
I've been messing around with mic placement and cant get a good sound. I have a shure sm57(of course) and when I record my guitar there is a crazy amount of low end. I want to bring across a really heavy sound but cant get it. When Im playing it, it sounds great, but on playback its all crap. Is there some trick for heavily distorted guitars?
 
In my experience (and this is no offense to guitar players) what sounds good to them live is rarely appropriate for recording....a lot of that probably has to do with room ambience and personal taste as well. Do you have a way of isolating the amp so you can judge the sound from your studio monitors alone? That's where I would start. And mic placement (at least for me) has never been as critical in getting a more "metal" sound as much as getting a good guitar/amp sound to begin with. I would try this: record your sound direct not using a mic to begin with. If your sound is horsesh*t for what you're wanting to accomplish, then it's your sound that needs adjusting, not the mic. If it sounds good, obviously it's mic placement. I tend to place a 57 1" to 3" from the grill at a slight angle pointing in. If you want more of a live feel, move the mic farther away. But what do I know.....I'm just a drummer with some recording gear!
 
where to start let me see here no matter how i say this you wont believe it ,oh yes ok less distortion makes for bigger sound, turn your gain down about 25% on your amp put your mic about 1 inch in front of the amp and if you have to mics put another 1 foot away from the amp to catch the room ambience and keep the volume low on the one that caught the room ambience, but anyway track it and then turn around and do another track of the same thing only this time adjust the eq a little different and then what you do is pan one hard right and one hard left and that should have a much fatter sound for you, if you record it with the gain all the way up the problem is that it sounds very fuzzy in the digital world, whats that you want a fatter sound than that ok well then here is what you do take and record the same thing again but with the clean channel this time and this has to be played exactly the same as the others so it dont stick out in the mix pan it hard right then play it again and pan that onehard left, now with these two clean tracks you want them way back in the mix volume wise there are just there to add a little punch and if played exact they will do just that, try it and you will see, another thing try detuning your guitar and run very heavy gauge strings that will help alot, drop it down like half a step or if you run heavy enough strings a whole step that realy gives you a aggresive tone that you wont believe. feel free to check out some of my stuff its not death metal and thats not the tone im going for but i cut my gain back 35% after someone told me to try it and im much happier it sounds so much better. anyway i wish you alot of luck and dont give up, what kind of amp are you using? and maybe what kind of pickups do you have youve gott the mic wright the sm57 wails on anything out there for instruments in any price range no studio should be without them. if you have anymore questions you need answered wright away feel free to email me flash2ace@yahoo.com i dont always get back here wright away.
 
Put the mic up close, roll off more bass than you think from the amp. Backing off a bit on the distortion is also a good thing.
 
Less distortion and bass it is than

Ive heard from a few people to put the mic in the center of the speaker but at a 45% turn is that true?
 
alot of the angle you use depends realy, start with a 35 and work your way more if needed, to be honest i dont use any angle just straight in front of my amp about a inch away. but yeah the distortion cut is a must, and i could help you more if i knew what kid of amp you have.
 
now this is my shit....

Necro, it can be tuff at times to get a really brutal sounding guitar tone. Everything everybody said is right on track. I tune to bflat, and my bigest problem is controlling the low end, now thats the problem.
 
i tune to stright A and back off the distortion a little bit. sounds killer.
 
Yep...

What flash2 wrote earlier is also an excellent point. I use 3 guitar "parts" to get a wall of sound (the Metallica Black albumn theory). I record the main guitar track in stereo. I then (via digital editing) take one of those tracks and delay it from the other just a hair (maybe .055 milliseconds? Sh*t....I don't remember the number)by move/pasting it forward. EQ the two parts differently and pan each one hard left & right. Then I go back and record the same part again keeping it 12 o'clock high. I generally scoop some mids out of this center part and keep it lower in the mix using it as a "thickener". Having the other 2 guitar parts panned hard, and having this center guitar track with scooped mids will allow you to fill out the guitar sound while leaving a nice little sonic "void" where your lead vocals can sit in nicely. You can have your guitars "cranked" but your vocals come through nice and clear without jumping out of the mix. This is by far the greatest trick I learned in producing/mixing rock music. USE IT! This info is nothing new to most folks around here, but it never hurts to mention it again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top