Mixing for Power Metal

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Docaroo

New member
Hi There guys,

I play guitar in a Power metal band (Gamma Ray/Dragonfroce/Iced Earth kinda thing) and was wondering... do you guys have any tips for mixes of this tricky genre?

we will be DIYing our next Demo, was wondering if anyone can offer advice on the general mixing process to acheive the "sound" of power metal. It's very guitar based, but vocal melodies are important - drums have to be tight, audible, but subtle - keys have to fit in there too... Any help appreciated!

Here's some mp3 examples of the "ideal" power metal sound (I know they are quite different but gives a full idea of the genre - as perhaps not alot of people have specific experience with it).

DragonForce

Sonata Arctica

Blind Guardian

Angra

Iced Earth

Also, don't confuse with Heavy Metal or things like that, where chunky, heavy and in your face "wall of sound" guitars reign... everything has to be tight, but balanced with guitars and vocals driving the melodys and riffs if you get what I mean!

Oh and here's some our our songs in midi format (written in Guitar Pro):

http://www.ascensionband.co.uk/samples.html

Thanks for your time!
 
Dragonforce is one of the VERY few new bands I have liked in the past 10 years

Their drummer sounds like a sissy version of scott travis, but it is obvious he is actually badass, and the recording didnt do it justice.

You say "subtle" on the drums, but I really felt if there were ANY weakpoint in the dragonforce Valley of the Damned thingy, it was the drums.

These drums were played AMAZINGLY! But sound like sissy little girl crap

I would toss out the "subtle" as painkiller and fight proved you could have a BRUTAL drum sound along with the most technical guitars ever and not have a problem. In fact this is the ONE type of thing I wish to record above all else.

I have mixed likely 50 sissypunk albums where the drums sound WAY tougher than the ones you mention, and these emo-weenies wear their sisters pants!

Sorry for the rant

I wish you good luck with this and hopefully maybe keep me posted. If you were ever in phoenix Id love to record this
 
omg that post has got me SOOO confused dude lol....

Ok maybe I don't mean "subtle" drums - compared to some other genres they are anyway. lol - ok everything is pretty much full on it the mix, which means its difficult to give one piece the lead and have everything else follow, when everything is trying to lead haha!

I don't know what you mean about painkiller and fight dude, those are not my bands songs - it seems from the post you thought they might be lol.. im not sure, like I said confused!

Those list of bands are the bands we aspire to sound like - I would really like to get a sound heading in the "gamma ray" direction, sorry theres no clips of them.

The only songs their of my band are these midi files:

http://www.ascensionband.co.uk/samples.html

I have all our songs on midi if you are interested in hearing, but maybe I'll let you wait til I pump out this demo - see what you think :)

I'll take you up on the Phoenix offer haha, but don't hold your breathe we are a good 10 hour plane flight away lol!
 
Ok I re-read your post 2 more times and finally get what your saying haha... I skim too fast!!

Anyway thanks for reading!
 
Fight-War of Words

and dont laugh Judas Priests- Painkiller album, both featured scott travis on drums

The technical guitar skills on those two records was on par with dragonforce, but the drums beat the HELL out of you

Seems like a lot of this "Iceland Metal" or "powermetal" or "Nordic Metal" sometimes has too much egos from one band member or another, and it shows in the album of one instrument obliterating the others. It probably comes from a PRIME influence of the genre's, Yngwie

Les Claypool's

GUITAR oh and other stuff stlye mix of Rising Force set the stage for so much of this
 
hey I love Painkiller... that drum intro has me CRAP my pants ever time I hear it..

I slam that on in my car and totally nail the volume up - PRIEST KILLS EMO DEAD!!! haha

Love it... anyway... back to the power metal tips!! Actually... you know what, I'll give it my best shot mixing it how I think it will sound.

Screw trying to sound like another band, its our band,our sound - it's whatever the hell we want!

The next you'll hear from me are the mp3s in a week or 2 :)
 
If there's a weakest link in Dragonforce I think I would pick the keyboardist or the vocalist. I think the drummer is one of the best out there. Their albums are recorded in perfect time at some ridiculous tempos. I think what he meant by "subtle drums" was the use of compression on the drums, especially the snare. It sounds very articulate.
 
The singer i knda ill but I thing thats popular like that in Viking Metal

I know the drummer is badass in dragonforce, just the recordings make him sound like a supercompressed weenie, and the drum samples they pick are kinda "meh"
 
yeh but you you really imagine having something like the painkiller drum sound sitting in THAT mix?? at that speed, and with the crazyness of Dave's drumming?? hehe it would be tricky... interesting though :p

Anyway, yes by subtle I really should have said well compressed, as everything is very uniform in volume...
 
I can imagine! Its a challenge and would be awesome. I think too many times, more especially in death metal, it has become the defacto laziness to default to "fingers tapping on a mic" drum samples for the kick. It doesnt have to be that way.

To me this is one of those examples of nonorganicness which could REALLY be improved and possibly even make the music more appealing to a wider audience

I was thinking up some of the more obvious GOTCHAS that nail me when working on this type of music. First thing that comes to mind is the bass guitar.

Seems you have two choices on these styles usually:

1) Bury it
2)FLAUNT it

The recording itself (and especially the bass player's skill) can necessitate choice #1 and preclude #2 pretty easily

If going with the bury it style, I usually hear a lowpass on the bass guitar, somewhere WAY down there, usually near the first harmonic of the key of the song above the 120hz-ish area of the kick. So for the key of D say, around 160hz ( some wiggle room above the harmonic at 147)

From there the kick drum sidechain controls a compressor to duck the bass guitar whenever it hits, and this is usually after te bass guitar has already been squeezed to hell and back to absolute flatness.

Multiband compressors were a godsend for this stuff, and as much as I usually cant stand them, it sure gives you some serious control over the three or four areas of bottom which are always SO HARD to compromise together on a singleband compressor.
 
If you want to flaunt it, the bass part itself must be able to do two seemingly diametrically opposed things, be able to stand on its own and also TO FIT THE DAMN SONG!!!

The recording chain and more importantly player technique will need to be capable of absolute clarity, OR a distortion tone with some serious uniformity. Any hint of fartiness, flim flam or rubber wrist will make it impossible to flaunt usually.

Sometimes you can still sidchain the kick to the bass guitar here, but the difference being you may only want the lows in the kick drum area to be controlled, with the rest left alone. It can unmuddy the bottom real fast

One thing that can SERIOUSLY be a deciding factor on what frequencies the bass guitar can hang out in in one of these mixes is the choice of guitar tuning. Past a certain point usually D for the low E, but certainly by C#, the lower you tune the guitar, the HIGHER pitched the gutar will end up souinding in a mix

sounds backwards but its not! When that sound comes out of someones suckblaster card into their chintzy little speakers, the low tunings will effectively tune the bottom right out of hearable range and bring the nex higher harmonics down and louder into a more obvious place. Its a funny phenomenon, but easily testable.

Invariably people will try to turn up the bottom that they cant hear anymore, and it WILL fight with the bass guitar and kick, often necessitating those awful "fingers tapping on mics" kick drum samples. I say forget that technique, use the hearable upper harmonics of the guitar to fool you into thinking the lower fundamentals are there. This technique works for all sorts of things, and hinting at bigness usually ends up with a bigger sound than just cranking mud.

If done right, itll leave room for the bass guitar to have not only a hearable, but solid place to live (many times people will lose the solidity when making tones and behaviours for a flaunted bass)

Another one that will SEVERELY limit the range of the bass guitar is "cheater tunings" on the electric guitars. Cheater tunings such as "dropped D" or the same deal with the guitar tuned lower but keeping that dropped d relationship.

I have yet to be able to record a cheater tuned guitar in anything resembling in tune. I have never heard one on any album anyone else has ever done either. A live recording, or showing up at a gig confirms that even those ones which appear to be drop d on an album, when actually played live in dropped d have the same damn problem. I have never heard even the biggest names play dropped d in tune. When I find a studio album which seems to have been done in dropped d, I am often able to confirm thatfor the recording the actual guitar was just tuned down and with a normal relationship.

The difficulty in controlling that simple bar, usually where one string is bent more than another, and perhaps the laziness or lack of technique that would cause the desire to play in drop d anyway, ends up with a WIDE unintonated mess at the bottom of the guitar's range. If the bass guitar features frequencies anywhere NEAR these, the whole thing will quickly sound like out of tune mud. If you are stuck with drop d tunings, you will usually have to high pass the guitars, and/or completely ditch the range of the bass thatis anywhere near the guitar's bottom
 
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