mixing heavy music

[guhlenn]

as a sort of addition to the heavy reference list, I would really like to discuss some mixing techniques here of the heavy engineers/producers.

I got new monitors and all of sudden i can see why compression sucks. LOL I put on the American HEad Charge album and really missed the defintion in guitars and the overall picture was like... well like a 3 year old just got his first set of paint... the soudn was everywhere but nowhere at the same time.

So i put on some of the cd's you guys mentioned in the "heavy reference" thread. DAMN! Soundgarden's superunknown; i really liked that one before but now.. my god is that a great mix or what? That guitar sound is to die for!

Korn's first album was killer also, i mean it was raw, heavy and well *fill in some subjectiev statements*. Not like the overproduced nu-metal that si supposed to sound like Korn at all.

So then i had manson's anti christ superstar which was a bit of a dissapointement. It sounded good but not great, but that could be because of the power that the korn album had just delivered. I liked Coma white more... more articulate sound...

Ok, moving on I put in Tool's AEnima (i found lateralus to be a bit harsh..). I'm a big fan of Tool, but i'm not sure i like the way the thing was mixed. I noticed that the panning was really all over the place (intended ofcourse) sonetimes panned hard left/right, then center then everywhere. Maybe it's something i'm not used too (my home stereo mad it soudn completely different anyway...)

This is getting to long so i'll stop, but please tell me how you perceive these albums and whetehr you have other techniques i should check out (and how did the tool engineer achive that weird panning thing? multiple tracks?)

Thanks!
g.

 

[earworm]

antichrist superstar and lateralus are my two favorite albums

not the best sounding on earth,but i love them

lately i tried to get real heavy sounds, loud and fat,
but in the end it just always sounds like i overdid it,

i prefer to keep some headroom, and not to make the music PUMP like a motherfckr

if you mix it decently and not TOOOOO loud, you can always turn the volume up later when you're playing it back,
but if you just overcompress or over-limit it, you can't make it sound less trashy with a hifi system,,,,


i don't ever try to sound like Korn or Tool, but they are my "directions",
i love the snare sound on the latest Korn cd,
and i'm also a great fan of the overal snare sound on that Tool album i mentioned

musically i can i enjoy old cds more than the newest Loud stuff,
the older cds give me less of a headache,,,,

maybe we're doomed to make everything as loud as possible, but it might change, one day the ears of all the consumers will hurt so much that they'll scream for NORMAL music


at least,,,, i hope,,,,,

 

[Ronan]

I got new monitors and all of sudden i can see why compression sucks. LOL I put on the American HEad Charge ....

I think you are probably talking about hating hard digital limiting. Compression is the sound of heavy music. Badly done hard limiting can really start to smear a lot of imagine and definition of an album. Unfortunatley it has become the standard and if a heavy album is not really hard limited it comes off as sounding soft. Too bad. If you want to hear some over the top hard limiting, check out almost any black metal album from the last few years.

Ok, moving on I put in Tool's AEnima (i found lateralus to be a bit harsh..). I'm a big fan of Tool, but i'm not sure i like the way the thing was mixed. I noticed that the panning was really all over the place (intended ofcourse) sonetimes panned hard left/right, then center then everywhere. Maybe it's something i'm not used too (my home stereo mad it soudn completely different anyway...)

.... (and how did the tool engineer achive that weird panning thing? multiple tracks?)

Aenima is amazing. I love the album and its some of my favorite engineering of a heavy album of the last several years. The last two records were recorded by David Botrill who is amazing! David was the engineer for a band called King Crimson and then I took over his gig as their engineer for a couple years which was really intimidating tyring to fill his shoes. David really knows how to capture the power of a band.

Start listening to more CDs now that you have your new speakers. You will notice that a lot more records have panning moving around from hard left to right ect, than you may expect. I love mixing records this way.

 

[Sonixx]

I love Tool... I haven't been in a Tool mode lately... They're going in car right now.

I love Aenima except for all the fucking profanty... Undertow is my favorite though.

I'm listening to Aenima-Stinkfist right now... the opening guitar(s) are really in the center... very narrow and then they start going all over the place... opens up a bit later, but still narrowly focused... the Snare is excellent... there's a lot of room for the kit.

-keith-