Wall of Sound Recording

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frankthetank727

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I am looking for some tips on how to get a "Wall of Sound" sound on my recordings. Not the loudness and volume we hear in the many recordings today that are just over-compressed, but just a true punch you in the face sound i.e. Devin Townsend/Strapping Young Lad, Carcass's "Heartwork", Neurosis, etc. Tips for Drums, Guitars, bass and Vocals would be plausible. Thanks in advance!
 
1. Don't overcompress
2. Don't let the mastering engineer overcompress either
3. Less is more...
 
There was a thread dedicated to this not to long ago try the search function.

But what it boiled down to was placement of all of the musicians together in one room and recording them all with 1 microphone.
 
I don't think this cat is talking about old school Spector sounds.
 
Armistice said:
1. Don't overcompress
2. Don't let the mastering engineer overcompress either
3. Less is more...
Click to expand...

This is really good advice, but the old stuff from Carcass and Neurosis is actually extremely compressed, it just does not have the extreme digital brick wall limiting on most modern metal records. A couple other things is those records have a very human feel to them, the parts are not super quantized, and there is a good amount of space in the arrangements. There are not lots and lots of layers, just a few big sounds.
 
For a DTP/SYL style sound it's all in the layering. Go look up "supercrush pro tools skool" (It's one of the songs off of his new album) and there are so many little keyboard parts and vocal harmonies in the background that you barely notice but they really fill up the songs.

Get a kind of trebly kick drum sound going (Almost the same pitch as the snare) and make it LOUD. You really want to feel it. Think like Love? style for the kick drum.

For his guitars it's nothing special. Double or quadtracked Mesa Boogie (Now he also uses an Axe FX for some things).
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For the vocals what he does off of Addicted is brilliant. All of the screams have like a telephone style EQ or something on them, like a low pass filter that cuts off all of the high frequencies so he'll layer the scream 3 or 4 times and pan it outward, but because all of the high frequencies are gone you don't notice that its been tracked so many times it just sounds huge.

In general he just double tracks his vocals and pans them outward. Either one track center, or two tracks panned out left and right a little so they still sound centered but it's thicker. They're all exact enough so theres no chorus effect.

For the big yell things he just does two tracks or something of a low growl and a high scream so it's like a big punk yell effect but with scream yells.

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That concludes my SYL rant o.o
 
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