Tips for recorcording a progressive metal album...

[RythmicIllusion]

Hey All-

It's been a while since I posted on here. Been spending lots of time practicing and experiencing music in it's various forms, headed to Berklee in January too. Looking at jemsite again, it's good to see that nothing has really changed...this is still by far my favorite internet forum, just needed to step away for a while.

So I am engineering/co-producing a metal album for my best friends' band, Manifest. They've been playing together for a few years now, and in the past 1-2 years they've really developed a signature sound. If you want an example of what they sound like, listen to Broken Fortune here. I really believe in these guys, I really love there music and they are a bunch of animals.

The guitarist and I both live together, and we are recording another band before we dive into the next 'fest instalment. I am very new to this game however, and was looking for any tips or experiences that anyone might have had with recording in (roughly) this genre of music. My setup is a 1.5 Ghz Powerbook w/2GB Ram, Lacie D2 250GB triple interface(FW 400 and 800, USB2.0), Digi002, Mackie HR824s, soon to get a Mackie 800R 8chan preamp, along with a bunch of shure sm57s, a couple ksm32s, a beta52 kick mic, and an sm94 small condensor (with access to a blue dragonfly). We will be recording the vocals, bass(direct), acoustic guitars and percussion here in my apartment, while the drums and amps will be recorded in a basement and in a professional recording studio that I intern at. I am very open minded when it comes to music, I love to experiment.

Any audio examples of recording people have done would be slick. We are going to spend months of this to get it as good as we possibly can. Thanks in advance for all your input. It's good to be back!

Many Thanks,

-Andrew Renault
Boston, MA

[jemaholic]

You obviously have a grasp of what you need to do.

Remember that it's not a concert and your best tones will be captured at lower volumes and performed seperately from the other players.
I find if I run a scratch guitar track that will be re-done later, there is no pressure and the drums and direct bass can be recorded together.
Go back later and record bass mic'd for texture.

The biggest secret I can share is to screw around until you get the BEST SOUND WITHOUT EFFECTS.

Record everything dry and you will be rewarded with a clean, seperated recording that will sound great on any player.

Less Is More.

[RythmicIllusion]

Thanks jemaholic, your advice is all dully noted and much appreciated. I do have many ideas and a pretty clear vision on how things should sound, but Im no eddie kramer...yet

I am only limited to 8 tracks at a time, so most things will be done seperatley. I had thought about doing the bass direct, but Im gonna try micing the bass and see what it sounds like. In terms of volume...the amps that we have available for tracking all sound amazing loud (soldano slo100, mesa dual rec black face, marshall jcm2000 dsl 50) and not so great turned down, but I know this also the area of the sound that's gonna take the most tweaking to get it as close as possible to our envisioned tone. Definetly will be tracking everything as dry as possible, adding the effects in mixdown that only really help the song and spice up duller textures.

I'll be sure to send along some stuff when we get our first decent mixes. Thanks a ton again!

[Two hands31]

Don't use EQ when recording. Ever. If it doesn't sound right, fix it at the source (whether it's the amp settings, the mic choice/placement, the drums, the singer's technique with the microphone, whatever). This way things will be easier to mix and sound much better.

And I'd disagree about the recording things separately thing. Definitely record bed tracks live as a full band off the floor. For example:

Slipknot's latest album was recorded live off the floor with the amps in iso booths. The drums from those takes were used as the final takes, and they added overdubs to clean up/add to anything from there.

Given your situation, I wouldn't expect to get many keeper takes from the bed tracks, but if you use them as a guide for the overdubs, you'll get a better overall energy to the tracks.

I know GGGarth (a.k.a. Garth Richardson) uses a PA instead of headphones when recording. He sticks the amps in some sort of isolation booth or box (depending on what he has available) and close-mics the drums as much as he can. He's gotten really good at minimizing bleed. And any bleed he does get sounds great and adds to the atmosphere. Another good example of this is Alexisonfire's latest album. George (the screamer of the band) had PA speakers pointed at him and cranked when he was tracking vocals, and it really added not only energy to his performance, but overall beefed up the sound of it. This might work for the vocals on this band.

And best of all: be creative.

[RythmicIllusion]

Thanks two hands. I would love to track everything live, and we probablly are going to for the rough tracks of each song. You also assumed right...i dont have nearly the capacity as Rick Rubin (no huge board, insane mic closet, mansion to record in). I have a decent project studio in my room, a decent basement where the band records, a decent closet for iso work, and access to a pro studio for mixing. so I doubt we will be able to use the drum tracks from the live sessions. However, the drummer is very talented and injects that "live" energy whenever he plays, and sounds great when its just him recording. Wish I could, but Pro Tools LE only lets you record 8 tracks at a time, and we are going to use all those tracks for drums for sure.

I LOVE that suggestion about using PA speakers. The vocals are very angry a lot of the time, and I think doing something like that would be awesome. The singer is a nut and loves the music loud, so we might get better energy that way. In terms of setting up the PA, performer placement (he would be holding the mic probablly). eqage of music coming out of the speakers...any general rules or tips?

[Jeff]

Depending on the amp, the best tones will not always come at a low volume. If its'a a tube amp, crank it, even if you're in the studio (just be sure to wear ear plugs!)

[RythmicIllusion]

Definetly....Ive heard my marshall turned all the way up, sounds great...the slo 100 one of the guitarists has is rediculous even at 2, and the rectumfryer sounds good round 4+...tube amps need to have the power tubes working for them to really show their true color(s). Loudness isnt a huge issue since we will be tracking in a basement, prolly just gonna throw a good amout of insulating materials around the amp area when we do the guitar tones to kill off as much room sound as we can

[bduersch]

Maybe this will be of a little help...

http://www.naughtybutterspoon.com/fa...ts.html#making

It's the "documentary" of how my last band recorded a mostly live record in my basement--it discusses a little about what gear we used and how we set it up.

--B

[bduersch]

I should add that since we recorded that CD in 2002, we've further upgraded the studio gear (now using the gear described here: http://www.naughtybutterspoon.com/studio/ ) and have been getting much better results. The biggest improvement came from investing in a better sound card (the M-Audio Delta 1010LT) and a couple more compressors (Behringer) & preamps (ART). Nothing fancy, but better than nothing.

The biggest challenge for us (every time) has been getting the drum mix right... essentially we have 7 mics on the drums, mix them down to stereo using a studio mixer, then add compression & effects and record them in stereo. That makes it difficult (if not impossible) to adjust the mix later. The alternative for us would be to record each drum to a separate track, which would allow us to change the drum mix later, but then we don't have enough inputs on the sound card to record everybody else (2 guitars + bass) live. Since everything sounds tighter when we record live (plus we get a little "bleed" between the mics, which makes everything sound fatter as well), we've decided we'd rather keep mixing the drums down to 2 tracks up front and deal with the consequences during final mixdown.

--B

[RythmicIllusion]

I read through your documentry, it seems really similiar to what we will doing and gave me some good insights...thanks for the heads up! I like that you did in fact use the basement for some verb...what sorts of things did you use it on(distant drum sounds, vocals) and did you experience any sort of problems with this that needed to be polished before it was mix worthy?

Thanks for all the tips so far, I've been learning stuff everday that im itching to try once i get my setup.[/i]

[Drew]

Hey Rhythmic, good to see you around here again, man. Since then, I've left the Burlington area for Waltham, MA- where exactly in Boston are you?

Gotta add a note of caution to the "everything cranked" comment- yeah, tube amps can sound really good really loud... but they're also harder to record clearly- you run into problems with sound pressure levels re: the mics, and while sometime that poweramp crunch can make a tone, sometimes a quieter, clearer tone sits in the mix better. Record a few both ways- I've noticed my Nomad is probably happiest in the 2-4 range for the sort of distortedsounds I like to go for (although, I LOVE what happens to the clean channel as it gets louder than that).

Best advice I can give for tracking rhythm guitar, though, is to use less gain than you think you need, and at least double everything up. It may take a few adjustments to your palm muting technique to get it to sound right (for me, I notice that as the gain goes down, to get the right "chunk" while muting, I have to mute closer and closer to the bridge, for a subtler effect), but as the gain goes down, the attack and "snap" of the rhythm track goes up- you get a more aggressive sounding, more explosive guitar tone. Sometimes it's nice to add a really distorted track mixed back a bit too, but i rarely record rhythm on my (admittedly gainy as hell) nomad much above 5. On my old TSL, 6 was about tops. Your guitarist will bitch and whine, but hey, you play too, maybe he'll give it a try.

-D

[RythmicIllusion]

Drew-

Good to hear from you as well. Im in the back bay, about a minute walk from huntington ave. I start class @ Berklee in the spring, im very excited about that. Pretty close to fenway as well...quite the place to be a few weeks ago go sox!!!

I definetly wanted to try a range of volumes with the amps...just so long as the power sections are really working. I've heard about mics distorting on loud amps, and since I will be recording this all digitally I want to make sure that nothing is clipping at the recorder stage. We are going to be using some pretty amp friendly mics (shure ksm32s and sm-57s) at least, so we will be able to crank things up without having to worry about damaging the microphones.

In terms of gain...yeah, we want some definition and the guys ususally don't have the gain maxed out. The gain on the SLO is usually around 12 oclock actually and that is still quite severe. I like that bit about the palm muting thing...another thing we will have to try and experiment with for sure. Definetly gonna be doing lots of double tracking and using a y switch to track two amps at once, see what combinations work out.

How are things going with you? I've been to waltham many many times...and what are you up to music-wise right now?

Thanks all!

-Andy

[bduersch]

Originally Posted by RythmicIllusion

I like that you did in fact use the basement for some verb...what sorts of things did you use it on(distant drum sounds, vocals) and did you experience any sort of problems with this that needed to be polished before it was mix worthy?

We really didn't do anything to dampen the "live" factor of the basement (which was pretty live, with 4 cement walls & a cement floor), so in effect, it colored everything a bit. When we recorded the base track, we had 7 drum mics (one bass, one snare, 3 toms, 2 overhead condensers) + one mic on each guitar cab (both on the other side of the room) + ran the bass direct as well as through an amp for monitoring. Given this setup, we got some natural bleed (a little drum in the guitar tracks, a little guitar in the drum track, a little bass in every track). But even just recording solo drum tracks using the 7 mics had a very natural reverb. When we overdubbed guitar solos, acoustics, vocals, etc. we typically used just a single mic in the middle of the room--we didn't get the thickening effect of multiple mics, but again we didn't do anything to stop the natural reflections off the walls.

Some of the earliest problems we had with the drums, I believe, were some very strange overtones and echoes that we couldn't get out of the mix later. We did a few things to fix... First, we replaced all the cables for the drum mics. When we started we had all sorts of different cables of different lenghts, and we bought a big batch of cables so they'd all be the same. Also, we paid a lot more attention to the position of the drum kit in the room... sometimes certain drums in certain locations in the room would ring out obnoxiously, and moving the drum set a foot or two would take care of the problem. Finally, we did as much as we could with the EQ on the mixer... rolling down the lows on the condenser mics & the snare mic, boosting highs for more cut on the bass drum, etc.--I think it helped in eliminating some of the unwanted/conflicting frequencies. So nothing overly complicated, really, but just something we had to learn from experience as we got the room set up.

--B

[pagliai]

My opinion:
1.record the drums in a good drum recording studio
2.double ryt tracks and pan them hard l/r
lch for example soldano - rch marshall with the same poweramp for example strategy mesa
You can go :guitar-effect-distro switcher-1out sansamp-2out amp-pre out-poweramp-cab1-sm57/md421(close)akg414(3)room mics(1 3'from the amp)(2'n'3 at the room corners on top)
at the end you'll play with 2 sansamptracks and 5 amp tracks so mix them(pan pot the room mics like you 'll put in the room left-center-right)and the other mics and sansamp like you like.
3.Bass-d.i.box(demeter audio)-switcher-1 out amp with md 421 close-2 sansamp so you'll have got 3 tracks mix them and go on tape.
Buy recording and producing in the home studio berklee and ..
best of luck
alex

[The Dark Wolf]

You seem to have the right 1. Ideas, 2. Equipment, and 3. Advice. Here's some thoughts.

Everyone has a different recording philosophy it seems. While Two Hands full band bed tracks to track drums is a nice idea, it's by no means gospel. Sometimes different approaches work for different songs. Just look at Led Zeppelin (maybe that's what makes each song still sound so unique).
Myself, I like to track drums with at least bass and guitar, but what I really like is playing along with a metronome as well. Just feed it into the monitor mix. But! Some people just can't seem to play with one.
As well, it's (generally) a better idea to at least track drums with 4 tracks - 1. Kick 2. Snare 3. Left (can be a mix of toms and overheads) 4. Right. You can achive that with a sub-mixer. Even better is kick, snare, OL, OR, main drum mix L, main drum mix R. But again, experiment. I have no problems tracking drums only on 2 tracks like bduersch.
Are you using the KSM32's for drum overheads? If so, I think a decent choice there. If not, have some good condensers for overheads.

Have some decent compressors handy. You can handle that at the computer, but I like to track dry, with minimal (or no) EQ, a good mic pre, and a decent compressor. Esp. for main vox, and for drum tracking.

Recording bass I think many have achieved a good result with a combination approach, ie., using both direct and a recorded tracks, then blended together. Some people really like ribbon mics for bass, but condensers work great, long as they can handle a decent SPL. (A direct bass track will give you plenty of fundamental, though, so you can record the bass amp at whatever volume works, more for the good bass "tone.")

I like main vox mono, rather dry, sometimes with some chorus. I love backing/secondary vox either panned or in stereo chorus. This is a neat trick for chorus sections of songs. For drums - kick goes mono middle, snare/hi-hat maybe panned JUST a bit right, ride cymbal (if mic seperately) just a bit left, cymbals and toms in stereo where they tend to sit in the mix. Bass, mono middle generally, and rhythm guitar tracks panned left and right, hard, with overdubs wherever sounds interesting. With your guitars panned hard L/R, this REALLY creates space for the main vocal and/or lead guitar, and makes for a better stereo image IMO. But again, look at Led Zep. They tried so many tricks, that it almost sounds like a diferent band each song, and that's kinda refereshing in these days where we know how to "do it all." Creativity matters.

My 2 cents. Good success on your endeavour! It's a LOT of fun