D.D.M.

In Mikseri.net: D.D.M.
In Soundcloud: D.D.M.

So, this is a demo of a demo, and the first one where I really got to incorporate Audio Assault's Reamp Studio. I've made this song as such I'd play it myself, kinda for practicing again since it's been what, 10 years since I last recorded something I played myself (that would be the few songs I made for Left side of the track). I'm so rusty that I just couldn't lay the tracks down, so I made a sampleset and tracked the song for now. And there's also quite a few things I did differently than what I've done so far. That applies also to the mindset when I can get those guitars and bass recorded for good; I'm aiming to play each part of the song in full, so there will be no repetition in the performance. But that's for the future.

First thing that was different was that I recorded all samples direct, so I could apply any effect to them if the initial sound wouldn't work. That is an idea I've been tinkering with for years; to have a comprehensive, clean sample pack, so I could use whatever amp sims I see fit.

Second thing was that I basically mixed this in Modplug Tracker. I demoed the sounds there and then just copied them to Reaper when the song was done. Only sounds I crafted in Reaper itself was the clean guitar, since for a brief moment I had this song mixed without intro and outro, despite the fact that I had them composed already.

Third thing is that I switched the file format from .it to Modplug's own .mptm module. That change I did because it handles the tempo better and it seems to work quite similar to .it in other aspects. So now I can make songs in any tempo and not rely on few select ones that hit even numbers (like 90bpm for example, which this song is in for the most part) with the speed and tempo variables.

And lastly, the fourth thing I did differently happened in Reaper; this time I didn't use any group tracks. I found out that the individual tracks' sound affects that of the group track (which now when I think of it is like "duh!"). So when I have a bass for example that already has some modeling going on and then group it for some more modeling, we end up with a sound that is different on the group track even if I'd put the same effects on the individual track. So just to stay clear from any of that, I kept all tracks separate and applied all effects directly to the tracks. So for instance, there are two instances of same effect on different tracks going on in the song instead of one on a group track. But that is not something my pc couldn't handle, so we're good.

So, soundwise this song turned out kinda garage-y, which isn't such a bad thing because it's in line with the first D in the abbreviation of the song title.
I wanted this song to be muddy and I think it turned out better than I had hoped.
There was only a clear vision of the guitar sound in my head when I doodled these riffs; there should be no nice-and-clear high end in the guitars. That was the driving idea behind it all. Everything else just basically (almost) fell into place after that.

At first I thought (and tried) that I'd just put bass, depth and mids on ten and roll off all treble and presence. That didn't work because there was too much bass at that point in the guitars, so I just left bass halfway and depth on ten. That seemed to be a good spot where the guitars became gritty and muddy but not boomy.
I kinda had hit jackpot with the amp model at the start when I went for the AD30 with matching cabinet. Don't know why, but I thought right from the start that Orange would have a gritty sound to it, despite the fact that I've never played real one myself.
After that I just boosted it a bit and added a compressor to tighten the sound. And that's where the right and left channel differs; they have different booster pedals assigned to them, though with same settings. That adds a little flavor there, to not have the exact same sound on both sides. And it's something I like to play around with every now and then.

Bass was giving me a bit of hard time at first. What I had set up for it just didn't work with the rest of the mix, it didn't fit in there. So I scoured through the clean amps, despite the fact that there are two dedicated bass amps in the Reamp plugin. I had the settings for the bass done already; all boom and no blingbling. So, full on everything that goes boom and zero on everything else. Now it was just the matter of finding the right amp and cab for the job because there were no pedals involved. So I scoured first the amps and found out that the Jazz Chorus on bass goes enough boom without distortion, so that was our amp. For cabinet I knew it had to be one of the Marshall's the plugin has.
1960 with Vintage 30's was too much boom, since bass is loud in the song, Greenback cabinet turned out to be a great one; not too much boom and an interesting sound for a low tuned bass (this can be heard before the third verse). Kinda lo-fi in my opinion but that was just perfect for the soundscape I was going for. Now it sat really nicely in there, providing a great low end for the song.

Drums in this song are the ones who really bring the garage to the soundscape. They couldn't be nice and clean and punchy; there had to be dirt in them. So what a better way to put dirt on anything than to drive them through a guitar amp. In this case I used Audio Assault again, this time Grind Machine II. There are only a few clean amps in that plugin, so not much to choose from (and two of those clean ones are from an expansion pack), but then again the cabinet is the one what really shapes the sound, so nothing to worry about.
I had only an idea for the bass drum sound to be kinda "thud"; like you wouldn't have a too good recording space or skills. And it wasn't too hard to find since I have played around with that plugin quite many times in the past. Bassmaster amp and Fat German cabinet -> Fat Bass. ;)
Then just more bass from the eq and mids for some snap and roll off everything else and voilá, garage bassdrum.
Snare, hats and toms were basically trial and error around the bassdrum; just playing with the clean amps and feeling them in the role; what felt good, stayed. After that I applied EQ accordingly; boom to toms, crisp to cymbals and mid(town) madness and crisp to the snare. It was all-in-all pretty straightforward and didn't take long to have a nice garage kit to go with the guitars and bass.

So that was the song for quite some time because in my initial sample recording session I didn't record the notes for the clean guitar. But after I finally got to do it and laid the parts down in Modplug, I went and crafted the sound for it in Reaper.
At first I didn't know what to do with it; should the sound retell the sound of the distorted guitars or be clear as day? So once again I just went with trial and error with the clean amp section in Reamp Studio.
I had recorded the clean guitar direct just like everything else, but with the singlecoil neck pickup instead of the bridge humbucker because the only things I did know were that they would be softer than anything else in the song and they should have the same cabinet as the distorted guitars. That is because in many cases when I compose or mix songs I always think what they would be like to play live. So what I ended up with was a Highwatt DR100 model with a couple of pedals.
At first there was only compressor to even and boost the sound a bit. But it felt like it needed something so I tried a mid boost. Still the sound was somewhat thin and dull, so I thought to put acoustic simulator there for the fun of it. And that worked, it made the sound kinda like a dull, distorted glass of sorts, if that's a way to put it. So in the end I didn't use the mid boost at all. The sound isn't crystal clear by a long shot and it wasn't quite what I might have thought it would be. But I think it works in this context and I really, really like the sound by itself, so that's the main reason it stayed.

So, there we have atleast one song released for quite some time, and blogpost too after like 3 or 4 years. Enjoy the experience.

Self-Inflicted Extinction

Song in Mikseri.net: Self-Inflicted Extinction

This song has been dormant for 3 years. I first pitched the idea of a death metal song where the bass would be just outrageous in 2014. Had couple of riffs in there and I liked it, but I couldn't come up with anything, so the idea eventually died.

The same idea came to me again some time ago while I was working, but this time it was more refined; I wanted to incorporate death metal, doom metal and that outrageous bass.
So the initial end result for the death metal parts was that one guitar would be laying some groundwork with slower doom-like rhythm, other guitar would be tremelo picking some figure in the key of the rhythm. And bass would be doing same as the "lead" guitar, just in a different pattern.
The whole song is based on triads, it's actually a childish, simplistic idea. The speed is the factor here that makes it sound the way it does. Slow it down and it's not so exciting.

At first I thought it would be just a blasting death metal song with the idea of the bass going throughout the song in triads, but when I got the death metal part done, I needed something to transition the song from verse to verse. At first I thought the bridge part would be slow doom-like piece, so at first I made a doom part, but that didn't work. Then I remembered that I had written down the tremolo-part of the verse, so I just took that and made the guitars play it in harmony, so I got my bridge.
I took the doom-part, now unused, and made it into pre-chorus, but what I came up as a chorus just didn't go well with the pre-chorus, so I changed places. It works better that way.

What comes after the chorus is just something I was doodling with, but I thought that it would be just hilarious to have an acoustic part in a song like this (propably there is bunch of bands that have done such thing (Arch Enemy comes to my mind), but I haven't) and it gives a nice contrast.
The acoustic part is the only one that is NOT based on triads in this song. :D

Oh well, so, about the bread and butter of this blog; the mixing.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted this to sound like; fat guitars, clangy bass and big drums. Well that was the initial idea atleast. But it got refined as I started fooling around.
The first mix basically had everything I mentioned above, but I didn't like it as much I thought I would, so I had to come up with something else.
I still wanted to keep some of the elements there, so I tried and found a nice sludgy sound for the rhythm guitar.
This song is mixed basically just with Blue Cat Audio's Destructor, only bassdrum has Reaper's own EQ with the Destructor.

Rhythm guitar achieved the nice, dirty and ugly sound pretty much the same way as the lead guitar; with Destructor's bass amp presets. Since Destructor is basically 2 EQ:s and a distortion module, there is no reason to stick to the "guitar" presets when dealing with guitars.
The lead guitar has a clean bass preset called Aluminium Man, at first I used it for bass too, but it didn't work that well in the mix, so I changed bass to the dirty version of the same preset, so the bass has some distortion in it... Again.

Drums had, well, drum presets at first, but I wanted something else for them. I wanted them to be clear and gritty, so I just shuffled through the presets and eventually set with different prestes of "tape emulations" for the drums. I added some EQ to the bassdrum to make it more prominent in the mix. Some 60Hz boost to give it some oomph and some 4KHz boost to give it some (oh) snap.

This time I didn't do anything to the acoustic guitar. Just raised its levels to match it with the other instruments.

When all that was done I added Destructor to the master track and fooled around with the "mix" presets until I found something I liked. Then I just adjusted the compressor a little and leveled it so that the mix doesn't hit red.

So that was the story of this song in a nutshell. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Miehen Kivinen Tie

Miehen Kivinen Tie
Dynamics are for pussies. ;)

This is my first release with new DAW and plugin that I bought. I got Reaper for DAW and Blue Cat Audio's Destructor mainly for guitar and bass use... But I noticed that it has presets for so much more, so I used it. So basically this is kind of a test run with new equipment. :)

My new workspace ^^

At first I wasn't sure how I would proceed with this song, so I just went with trial and error. As I was testing I decided to just blast the shit out of the mix, so I did.
The drums are the most prominent example of this approach. I played only with the presets here because they are extremely good, there is plenty and well... I haven't gone in-depth with the plugin yet.

For bassdrum I used "Bassdrum Oomph"-preset which turned it kinda like it's from some house song or such... Not so metal. :D
But it's great for this mix because it's easy to pinpoint and it's so out of place here... To me it's so wrong it's great.
I put the same preset on the toms just to make them go BOOM!

Snare and cymbals got 2 versions of "Smiley Exciter"-preset which, as you might guess, is a V-shape EQ curve. It worked nicely as it took both aspects of the drumkit out from the frequency spectrum where bassdrum and toms are, despite the bass boost.

After all that destruction, I made a Drums Master-track where I applied Vladislav Goncharov's Limiter no6 to compress and limit the drums. I compressed the drums with 3:1 ratio, long attack and short release. I also engaged the high-frequency limiter to keep the cymbals in place.

As a pre-caution I also used the peak limiter in multiband mode and the protection module as a final "master limiter" for the drums.

For guitars I used the "Convolution Amp/Cab modeler" provided with Reaper. Left guitar got Fender Deluxe amp with Marshall Cab and right guitar got JCM 800 with the same cab as the left track. After that I looked at the frequency spectrum of the guitars and as a result applied EQ to them. What happened as a result is a bit wide notch around 100Hz to remove the boom from the guitars.

For bass I used the BC Destructor's "Aluminium man" preset that gives bass the grit you hear. As with guitars I checked the spectrum and as a result I basically cut everything around 50Hz, but the notch grows exponentially, so the notch affects degradingly all the way to 500Hz.

After all that it was time for the Master channel. There I also used Destructor and found a preset called "Oomph mix". It basically boosts the whole spectrum, balance leaning towards bass. Afterwards I just applied Limiter No6 again to limit the whole thing to -0.5dB. Destructor has a built-in limiter, but there's no control to it, so I just wanted to make sure the red light doesn't flash, that's all.

The result is something that I haven't done before, but I'm satisfied with it and had a lot of fun fooling around while mixing this. Watch out for your eardrums and enjoy!

Slow In Motion: Stories from a deep place

Slow In Motion - Stories from a deep place

The second installment from Slow In Motion is finished at last! I'm going to talk about the last song of the package, since it's the one that took most work mixingwise and because every individual element explained here is the same in every song where applicable. So, let's get started.

I had a clear vision of what I want from the sound of the second package; fuzz! A LOT of FUZZ! And I got what I wanted.

As you can see, the last song took some doing, since there were many elements to take into consideration.


First of all, to achieve the FUZZ I was after, I went for the guitars. The bread and butter of the resulting sound is Distorque Audio's Face Bender. I was so happy to see that it actually has 2 stompbox effects modelled, so naturally I put one to left guitar (fuzzface) and the other (Tone Bender) to right guitar. I then tweaked the pedals settings individually to go together. The amp sim I used was just some quite random amp I have. To that I didn't do any individual tweaks, just a working base tone to build upon. The result was even better I had hoped, but to keep the guitars in check I put GVST's Multiband Compressor to the group track and squashed bass, middle, and treble frequencies.


The bass (as usual for me) turned out to be a hard one to get sounding good. I've been playing with TSE Audio's BOD for some time before I started working on the sound for this package and decided to use it since every other method didn't seem to work at all. I'm not sure that I can say I'm happy with the result, but it works in this context, so why not? I worked fairly long with the BOD being the one bringing the distortion to the sound, but at some point I decided to turn it around, making BOD more like a booster and eq.
EQ on the bass is well... Bass. I didn't want any clang and sparkle to the sound, since it just sounded weird with the guitars (tried it at one point). After all I put multiband compressor in there, let all the bass frequencies through with some compression (as you can see) and cut the mids somewhat and almost all of the treble. So all-in-all the bass is like a layer of distortion here. And you can hear it clearly at some points throughout the package.

Drums were fairly simple to do because I knew exactly what I wanted and how to achieve it. I just put the drums through Shattered Glass Audio's Ace. Individual settings for different parts of the drums and that was it. The result is very basement-like, but I really like what that amp sim does to that particular set of samples. After that I just put a compressor on the drums group track in Cubase and tweaked it to perfection.


I had some idea of what to do with the piano. There were 2 things on my mind; need to get some life and space to the sound and put it a bit to the background. Well, succeeded on the first and ultimately "failed" on the second. To have some space and life to the sound I used Soft Amp's Flextron DC14. Once again a guitar amp simulation, but who cares?
Most pleasing sound I achieved with the 2000's model paired with 1x12 cab, since I didn't want it to sound "big and bassy" with the 4x12. The life to the sound came through that with heavy middle and treble boost and the space to the sound came with the built-in reverb and ambiance of the cabinet mic. After that I just put a compressor on it and tweaked it a little. The compressor doesn't actually compress but brings it's own twist to the sound. The same thing was actually with the drums, since I used the same plugin called Max Synth's DSP-3. I really liked how it fitted to the soundscape and at first the piano was in the background (in the 9th song, since it was the first to have it) and I thought it was fine. But coming to the last song with all the other elements (mainly the strings) I noticed that guitars pretty much buried it in combination with the strings, so something had to be done. Solution was fortunately simple as to just bring up the level of the piano quite a bit. I had to remix the 9th song because of the changes to the piano and at first it felt like the piano was too loud. But I got over it so quick that I decided to leave it like it is. So the piano sure as hell isn't in the background anymore.


The first "new" thing to work on this song was the violin, which also does something that I haven't had in these songs before; playing a solo. I didn't want to assign one of the guitars to the solo because I wanted it to sound constant, so I had to come up with something else. I remembered that I have many times used a certain violin samples when I've needed one, so I decided to go with that. I've tweaked the violin so that one (the original) is really short on sustain and the other has a buttload of sustain. Because of that their attack (and thus sound) is a bit different from each other. I used the long sustain in the longer notes and the short one in the faster runs.

The solo came to be as I just felt that this song could really use one, so I played around for some time before coming up with the pattern. It's simple, but that's how my solos mostly are as I never see myself as a solo player, so I'm not so good at composing them. Also I have much limitations when it comes to solos since I don't know many scales or anything like that. The solo part is kind of an combination of something older (the rhythm part) and newer (being the solo itself). As I was playing around with the melodyline, I got the idea of combining it with that rhythm. That opened up some possibilities to me since the whole part goes mostly on triplets. I really used that to my advantage on the drums and that's why they sound the way they do in there.

I had the same idea with the violin as I did with the piano; life and space. But this time I didn't use an amplifier simulation. Instead I got the life from Digilogue's ancient Blueline Chorus and the space came from same serie's reverb. I tweaked them to really have an impact on the sound and then leveled it with some compression. But then I had to brought it up aswell since it is after all the one to play the solo and shine in the spotlight.


Last but not least was the strings. I first had them only in the solo part and I really really liked it. But then I thought that it would sound more epic and be more constant if they would be layered all over the song. So I did that and I heard it was good. The strings were fairly simple to get to fit into the soundscape as I only used the DSP-3 to give it some colour and then just searched for the right level for them to be present but not dominating. All-in-all I think I succeeded pretty well. The result is more like an epic melodic metal song than a sludge song, but it fits for the theme of the song a lot better that way and really stands out as a closer to the package.

So, there you have it, long story about a long musical journey. Enjoy!

Black Metal Army of the Seven Nations

Black Metal Army of the Seven Nations

This got started sometime in fall last year, can't remember exactly when. I had the base of the sound done beforehand because I was working on another black metal song.
The initial sound isn't so kvlt, but I liked it, so I worked some (black) magic in Podium.

The sound you hear is the result of shitloads of VSTs. There's first Grease Tube on the guitars and bass. Guitars are "tight and compressed" as the settings say in the plugin. The bass is complete opposite, being "open and crisp" with "far" mic placement that gives it depth and even more bass.
Drums are layered with my presets in 50rcery, which I've come to conclusion, is a compressive multiband EQ. :D
Then in Podium I put some more compression on the drums and EQ on the bassdrum. For the EQ I Boosted 60Hz, 500Hz and 2kHz.
But the real black magic came from the 50rcery in the master channel with most boost on low-mids and treble.

Mostly this is just me trying to remember what I did as most of the parts of the song were already made last year. Today I mostly just made some re-arranging and re-working the parts already done. The only new thing from scratch was the solo. At first I had no idea what to do with it, but after a while I got the idea of using bass on it. But the bass I used on the song already didn't work on that, so I got the other sample set I usually use in my songs.
Then it was just decision of what to do with the sound. But that wasn't a big problem, because the answer to life and everything in the universe if FUZZ! I just put Face Bender on it, tweaked it to perfection and went with it. At first I thought to follow the original solo, but then again since I don't do it with the riffs either I just intrepreted it. It sounded wicked in the tracker already and propably not in a good way, but I wanted to make it just outrageous so I put some phaser and reverb on it in Podium and the rest is history. :D

I finished the song after the solo because I felt like it had nothing more to offer. So here you go, a quick and dirty explanation of a quick and dirty raped song.

Slow In Motion: Things yet to come.

02. Pressure of Becoming

I'm going to write only one post regarding this forthcomihg "album" because the sound is initially the same on every song.

I've learned that you can get interesting sounds when you put already amped guitars and bass through an VST guitar or bass amp. And in this case (as in most of my mixing work lately) I put the drums through an guitar amp simulation aswell.

Guitars went through an AXP Flextron clean channel with the '90s mode. When I took the "bright"-setting off I got that mud'n'dirt to the sound. After that I tweaked the EQ in such a way that the curve is almost flat (as seen in the following picture).

The EQ on the amp is almost the one I always use; bass halfway and mids full. The only difference here is the highs that I reduced a lot to cut the hiss'n'sparkle. Only real difference between the channels is the tube position which is Post-EQ for one and Pre-EQ for the other.

Bass went through Shattered Glass Audio's Ace which is a Fender Tweed rendition. It gave a nice growl to the bass; it breaks nicely to distortion. There's nothing much to tell here; I just played with it until I was satisfied with the result.

I put drums through AXP's FM25 which is a rendition of Fender's Frontman 25. Not the most aftersought amplifier, but excellent for this purpose. Everything went through the clean channel with individual tweaks to EQ and cabinet.
Bassdrum and toms got 1x10 cab with hard mid-scoop EQ; 10-0-10. Ten seemed to be the key for that. :)
Snare was just flat-out full blast EQ with 2x12 cab.
Hats got some reverb (half-way), not that it can be heard. :P Cab was 1x10 with full mids and treble. Bass I cut completely out.

So that was the initial sound in Modplug Tracker. It clipped somewhat heavily, but since individual tracks did not, I went with it. After I got that done I ported the whole thing to Cubase for final tweaking.

In Cubase I didn't do too much. Since the guitars have somewhat different sound (left being much more muddy) I boosted the level of left guitar 3dB compared to the right one. Bass got some compression to make it even and constant. The only other major thing before master channel was the snare which sounded quite thin on it's own. So I put some EQ with low-mid boost and some sparkle at 2kHz. And after that some compression to bring it up in the mix.

Master channel included a compressor and limiter to push the mix and prevent it from clipping. Dynamically this is a murder, but that's what I was going for; a dirty wall of sound.
I got what I was after, I hope you enjoy.

Death to Terrorism

Death to Terrorism



At last I have something to write again! I have another song finished aswell, have to consult the archives before I can release and write about it though. It's been finished for some time now, so I need and try to remember how I mixed that one. But that's not this song, so let's get to the point here.

This was originally just a test of a plugin type I hadn't used before; a gate.
I had experimented with it in 2 other songs-in-the-works, but this one was the first to be complete.

At first I had the gate on drums as well as on bass. On drums it was so tight it killed all sustain and at first I was happy, since it was going to be a fast song right from the start. But then I noticed that the bassdrum had some kickback because of the gate. It wasn't audible in the fast parts and barely in the slow ones, but it still bothered me a lot. So I opened up the gate somewhat so it left some sustain to the drums and also returned some of the original sound of the samples. And I saw it was good.

The gate on bass made it distorted in a very sweet way (for my ears), sounding like a bit crusher. I liked the way it sounded and was very happy... For a while. It turned out that the gate didn't work in the long run; the sound became really odd after some time into the song. So ultimately I had to think something else for the bass.

I had an idea for the guitar after reqular EQ proved not to work as I wanted in this situation. I got the Grease Tube VST plugin and tweaked the guitar sound with that. And it made wonders for it, making the guitar track extremely dirty.

So the next idea was to put the same plugin on the bass track. And it proved to give a really decent result. I have to admit I'm still sad that the gate didn't work because with the guitar track it would've propably been a killer sound. But all-in-all this was a really good alternative since the plugin gave some nice distortion to the bass.

After I got all done in MPT I exported the tracks to Podium for the final mix. And that proved to be a pain in the ass... A big one too.
I had already done some mixes with the gated bass, so at this point it was just tweaking the levels, but that turned out to be quite a job to do. All-in-all I had to mix this shit almost 20 times before it was finished. The mixing was a bigger job than the composing or coming up with the sounds. :P

In Podium I added EQ on the bassdrum, snare and cymbals, but this time I boosted only ranges from around 1kHz to 4.5kHz. As follows:
Bassdrum: 6dB boost at 2kHz.
Snare: 3dB boost at 1,25kHz.
Cymbals: 4.5dB boost at 3kHz and 3dB boost at 4.5kHz.

So in that matter too this was a different way for me to do things. I wanted to make a clear dirty mix, so that's why I didn't make the drums so snappy and crispy. It wouldn't have fit for the atmosphere of the song.

I had really hard time with the drums on this one, they were being buried all the time. So after like 15th or 16th mix it was clear to me that I need to bring the guitar and bass down. So I made a 3dB reduction to them and got the drums' levels up a bit in the process. Now it sounded really neat on my AKG K-44 headphones and I was so happy.
But then I listened it through my KRK Rockit 5's and it became clear that the snare is barely audible at times. :/
Some listens more and I realized that I can't do too much to it or it becomes too dominant on the other parts, so I left it as it was.

This time I used compression on the master track along with the usual limiter. That's how I mixed all the mixes before the last one. I noticed that the compression cut some of the low end, so I exported 3 files from Podium: drums, bass and guitar. Drums I exported the way I had mixed the song: with compression and limiter. Bass and guitar got out without compression, although they both are extremely compressed already because of the Grease Tube.

After that I imported those three tracks back to Podium, applied the limiter to master track and made some reduction in levels and that was it. Finally.

So there's little problems with the snare, but I'm still very happy the way this turned out to sound. And composing-wise I'm also satisfied, I think there's some nice things going on, especially with the drums. Also something bit different at times.

Enjoy this little piece of heaven. ;)

Obscure Abomination

Obscure Abomination

A trio-based death metal this time (as there is only one set of guitarsamples). Sort of repetitive as DM is not my "primary" style, not too good at composing it. Still every now and then I just get the feel to do something like that. But to the point, shall we?

Ok, so first I made a good sounding rough mix in Modplug Tracker that is eventually what you hear in the final mix. There was not much that needed to be done, mostly level adjustments. Compression and eq on bass and that was it. The mix in MPT hit the red almost all the time, but individual tracks were ok, so it was a good foundation to work with in Podium.

So, guitars are raw, there is no eq or anything on them most of the time. And by most of the time I mean that there is the part at around 1:20, but we'll get to that later.
The main sound of the guitars are the raw sound of the samples. And to this song it works just fine, atleast to my ears. Only thing was that the guitar track was doubled to compensate the boost of bass and drums.

Bass has my "dry curve"-eq, but still it comes out in the mix quite nicely, beefing the sound up. The guitar itself has quite bassy sound, but I think these work together nicely. They don't eat eachother out.

I started from scratch with the drums. I had a new plugin to work with, 50rcery, a multiband compressor that doesn't seem to be a compressor afterall. Oh well, anyways, as it works like one, I used it like one.
I made 2 presets; one for the drums and one for the cymbals. I first did what I've learned to do a while ago; long attack and short releases. After that I focused on the threshold and with it I pretty much killed the sustain of the drums. There was only going to be "short and aggressive" drums, and I think I got it right.


Oh yeah, and then there is the part at 1:20. For that I had to double every track. And thst's what you see in Podium; the little trio-based dm piece took 24 tracks! :P

That specific part's sound was inspired by Torture Killer song off of the album 'Swarm!'. Can't remember what song though.
Anyway, I wanted to make my version of that idea, so I doubled the tracks and worked a sound of it's own to that part. That meant mostly eq with high-end boost and rough bass-cut.
Again two presets were made from scratch; one for the guitar and bass and the other for drums.

The preset for stringed instruments got boost from 10kHz to 19kHz and everything else cut. That pretty much kills the bass in this, but then again it was somewhat the point, as I wanted a really thin sound.
The drums were pretty much the same, only that the boost was from 1kHz to 19kHz and everything else got cut.

After that I exported everything to Podium, set the levels and started to think what to do with that "special part".
It was dry alright, but as my original intention for the sound was to put it through a speaker emulation of some 2x2" cabinet and I couldn't do it, I had to come up with something else to push it back a little to make it sound even more tiny and lofi.
So, the solution was to level it down a little more than the "main sound" and add some reverb. I think I did the trick as good as it could be done with the set of tools I have.

The final thing was to put limiter on the master track with a -0.5dB ceiling (I started to use that a while back) and boost up the overall volume so that it clips only a little every now and then. Though it seemed to clip a bit more than I expected when I opened the mixdown in the sound editor, but I decided to leave it at that.

So, here it is; a short blast of high-speed death for your ears... You're welcome. ;)

UPDATE: Ok, so I got some feedback about the ride-cymbal. I made changes to it based on the feedback and tweaked the volume levels.
As I was on it, I reworked one part of the song a little, and well, now I'm more satisfied with it.

I had to export the tracks again to Podium, so I thought to do a little re-mixing to it as well. I put some mild eq-boost on the bassdrum and snare and after that I tweaked the levels a bit. Bassdrum got a little cut, snare was kept as-is and the guitars and bass got boosted about 3dB.

The boost from the limiter plugin was removed and it's character shaped a little.

So, little tweaking here and there. I think it turned out ok. :)

Cnoc An Tursa - Bannockburn

Cnoc An Tursa - Bannockburn

This song has been most challenging to mix so far. Part of being that it's black metal, the other that it had 22 tracks.
So, I once again retrieved some raw tracks from Mike Senior's multitrack resource page.

And because of that my "workspace" looked a lot different than usual:

No tracking, no Modplug Tracker, nothing too "conventional" for me. Haven't worked too much straight in the DAW doing the mixing. Oh well.

6 tracks for the guitars turned out to be quite challenging. They almost buried everything else and also each other... And well... There's so much going on all-in-all that at some points some burying occurs. Atleast to my ears.
All guitar tracks have individual sounds, 3 tracks being panned left and 3 panned right. I used my previously created presets on the rhythm guitar tracks and made sound for the lead tracks from scratch.

The rhythm tracks are modern high-gain, while the lead tracks got more a vintage british high-gain with chorus and delay.
The first rhythm track has more open sound, while still being crisp and extremely aggressive. This can best be heard during the second guitar break at 3:07.
The second rhythm track has extremely compressed sound that takes no prisoners. This sound can best be heard during the first guitar break at 1:40.

Bass track was put through guitar amp simulation, the very same that the guitars use. The amp setting was made modern middlescooped high-gain and put through bass-cabinet modeling with 15" speaker. So it's the first time I use distorted bass on a mixing project like this. I thought that it seems to be so common these days that I'd give it a try as well.

I had no presets for the drums since I'm working on my laptop now, and all my previous presets for plugins I usually use are on my old PC. And also because of that I had to get new plugins, so I have all new tools in my pack now and I'm learning to use them as I mix.
This time I used some EQ on the bassdrum, snare and toms. And all tracks got a limiter in there.

The hardest part so far was getting the levels right for the drums and the guitars. After getting those out of the way the next big problem was the synths. That was luckily quite easy to fix, since some tube compression brought them up in the mix. Still there's so much going on with the synths all the guitar tracks and all, that I feel like the soundscape is a bit too full...

The vocals were quite easy since I had quite good vision what to do with them. Since there was 2 tracks of lead vocals, I took them both and panned them a bit to spread the stereo image and to leave some space in the middle for bass, drums and backing vocals.
I then applied some tube compression and reverb to them.

The backing vocals had one big problem; when they came along, the lead vocals got buried, and when I pushed the backing vocals back, it was like they were not there. So I came up with the idea to lower their pitch with one VST I have. So they got positioned in the middle along with some tube compression in register octave below the original.

So, this is my first time mixing black metal. What do you think of it? Was hell of a job, but fun nevertheless!

The Ghost, The Spirit, The Killer

The Ghost, The Spirit, The Killer

Some Twin Peaks-inspired doom-metal this time. Somewhat lot of restrictions when it comes to composing because of the samples, but for so long I've wanted to do something with this sampleset. The sound is propably the crispiest I've had so far... And I love it!
This is the first song I made totally on my laptop, that brought some new things with it, and that's propably the reason why I feel like I had some problems with this song here and there.

I've used the guitars and bass multiple times in different songs, but never together (if I remember right). And this is only the second time I use this drumkit.

What I mean about the restrictions regarding the composing is that the guitars only has one octave of open and muted powerchords, so every melody had to be played on different instrument and the guitars would only be there to provide the rhythm. I thought about violing, cello and clean/acoustic guitar for the melodies but ultimately settled with the piano.
That was great, because then I got the idea of making it sound really creepy when I came up with the melody for the intro (which by the way sounds really Halloween to me). So I have 3 tracks of piano on every melody; one center, one delayed panned to left and one delayed panned to the right.
So, for a while I was happy with the result. But then it started to sound like it needs more creepyness. So I threw some reverb in there and brought it up a little in the mix.
Now it's creepy enough for me. :)

From the original notes the final tracked version has some major changes; the verseriff is totally remade and the drums in chorus have got some changes too. It's a lot better now.

The mixing turned out to be really tricky. I lost the count how many mixed I've done before coming up with this.
I started, "as usual", by implementing my "curves" to the guitar and bass. And those curves look like this:

Bass...

...And guitar.

And then some compression to the drums and EQ to the piano. So the rough mix had all the elements I usually use.
After that I got all the tracks to Podium and put some EQ on the bassdrum and snare. And the reverb to the piano.

I had read from a finnish book called "Rockband's ABC" that if you want the "snap" to the bassdrum, boost the EQ around 4kHz. So I did and it really was there. I was so happy! So I boosted the snare as well from 4 and 5 kHz, got some "snap" there as well.

A lot of experimenting was done with the mixing before getting it the way it is. In many ways this is reverted back to the raw mix.
I had put some EQ on the toms as well, distortion on the bass... At some point there was 2 tracks of bass; the clean and the distorted. But all-in-all those experiments didn't sound so good afterall.

So what you hear here is quite much the first mix after the raw one. Drums have the EQ on bassdrum and snare and reverb on the piano.

The guitars could use different eq-settings to get even crispier sound, but that should be done from the modelling-processor and re-record the samples. Now I have to go with this, so here is another piece from me. I'm satisfied, I hope you are too after you have finished listening the song.

A Dying World

A Dying World


Another older song. First I thought this to be for Left Side of the Track, but as the musical direction changed I thought to track and release this. A lot have changed when compared to the original; tuning came up to standard E from drop A, Hammond changed to violin and I added contrabass and timpani when I had made the base of the song in Open MPT. I also made some alterations to the drums as I was tracking the song and some little additions were made to the song as well (most notably the contrabass "solo" part).

This song was a pain in the ass to make. The tracking part was easy but after that came the problems. At first the violin sounded to be out of tune with the guitars, but that was just my ears f*cking with my brain. And after that came the problems with the volume of the violin; other channel was louder than the other, so it was heavily panned. Got it fixed pretty easily though.
After those came the crashes; at first they were way too loud! That took three mixes to get it right.

So was it there then? All good to go? Ha! No!
After the crashes came the bassdrum; it got buried badly in the blastbeat-parts. Luckily that was easy to fix; a bit more volume to it and that was it.

At that point I had made three mixes of the song and it still wasn't good enough.

Next problem was the overall mix; it was so quiet, so damn quiet. So once again it was back to the old track editor view... Next up was the overall volume boost, which didn't solve all the problems. Of course it didn't!
It was louder alright but all the "orchestral" elements got buried really bad. So another mix was to be made.

I had played it secure at first; the levels were cut really hard, so no red light was flashing. But it turned out to be too secure, so I got all the levels up a bit, to the point where little flashing occured.

Now, after many different versions and several mixes later the song is finished. All is quite well balanced, although the guitar gets a little buried in the blast parts, but all-in-all I'm happy with this now.

So, take a listen and enjoy.

All Your Bass Are Belong To Us

1. Love / The Scene Is Dead

2. Hate

3. Life Goes On

Mixing this has been tricky. The songs themselves are from 2006, but I remade them a little.
Originally they were done "fake stereo"; same samples on left and right with bit of delay added to the right channel. But I found a set I could make these songs real stereo.

At first I was happy; I get real stereo samples to the songs, so I get to release this EP. After I made the first version I heard what was wrong with the samples: They don't sound too good together. The right channel was dominant compared to the left.
So I tried another time by making the left channel louder, but that didn't work too good either. The real problem was eventually that the "new" sampleset I used on the right side had way more bass than the left channel, so it was quite dominant no matter what I did.

So what you hear here is the third and last version of the mix. I made the left channel as loud as possible and then turned both (left and right) channels mono. So no more fancy stereo-mix with this one. This is the only way I came up with to make it sound even.

The sound is quite well... Different I would say. Didn't think it would turn out like that. But it works nicely, although the more crispy distortion bass seems to get buried a little. Somehow the sound feels a little "chorused". 80's goddamnit! :D

To the mixing I used the same presets I've used on about every song I've released in Mikseri. The clean bass has a big bass boost, it sounds really metallic without it. And in the original mixes it was dominant. Now it gets buried nicely, but not too much.

The distortion basses have some mid boost in them. Right channel has a bit more than left. Left channel has more like "full range boost with a small bass-cut".

Drums have the same compressor presets I always use.

The master compressor I used had ceiling put to -0.5dB to avoid clipping and then I compressed the shit out of these songs. And you can see that; there has been a lot of cutting. Still the sound is quite good; everything is audible.

The outro in 'Life Goes On' was a bit surprise to me. The part where there is the most going on (the violin, timpani, strings and piano) left channel got cut quite harsh. I didn't think it was so loud.
Though I don't care since my goal was to "push it to the limit". :D

This EP didn't turn out the way I originally planned but then again I hadn't too much plans when I first started to work on the songs, it came along the way while working. The only goal was to get rid of the "fake stereo" and well, I did. :P
The samples are quite lofi and also quite loud themselves so there wouldn't have been too much dynamics anyway.

A bit under nine minutes of bass attack here. Get blasting your speakers and enjoy!

The Seven Deadly Sins... Homunculus!

The Seven Deadly Sins... Homunculus!

This one is different in many ways. Musically, mixing- and trackingwise.
First of all, this is the most complex and technical song I've ever done so far. Most of the riffs I don't even know how I came up with. I don't know how happy I am with this song because this is just so different.
All in all this has been a LONG project for me and I'm extremely happy that I got this done. I got to fulfill my little dream of a longer two-piece song (actually two songs in one, but anyways...).

So musically this is something new, the riffs are so strange for me, despite the fact that the second song is a lot more straightforward than the first. Atleast this shows me that occasionally I can think outside of my own box and come up with something different, even in metal. So, atleast from that perspective I can say that I'm satisfied with this.

Trackingwise this is the first song I used a new method with the drums. I came up with it while doing a backing-track for myself to practice with (Mandatory Suicide, I'm planning a cover of it). The second part of the song was the first I implemented the method and then realized that the cymbals of the first one need to be reworked. So, all-in-all this is the first released song with "new" drums.
So what I'm jabbering here about?
This:

Before I had done the drums (and especially the cymbals) so that the cymbal can ring a little after the hit. But while doing the drums for "Mandatory", I realized that it's not how it goes when playing real drums. So I changed it so that every hit of the same cymbal is on the same channel rather than being on two separate channels. I think it's more realistic like that.
Pretty hard to explain with words, so there's couple of pictures to clear this out. You'll see the change when you compare channels 8 & 9 in the pictures.

Mixingwise this was a bugger, a really big one.
The bassdrum was too soft, some kicks (especially single ones) got buried in the mix and they were buried deep. So I had to mix this a bit differently than usual.
At first I did what I always do; get it "right" in the tracker. But then, instead of exporting the whole thing as wav, I exported every track separately.

After that I got all tracks into Podium and applied some EQ on the bassdrum. After that I reworked the levels and exported the song.

The bass is a bit mystery still: is it ok or is it not? The lower register seems to get buried a bit (atleast to my ears). Maybe some compression might help get it fixed, as now the higher register of the bass is really clear. But then again; if getting the lower register up a bit, what it would do to the bassdrum?
I put a lot of mid and high boost to the bassdrum, so it sounds hard and I'm satisfied with it.

I did keep all the tracks, so I can tinker with this one in Podium still... Might do something to the bass, or not. I don't know yet.

Now I have to say that feedback on the bass-issue is more than welcome. I listened this through my monitors (KRK Rockit 5) and a pair of headphones. I'll give it another shot with couple of more headphones and see does it make too much of a difference.

But in the meantime, listen and enjoy. :)

Thrash Metal Deliverance

Thrash Metal Deliverance

This one is kinda simple and straightforward. Not much to say about the song here, drums could have used a bit more variation though.

The mixing then, well, bassdrum is clearly too soft. It could have used some eq along with the compressor. Some mid- and high-boost to make it sound harder. Or other thing would be using the compressor differently. But well, I'm learning here and trying to improve every time. This blog is also kind of a diary of mistakes for myself. :D
Can read here my own opinions and learn from them.

The bass in this one is kinda soft too, but that hasn't bothered me. It has a quite bass-boost eq-curve. The real annoyance really is the bassdrum. Doublebass parts can be heard, but single kicks gets easily lost. I don't like it because for me it gives the feel when listening that something is missing. I learnt from old Metallca-albums that songs can be mixed so that every instrument (and every part of the instrument as in drums) can be heard. And that's where I always aim when mixing.

Guitars are crispy as always, maybe I should do some other eq-presets for them too to get some different sounds. That remains to be seen.

At this point, just sit back, relax and take a listen to this uptempo thrasherpiece.

Thoughts About Life

Thoughts About Life

As the name implies, I had thought about my life quite much for several days prior to making of this song. My life was quite a mess at the time, so this song turned out well... To be quite a mess. :P
Can't recall anymore how I came up with the riffs for this song, but I believe that it was quite the same way as I always do: some of them comes while I'm playing and some of them comes while I'm already working on the song. So it's quite like 50/50 natural and "artificial".
Propably because of the state of my life and mind at the time, this one has the piano. Somehow I tend to come up with some melodic stuff when I'm having a hard time.

What comes to the mixing, this one was left with alot of dynamics, and I like it. The song came out a bit "soft", mainly because of the bass-elements. The state of mind I was in propably had something to do with it. I might aubconsciously have done it like that, not wanting to do a "hard" song.

The piano went through Guitar Suite's Fender Twin-model, which made it sound quite dry and raw, a bit toy-like. Alone it sounds bit harsh but it comes nicely through in the mix.

Guitars sound quite dry as well, despite that there's nothing that I wouldn't have used before.

What comes to the bass-elements in this song, they sound soft, really soft. Don't know why though. And they are the ones making the whole song sound soft to my ears. Other than that the drums came out really good. All in all I think the mixing is good, despite being a little bit different.

Spark of the Oldschool

Spark of the Oldschool

I have to say that I'm proud of this one. Musically and mixingwise. There isn't too much dynamics, but the sound is the best I've achieved so far.

Bass has one of my "usual" eq-presets; heavy bass-cut and a lot of mid-boost. In this song it fits perfectly to the soundscape and atmosphere. You can hear it, but it's not coming out to your face. Guitars have nothing fancy, just the preset I always use.

Drums utilize the same presets I mostly use, but with these samples the results were astounding. Easily one of the best drumsounds I've got so far. All are crispy'n'clear.

There's no great foundings with this one, just the same stuff I usually use, but this time it really hit the spot. So good that I thought I should make more songs with these sounds. Thrash-disk with these sounds would be awesome!

So, let yourself be caught in the mosh and enjoy this one, I have to say that I do.
That's all folks!

Phil Collins-hangover

Phil Collins-hangover

This one is very natural and pure when it comes to sound. No post-compressing or EQ. And the song itself has only Fender Twin-model from SimulAnalog's Guitarsuite VST-pack. I ran guitars and bass through it.
Drums have absolutely nothing. They are as is. I liked the sound that way, because the song itself is something I don't normally do. The sound turned out to be quite well balanced with these settings. I just got the volume levels right and that's it.

What comes to the making and composing this song, this was different in many ways.
First of all, this doesn't accompany my routines to the full, because I don't have the channels like I usually do. There's only one channel for the toms and one for the bassdrum.

Second is that this has only clean guitar, that's something I have done only once before, if I remember right.

The third and biggest thing was the composing and tuning. This is so far the only song that I've done using a tuning of my own. I came across it by accident and quite instantly saw the benefits. And this whole song is build upon those.
So the whole song is composed on 3 strings and it utilizes the changes between major-, minor-, sus2- and sus4-chords. Because of the tuning those 4 are really simple to achieve and play.

I haven't used that tuning anywhere else yet because it's hard to come up with stuff on that tuning, atleast for me. But it's still a fun tuning to play with.

So, enjoy this depressive piece of music and see you next time.

Oh, and the name for the song comes from a finnish tv-cartoon called Pasila. I took it from there after my girlfriend told me that this song reminds her of the Collins' classic "Another Day In Paradise".

The Modern Sound (of America)

The Modern Sound (of America)

Something quite different again. Tonally (and mixing-wise) this is something I don't normally do, but this time the song "demanded" it and I delivered.
Nu-Metal inspired piece, so the tone is middlescooped and dynamics are non-existent. So all-in-all this one was very easy to record and mix.

I talked earlier how it's easy to record a song when you know exactly what you're after. And this was it. I knew the sound I needed and I knew the way to mix, so there was no quessing games or tryouts. Just got into it and bam; finished.

This was done a little bit differently, guitar was "as is", no post eq. But instead I put it through a compressor. Bass in this one is tracked and put through some mild eq. Drums are done just like I usually do; no eq, just compressor.

After the whole thing was finished I ran it through a compressor once more and put the levels to max. Limiter came in handy and the result is what you see and hear.

I don't like the sound of this, but I just wanted to do one song of my own like this. I've mixed one other song this way too and don't like that either. :D
But I'm always looking ways to experiment and that's why I also do things that are out of my comfort zone.
I've also made one other nu-metal inspired song, but the mixing on that one is whole lot different than what I did here.

So, compressed middlescoop-shit for you. Enjoy! :P

Matilainen

Matilainen

I put my free time at the army to use and made a song out of frustration. Heh, that's what I usually do, in or out of the army. :D
So this one is from 2004 and the better ones from the oldies.

Mixingwise this was once again a bit more tricky one. As I didn't have the tracking routine yet (it started to form one or two years later and getting the final form in 2007). So once again I used the "one compressor hopefully fits all" method. Yeah, I know; I'm a lazy ass piece of shit because I don't rework the songs and go from there where is no fence. Oh well, these are old stuff and the new one is really what matters, right? :)

What comes to the song itself, I pretty much wrote it all down there. Playing the guitar upside down 'cause I didn't have my own there with me. This one has some punk/metal-feel to it, mainly because it's about a person that gets to your nerves.

Samples are kinda clear, except the bass. But guitars and drums sound clear and powerful. I'm especially happy with the bassdrum that comes out loud and clear.

Next up will be a spinoff in my catalogue; nu-metal! (Atleast inspired by nu-methul.) Middlescooped sound and flat-as-shit dynamics.
Also I'll work on an old bass-EP so I can release it after well... 6 or 7 years.

In the meantime, take a listen of this old piece of crap.

The Mammoth

The Mammoth

Ass-kicking sound with dynamics, this is the result I should get every time. The samples are not my favorite, except the guitars. The drums sound good and they're easy to mix, but the sound itself isn't exactly what I prefer. Bass goes pretty much the same, although it's bit harder to mix. Still I think I got it pretty good here.

There's a bit too much bass in this song, but with these samples getting it out would mean some eq:ing on the drums and different eq on the bass. That would mean some alterations to the way I work.
With these samples the song tends to get a bit more bass-oriented. That's what I was after when I started to really mix my songs in 2007. After listening a LOT of music and discovering the old records of Testament, Suicidal Tendencies, Slayer, Queensrÿche, Biohazard and many more I started to realize what "good sound" meant to me.

The real ear-opener for me was Overkill's album 'Horrorscope'. I had never heard sound like that. And to this day it still is an unique sound in my books. So, that became "THE sound" for me and I've tried to get that sound ever since.
The good thing is that I can't achieve it, so I usually end with a clear crispy sound of my own that is my "Horrorscope". :)

The second thing that started to affect really to my mixing was when I really got into Queensrÿche's album 'Warning'. That made me the big fan of the old records and ever since I've listened the oldies with totally different ears. With that album came the appreciation for dynamics and mid-gain sound. It has air in the sound and that's what I fell in love with.

The first time I recall noticing something about the way how music is mixed dates back to 2004 when I was still in the army, "serving" my country. I was listening to Metallica's '...And Justice For All'-album and remember thinking "damn, you can hear every instrument. Even the bass."

Ok, so this got "a little" off-course, but oh well, atleast now you know why I mix today the way I do. Enjoy the ass-kicking from this thrash-piece.