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.