A Beginner's Guide to Mixing Metal at Home - Episode 4 part 2 (Vocals 2)

[iriootti]

Really helpful tutorials, cheers!

[AceFire117]

Hey man, last week-end i was tracking the vocals with my band, and at some moments especially with the "band shouts" the main vocals are completely buried. I was wondering maybe it's because i shouldn't of copied the band shout twice and panned them 100 L & R. What do you think ? I'm also thinking of the eq

[Jamesmsv]

@AceFire117 Traditionally 'backing' vocals are panned wider than the main vocal and also EQ'd with a little less low end. So you were on the right track but 100 L/R might be a bit extreme and is probably why they're drowning the main vocal. If you brign them in and find it's stil lhappening, find the main EQ area of activity for the main vocal and reduce the backing a bit in that area, that should also help!

[AceFire117]

@Jamesmsv okay thanks for the quick response ;)

[mcufre]

Fantastic tutorial, music, production, everything. Im sharing this with some people and they all love it, way to go bro!

[Jamesmsv]

@mcufre Thanks mate, I appreciate the support!

[forgivenRH]

just doing the bass drum with your exact settings, it starts getting all jarbled sounding like clicks and pops?! help please!

[Jamesmsv]

@forgivenRH That sounds strange. Normally clicks and pops would be a sign that you've overloaded your CPU, but if the only thing you're doing is EQing the kick then this is unlikely. I suppose if the sample you're using is already EQ'd for metal then adding more extreme EQ like this could cause it to sound really bad. What drum sounds are you using as a starting point?

[10dthompson60]

Is this your music at the beginning?

[Jamesmsv]

@10dthompson60 It is indeed, I've just started uploading my back catalogue to my playlists if anyone wants to bear the full song.....

[10dthompson60]

@Jamesmsv I thought it was killer, and your vocals are brutal.

[gemarrs]

First wanted to give a great thanks to you for these videos. You do a fantastic job at explaining things and getting down to the point.

So, I just wanted to ask, do you know of any good free VST equivalent to that reverence reverb plugin you're using? I'm assuming that particular plugin is likely exclusive to cubase.

[Jamesmsv]

@gemarrs @gemarrs I got a free one with Garritan Personal Orchestra called Ambience and I've been very impressed. It can be found here: magnus(dot)smartelectronix(dot­)com I've only used it on orchestration but I reckon it's good and variable enough for pretty much everything.

[gemarrs]

@Jamesmsv Thanks man, I'll give this a try. :)

[OllieMackenzie0]

Absolutely love these videos. When is the final episode up?

[Jamesmsv]

@OllieMackenzie0 Thanks for the comment - Episode 5 part 1 being uploaded right now so should be live some time tonight or tomorrow morning (04/12/11 - 05/12/11) !

[ThePRIMEMINISTRY]

James- thank you for the quick response. I've subbed your channel and will stay tuned- I've learned a wealth of info from just one day. You are the reason the internet is a valuable resource. One more question- would that Metallica Gold IR work with Guitar Rig3 and Logic Pro9?

[Jamesmsv]

@ThePRIMEMINISTRY Thanks for the sub! As for Impulses, yes you can use them with guitar rig, just make sure you turn off the cabinet module in guitar rig first otherwise you'll double up on the cab sim sound! Just place the Impulse loader in the plugin chain after Guitar Rig. I'm afraid I don't know about Logic though, I've only got Cubase. I do know that Logic struggles with some VSTs but as far as I know the only way of knowing for sure is to try it out.....

[ThePRIMEMINISTRY]

Much appreciation- to you. Do you recommend using stereo guitar- Im using Guitar rig3 as well and it puts the guitars in stereo- does this take up too much stereo space when you have multiple guitar tracks?

[Jamesmsv]

@ThePRIMEMINISTRY Always use stereo gutiars with metal! You want Kick,Snare, Bass dead centre, Vocals can be panned but keep it tight, no more than about 20L / 20R. You then have all the rest of the stereo spectrum for guitars and ambience (synths/orchestration etc). I use 2 tracks of guitar on each side, one set to 100 and the other to 70. That's just what's worked for my sound, you would want to experiment but don't worry about taking up that space as it's there for the guitars anyway.

[Robglacier]

Dude, thank you for these. they have helped me massively!!

[Jamesmsv]

@Robglacier Glad to be of help, thanks for watching!

[MrAngelspit]

Awesome yet again Cheers bro!!

[Jamesmsv]

@MrAngelspit Thanks dude. I was a bit worried that i'd gone in to a bit too much detail with these 2, they ended up a lot longer than I was expecting!

[TheInconvenientPanda]

i was wondering if you have ever used the 'haas effect', the idea is if you delay the right panned vocals by 9ms it's widen the vocals and makes them sound wonderful... unfortunatly i haven't been able to get it working... it ends up i sound like a robot... any help or tips would be much appreciated... and keep up the amazing work :)

[Jamesmsv]

@TheInconvenientPanda I agree about the weird sound, when I've tried this it sounds like a cheap chorusing effect. These days, the free stereo widening plugins with Cubase are good enough to do this job better, that's been my experience anyway. Thanks for watching!