A Beginner's Guide to Mixing Metal at Home - Episode 1 pt.1 (Kick & Snare)

Welcome to my new series on mixing heavy metal using your DAW or home computer. When I was looking online for a lot of this information I often came across a very unhelpful answer to reasonable questions -
Q: "how should I eq my kick?"
A: "There's no set template for EQ you fool, every project is different.

Whilst these 'experts' are fundamentally correct, it doesn't help the person who has no idea where to begin. My settings and my methods won't work for everyone, but at least if you have an understanding of how I go about things then it will help you to find a good starting point for your own stuff.

Episode 1: Drums
Episode 2 will follow soon and will cover the Bass.

All music copyright J Howard 2011

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• heavy metal
• metal
• home recording
• cubase
• mixing guitars
• mixing metal
• how to record heavy metal
• recording drums
• compressing audio tracks
• mixing and EQ for metal
• studios
• episode
• help
• tips
• software tutorial

[BtwnLoveAndHateBand]

where was this vid 3 years ago? damn i feel ive been wasting a lot of time lol. keep up the cubase please (though u might consider getting a better processor) if i could afford the good shit, i'd spend the money on real studio time. a demo is a demo

[Jamesmsv]

@BtwnLoveAndHateBand way ahead of you dude, got a new PC in January and it'll start appearing in videos soon. thanks for watching!

[M3G4G0TH]

screw cubase. try out

REAPER

upcoming DAW, its been awwesome for a few years now. and the pricing is... epic. and you get the whole package. ;) google it

[Jamesmsv]

@M3G4G0TH I actually use the free Reaper plugins for my bass tutorial, I think they're great for that. However they do have their own share of problems, the EQ isn't very transparent for example. But that's life, everything has its pros and cons. Cubase plugins used to be rubbish and they've come a long way in recent times.

[gunblade00]

@Jamesmsv dude I'm excited I just finally got enough to buy all the Waves plugins, I know it sounds like a lot for just mixing and mastering plugins but you should really look into them. lol They turned my amateur tracks into masterpieces. Should be putting out something new using them soon if you wanna see the difference.

[Jamesmsv]

@gunblade00 Check out my Episode 5 part 2, which covers using some of Waves plugins. They definitely are the best value for money for home recording. Make sure you record using 24bit 48khz though, I've found that makes even more difference when using quality plugins instead of free ones.

[suckmyballs1]

6:18 "ive got a high shaft cumming"

awsome vids mate, most helpfull =)

[gunblade00]

@Jamesmsv I'll definitely have to give that a try. Lol these plugins are fantastic but they're definitely a change from the stock plugins is was using before, so many more options now.

[slyppy82]

@Jamesmsv yeah man, i i got written instructions from ssd on how to do it with cubase 5 and from what i can tell after trying several times, i cant do it with the LE version of cubase. i can do all of the procedures except the one for "Activate all outputs". dont know why, but i guess i don't plan on spending several hundred dollars for the full version of cubase just for that feature. Thanks for the input though.

[Jamesmsv]

@slyppy82 If you hit F11 in cubase this should bring up your current VST list. I don't use Steven slate so I'm not sure if it has the feature, but there should be a button next to the on/off and freeze buttons that you can hover the mouse over and it;s called "Activate all Outputs". If SSD allows this, you will then get 8-16 channels depending on how it's set up. I would have thought SSD has this as I've heard it's pretty good, although it does use Kontact player which I know can be tricky