yeah I heard of those plugins, but I can’t really get my hands on soloed guitars.
Also the whole point is to learn how to dial the tone I have in mind without relying on tech wizardry.
But do you mean the first clip (Obscure Sphinx) or the second one (Alcest)?
In case it is Alcest I don’t really aim to have it hard clipping. Actually amount of distortion is further down on my list of priorities. First one is to get that interesting frequencies right.
Well, he’s a producer with a lot of friends in the business so it is not as surprising.
Now I noticed that the original somehow sounds darker in my DAW than on Youtube.
As it is brighter in reality I moved the low pass filter on guitars from app. 8kHz to 12kHz, but it’s not enough.
I wonder if I should boost highs or presence - I never quite understood the difference between the two.
Sometimes you can use similar software to remove or solo certain things too, especially if they take up very predictable space in the mix like vocals for example. That’s how people get isolated vocal and guitar tracks. It’s not perfect and you often still get bleed, but that’s typically how many people do it.
Regarding Rick, it wouldn’t surprise me if he does have those connections, but I also believe he has quite the arsenal of tools at his disposal to do that kind separation if he needed to. Dude clearly has a professional home studio at his disposal.
The track you posted immediately after this was my favorite so far. Again, not sure it’s hitting your ‘target’ tones but it’s a good sound. Subjective, I know.
Again, opinion here but I’ve never put any reverb on heavy rhythm guitars. It makes them sound too distant and washed out for my taste. I know there’s other mixes you’ve put up here where you were specifically going for a washed out sound though, so take my comment with a grain of salt there. At the end of the day, if it sounds the way you like, that’s what matters.
The goal with the reverb is to imitate room here. I know they recorded the album with whole band playing at once.
I just want to add a bit of depth and life this time, nothing else really.
I see. To make stuff appear in the same physical space, I usually used an effects channel that had a really saturated amount of reverb/delay. I would then send certain tracks to this. My DAW had the ability to send anywhere from 1 - 100% of any given track to the effects track. I’m sure that’s fairly standard, but I don’t know since Cubase is all I’ve ever used.
The other thing you can do, and this is what I do, is that I make a copy of the track, and then I drench that one 100% with whatever reverb and/or delay I want to use. I then mix the two together with some panning so that they are spaced a bit in the stereo spectrum, and then bring the level of the 100% wet track up to the level where it mixes well which for me is when it’s barely audible, maybe more so for lead. That gives a nicer reverb sound and clarity in my experience than putting it directly on the recorded track, and you can make it boisterousor subtle as you want. This way you have individual control of the track and the types of effects on it, instead just a master buss.
I created whole new track with reverb at 100% wet and sent all instruments there.
It is more noticeable on drums, but otherwsie barely audible.
Dialing it in is a bit trickier - lots of parameters and options to set:
As it applies to guitar amps, it’s a little complicated, but the presence control in your typical guitar amp is semi active, and is speaker dependent, meaning you could get a different response depending on the speakers and cab you use.
If you are curious exactly what happens and why, and want me to go into it, I will, but it may be pretty long winded just to warn you.
I have just been told what gear was used to record the song:
POD XT Pro + Sonic Maximizer into Marshall JCM800 2204 into Laney IRT 412 for one guitar,
POD XT Pro + Sonic Maximizer into Peavey PV900 poweramp into Orange 412 cab for the other.
Now only if I could find myself correct IRs that would be great.
Also need to find out what were the settings on PODs and what exactly is Sonic Maximizer.
I used to have a plugin called a Sonic Maximizer by BBE. I can’t remember using on anything that I kept or what qualities it had. If I am remembering correctly it had pretty simple settings.
People these days probably laugh at POD xt since there are so many “better” products. Still, back before Periphery got big Misha got some really great sounds out of a POD xt and not really much else in his chain.
I was right about the JCM and Peavey though. It felt to me like they were using some JCM and Peavey-like amps, but did not occur to me they could be using anything digital.
I have an older bbe sonic maximizer in a rack case. It was originally a piece of outboard studio processing gear that added more or in their words corrected hi and low end response. It was essentially an enhancer. It in reality kinda of just makes things sound a little scooped and ratty.
Is it available for download anywhere?
I’ve found some JS plugin that is supposed to do the work, but I am not sure if that’s how it’s supposed to sound.
Yup, pretty much what the JS plugin I’ve found does. Only it’s very subtle, so much in fact that I could as well just not bother.
I’m unfortunately not aware of any. I’m totally out of the loop on obtaining plugins without paying for them. In fact, I’ve always been and the only non-paid plugins in my possession were given to me by Misha Hopefully that doesn’t incriminate him lol!!! It’s not like I ever made money off my recordings, they were just a fun little hobby.
Also forgot to mention - there are some feedbacks in the song, especially on fade in. I tried to replicate it in a DAW with plugins and routing but no luck.
So I decided to plug guitar into a cheap amp in parallel to the plugins, and placed mic just for kicks. Didn’t bother with proper placement.
To my amazement that cheap, terrible amp sounds not too shabby when miced, but mixing it with ampsims yields interesting results.
I could probably try again and post some samples if you want.
I got some more info:
He says they used POD with SLO100 preset as “main gain”, whatever that means - the rest he does not remember.
Rythm guitar sounds like a Marshall to me though - he said POD was plugged in input jack, so maybe it was just to add more gain.
So here’s the plan - I guess I will keep using Nameless for rythm tone. The original sounds a bit more darker to whatever I got - maybe due to Laney cab. I don’t have any Laney IRs, so I’ll see if EQ helps.
As for lead - I don’t have any SLO ampsims IIRC - if I don’t find any in my library I think 5150 will get me close enough with some Orange cab IRs.
Of course mics will be a huge factor here, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out which ones were used exactly and in what spot, but at least I have something to work with now.
Now I guess only thing left to do is learn the song, program drums and bass and wait for new strings - I’ll be getting 9string set for that .105 oomph in (double) drop D.
I guess I’m getting close.
I did find SLO plugin in my library but I must have done something wrong as it sounded awful with IRs I wanted to use, so went for 5150 instead.
And I’m no longer sure if SLO was supposed to be lead and Marshall rythm or vice versa:
In any case I still have some more song to learn. Actually I have almost no clue what they play when clean guitar kicks in, even worse - no idea what’s going on when they go back to overdrive. I mean I sort of know which chords, but the voicing sounds off to me, especially when I see weird shapes fingered on fretboard in their lives:
Turns out SLO was supposed to be rythm and Marshall (really though? I think POD simulation of SLO was going through both amps, but whatever) lead.
I’m mostly finished with learning guitars parts, so on this occasion I decided to revisit the tone.
I’ve found “allegedly” decent SLO100 sim for free - it’s in the free version of Amplitube. I can’t however find the right tone.
I knew they were using some Orange cab on rythm guitar with the SLO sim, I haven’t found any Orange IRs that I liked though so I went on and used almost the same IR’s as the lead one, at least for the time being.
Of course I’m still struggling to capture the characteristic of the original tone:
Here’s what I came up with:
Full mix (no double or quad tracking)
just right guitar:
just left:
For comparison, here’s the original:
Right:
Left:
It seems like my chors in the later riffs are muddy and the low notes not powerful enough.
Also it kinda feels like the right guitar in the original is a bit more honky still maintaining some brightness and clarity, while left is softer in it’s attack and top end.
Apart from the tone itself, the guitars in original appear to be much fuller and punchier.
The low D is earth shattering, it’s like each note has enough energy to open portal to another dimension.
I honestly don’t have a clue how they did it. And it’s the same live, even with just one guitarist, so it’s not down to mastering magic.
I don’t expect changing strings to fresh, heavier gauge will give such a massive difference, there must be something fundamentally wrong with what I’m doing or my rig.
Hopefully that doesn’t incriminate him lol!!! It’s not like I ever made money off my recordings, they were just a fun little hobby.