

To get the best out of these two instruments, you have to master making your kick drum and bass not to clash with each other.Ī straightforward way to do this is to use an EQ that has a visual analyzer. As you may have noticed, the kick drum and bass guitar have their most important parts around the same frequencies. Kick-bass relationshipįor any mix to have a cohesive low frequency, you must pay serious attention to the kick-bass relationship. For metal music, this is an important part, mainly because it is mostly live music, and even studio recordings are tracked like live performances. Sometimes, due to over-compression, we reduce the music’s dynamic range. The dynamic range is simply the musical difference between the loudest and softest sounds. Also, while going for loudness, remember to keep the dynamic range. The fans can crank up their car stereos and other listening devices to get loud music, but they can’t get energy if you didn’t mix energy in the first place. It’s possible to have a loud mix with low energy it’s better to have a moderately loud mix with high energy. In metal music, the part that really pumps the music is the kick drum and bass, which are the foundation on which other elements sit. As a matter of fact, what you need the most is not necessarily volume, but energy. Most of the time, to achieve a loud mix, you don’t need to crank up the gain on all the instruments - sometimes you just need to drop some levels, and possibly do some EQ, to allow some parts come through better. When you’re mixing metal music, you’re obviously going for a loud mix, and sometimes you can be tempted to just crank up the levels on individual tracks as high as possible. It would be sad if, after you spend hours mixing, the artist complains that the guitar sound isn’t what they were going for. It will make more sense if you use less of your processing so you don’t compromise their sound. Speaking of plugins, when you are mixing metal guitars, the guitar players already use their effects to achieve the sound they want. If you don’t bring that feel to them with your mix, you would be backing up the wrong tree. Most metal fans want their favorite artists’ music to sound like they are listening to them at a concert. By the time you stack plugins on each other, the first thing you notice is the song begins to sound unnatural. If it is just one plugin you need to get the sound you want, by all means, use just one plugin. When treating the vocals, a drum sound, a guitar sound, or bass guitar, make sure you use as little processing as possible.

So, you don’t want to do too much processing that would remove the natural feel to these elements. This also means that while mixing, the goal is to have a natural-sounding song. Most of the sound we mix is from instruments that already exist. This means that you would need less artificial or cooked-up sound. In metal music, most of the elements and sounds come from live instruments and vocalists. Here are five tips to take your metal mixing to the next level: 1.

How do you accomplish this? If you have ever mixed metal music, you would know that this is one of the most difficult things to do: achieving maximum loudness without distortion, clipping, or inducing ear fatigue. We also know that in order to make metal music sound exactly how it’s supposed to, it must be very loud, and you must attain this kind of loudness without having any distortion or irritation to people’s hearing. Therefore, when mixing metal, you must be ready to deal with stuff like big sounds, loud guitars, in-your-face drums, and aggressive vocals. The standout quality of metal music is the loudness and energy of the performance.
