How To Get a Killer Metal Guitar Tone
An in depth video explaining one of the easiest ways to get a brutal "wall of guitar" sound in your recordings. The secret? = Using an impulse loader and utilizing multi-track recording. Watch to find out how!
FAQs:
- Record your guitars directly into your audio interface dry, no hardware amp or mics required.
- Multi-tracked guitar parts must be recorded as tight and clean as possible, otherwise it will sound incoherent, don't be afraid to edit your takes!
- If you're getting a lot of noise from your guitar signal there are several options to try, ranging from most practical to least practical:
- Your guitar pickups might not be shielded properly and can pick up interference. Usually it's from your monitors and can be fixed by moving further away from them or spinning around in your chair.
- Manually cut out the silence in between notes - this is the best option, all the pros do this, it's tedious but gives you the best results.
- Add a noise gate at the start of the signal chain or just after the TSE808.
- Get a guitar with cleaner or hotter pickups.
- Upgrade your audio interface - plugging directly into your computers sound card will probably sound like crap.
- If all else fails always remember to follow signal flow! = Follow the signal from your guitar, to your cable, to your sound card, into your DAW. At what point does the signal become noisy?
- If you're running a 64-bit host DAW the 32-bit TSE808 plug-in will crash it.
Why your tone will (most likely) not sound exactly like mine:
- Different guitarist, different guitar, different strings, different pickups, different patch cable, different audio interface, different edits, different mix. It's the small details that add up to make a big difference in your sound quality.
Now here's some mumbo jumbo I have to say about this video.
There are no hard rules that apply to mixing, only general guidelines to follow. Some people might be like "This sounds like shit! You cut too much mids!" Whereas other people might be drooling over this tone. The most important thing in the end is to make sure that each instrument and kit piece has it's own frequency range which it can dominate and be heard in the mix. Focusing too much on the guitar tone and not enough on the bass tone can ruin your mix. Believe it or not, metal guitars sound really deep and thunderous because of the bass guitar. Electric guitars by themselves sound incredibly thin and airy without it.
This video should serve as a general guideline as to how you can get monstrous metal guitar tones for free, there's so much flexibility in what YOU can do! I threw these tones together in minutes, usually I spend days working in tones that I like!
Goodluck, and happy mixing!
*** TECHNICAL NOTES ***
- DAW is Cubase 6.
- Guitar recorded directly into an RME Babyface. No amps or hardware pedals were used.
- Drums are programmed using Addictive Drums.
- Bass guitar is also recorded directly into an RME Babyface and processed inside Cubase 6.
- Voice was done using an online text to speech converter.
