Jonesey: Use the Sonitus delay brother...it's a great delay and will work perfectly for this. :) No need for anythning else really. I think the Sonitus stuff is some of the best stuff out there and to be honest, I think it's the best "come with a DAW" stuff out there. I use it on everything. The only Sonitus plug I'm not crazy about is their multi band limiter. But everything else gets use over here.

Matt: Aww you're too kind brother, thanks so much! Yeah I had a feeling this was a different thing you were going for. But now that I've heard your stuff, I know what we gotta do man. :) Let me give you a run down.

Foresake: Makings of a really good tune brother. Don't dare scale anything back. Do what you do and enjoy it. The thing I'd do if I were you that will make a huge difference in your "wall" would be to double you instruments and pan them. For example, play the acoustic guitars 2 times and pan tighter...like 60/60 or 70/70...play the rhythm electric guitars two times and pan 85/85 or 90/90 and you'll hear things get more sound instead of the mono instruments with stereo effects you have going on. Put your keys in between the guitars or inside them and experiment. Or, if you want, run the keys out hard left/right and see how it sounds.

Cheese.....no such thing as cheese in my world brother. Use sounds, lyrics, styles and whatever else you feel and forget about what people say, cliche's and everything else. Do what you do because you feel it man. Two words I hate when talking music...the words "cheese" and "sell-out". No such thing when you do what your heart tells you and you remain happy/content. :) 

In your name: Love it! Same as above....double your parts and pan instead of ths single instruments. Even if you just double this stuff for the chorus parts and leave it as it is now for your verses etc. One thing that caught me...if you don't mind me mentioning...in this song...the main keyboard line where it starts the run A G# F# E....you know like at like 2:06...it sounds cool but somewhat strange due to you singing major and that A playing a somewhat minor starting sequence. I'd experiment there and either use a Bb instead of A or try this sequence:

B Bb G# F#, E F# G# Bb etc. This makes it more major sounding and enhances your killer major hook line in the vocal. Subjective, but just something I heard that I felt was worth sharing. :)

Still Here: Leave that intro with the single guitar like that. It's intimate like it is...when the music comes in, bring in another with strums in stereo...when its just guitar vocals and that bell/key sound...back to one acoustic again to keep it intimate...pan it away from the vocals. Right idea at 1:07...we need a bit more power. I'd add another acoustic in as well as another electric until 1:28. Then kill the electrics and let both acoustics be there. Stuff like that. You just need more of your instruments doubled and panned bro...the ideas are great. A little orchestration here and there and you'll be in good shape. I hear a little gritty guitar in these for a little power if you decide to add it. Nothing extreme or metal...just a bit o' grit to give you a little power in the chorus sections if you want. Just for the sizzle part of it. This would work really well with those acoustic guitars. I was half tempted to play along and show ya what I mean...but I think you know what I mean. :)

Just to clarify, when I asked for samples....I meant of pro bands you felt had "the wall". However, it was a pleasant surprise to hear YOUR stuff come on. LOL! I only heard a few small snippets of your stuff all the time we've been talking on the forum, so it was nice to hear some tunes man. Really good job considering you're not done with them yet. I wish you all the best Matt...hope some of this stuff has been helpful. :)

-Danny

I've listened to all of the links Danny, and the sound I'm more interested in than any of the others is Escape The Fate.

It sounds clean & separated yet brutally powerful

It (the guitar sounds) reminds me in a way of Evanescence in their "Fallen" era

I'm thinking something along the line of layering my guitars..almost like 10cc's I'm Not In Love...or Band Of Susans.....

This is an excerpt from a much longer piece, but it's not exactly the wall of sound I'm trying to get

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ihisnirvja2oq4f/Beuaty%20Excerpt.mp3

Ok Jonesey, here's what I did to get that sound. It's 4 guitars. Two recordings of me playing the same part. I compress them on each channel at 4:1 removing about -2dB of gain reduction, set attack and release to taste to work in time with the music, high pass at 120hz. Slight cut about -1.5 or -2dB at 320 hz, boost of +1.8 at 5k for a little sizzle.

Recorded two more guitars playing an octave of what I play in the pre-chorus and chorus parts with a stereo chorus from my processor destructively because nothing else can get this particular chorus. So I record the left side with the chorus on, and then the right side and each side of the chorus will waver differently so it will add to the stereo effect as well as my human timing inconsistencies. Pans at 75/75.

Same eq curve but on this I remove -3dB of 320, boost 6k to +3dB so these really sizzle. Compression the same but this time we remove -6dB of gain so these are super tight and consistent. I want them even with no dynamics like a synth would be if it were in there. The volume difference between the main rhythm guitars and the octave guitars is -2.5 dB. The main guitars are at -5.5 dB the octaves are -7.5 dB. So they just layer with the main guitars without competing with them. You're left with a little sizzle that almost sounds like keys playing due to the octaves I'm doing there. Because they aren't dominant, they mix in so well, it barely sounds like there are 2 more guitars...but when you listen close or you hear the verse come back...you can notice something is missing. So in this situation, the octave guitars where my orchestration pieces.

From there all 4 guitars are sent to a bus. On the bus you can use the 4k bus compressor or in my case, I use a UAD Precision bus comp that I absolutely adore because it just shines for stuff like this unlike anything else I've ever heard for layering. 2:1 ratio, not sure what attack I used...release was on auto.

This may sound a little tricky. Forgive me if I confuse you here...but I'll do the best I can to explain this part. I create an effects bus and put a small room impulse on it using Pristine Space. After PS is either an 1176 comp or an LA2A to squash this really good. The good thing about the impulse here is we can pan it using the send pans on each track it's sent to. If we had a verb here instead, it doesn't allow us to pan on the send pan. 

Ok, so we have the main guitar panned at like say 85 left. I send this squashed impulse to that track and set the pan on the send on the track to 60% and mix it in via the send level just until I start to hear the sound of the impulse which is feeding off of the guitar panned at 85L. When I start to hear it work it's way right into the 60% pan field, I stop. This makes the sound appear larger than it is.

I do the same to the guitar on the other side so it too grows a bit in size. So in theory, we have two guitar sounds that simulate like they are the size of 85 L to 60 L on one side, 85 R and 60 R on the other. Take the impulse away and the guitar sounds like it is sitting dead on 85 instead of having a size from 85 to 60, understand?

Once I have that in place, I either use the PC eq or drop a Sonitus on that effects bus that has the impulse and compressor and I eq it to fit the sound of the guitars. I'll high pass until it removes the blanket part of the room and sounds more natural. I'll mess with mids and some high end to get the best sound I can get because this little eq is going to taylor how this effect presents itself.

After all this is done, I'll go back to the main guitar bus and check on the Precision bus comp that's on there and may tweak things a bit further to tighten it up or maybe even open it up a bit if it's sounding restricted. Then, I may play around with another eq on this main guitar bus to eq the 4 sounds as an entity. You know...sort of like mastering them to really shine...and that's it.

Hope you can make sense of that...if not, just ask me and I'll try to confuse help you the best that I can. :)
 
-Danny

Danny Danzi


Ok Jonesey, here's what I did to get that sound. It's 4 guitars. Two recordings of me playing the same part. I compress them on each channel at 4:1 removing about -2dB of gain reduction, set attack and release to taste to work in time with the music, high pass at 120hz. Slight cut about -1.5 or -2dB at 320 hz, boost of +1.8 at 5k for a little sizzle.

Recorded two more guitars playing an octave of what I play in the pre-chorus and chorus parts with a stereo chorus from my processor destructively because nothing else can get this particular chorus. So I record the left side with the chorus on, and then the right side and each side of the chorus will waver differently so it will add to the stereo effect as well as my human timing inconsistencies. Pans at 75/75.

Same eq curve but on this I remove -3dB of 320, boost 6k to +3dB so these really sizzle. Compression the same but this time we remove -6dB of gain so these are super tight and consistent. I want them even with no dynamics like a synth would be if it were in there. The volume difference between the main rhythm guitars and the octave guitars is -2.5 dB. The main guitars are at -5.5 dB the octaves are -7.5 dB. So they just layer with the main guitars without competing with them. You're left with a little sizzle that almost sounds like keys playing due to the octaves I'm doing there. Because they aren't dominant, they mix in so well, it barely sounds like there are 2 more guitars...but when you listen close or you hear the verse come back...you can notice something is missing. So in this situation, the octave guitars where my orchestration pieces.

From there all 4 guitars are sent to a bus. On the bus you can use the 4k bus compressor or in my case, I use a UAD Precision bus comp that I absolutely adore because it just shines for stuff like this unlike anything else I've ever heard for layering. 2:1 ratio, not sure what attack I used...release was on auto.

This may sound a little tricky. Forgive me if I confuse you here...but I'll do the best I can to explain this part. I create an effects bus and put a small room impulse on it using Pristine Space. After PS is either an 1176 comp or an LA2A to squash this really good. The good thing about the impulse here is we can pan it using the send pans on each track it's sent to. If we had a verb here instead, it doesn't allow us to pan on the send pan. 

Ok, so we have the main guitar panned at like say 85 left. I send this squashed impulse to that track and set the pan on the send on the track to 60% and mix it in via the send level just until I start to hear the sound of the impulse which is feeding off of the guitar panned at 85L. When I start to hear it work it's way right into the 60% pan field, I stop. This makes the sound appear larger than it is.

I do the same to the guitar on the other side so it too grows a bit in size. So in theory, we have two guitar sounds that simulate like they are the size of 85 L to 60 L on one side, 85 R and 60 R on the other. Take the impulse away and the guitar sounds like it is sitting dead on 85 instead of having a size from 85 to 60, understand?

Once I have that in place, I either use the PC eq or drop a Sonitus on that effects bus that has the impulse and compressor and I eq it to fit the sound of the guitars. I'll high pass until it removes the blanket part of the room and sounds more natural. I'll mess with mids and some high end to get the best sound I can get because this little eq is going to taylor how this effect presents itself.

After all this is done, I'll go back to the main guitar bus and check on the Precision bus comp that's on there and may tweak things a bit further to tighten it up or maybe even open it up a bit if it's sounding restricted. Then, I may play around with another eq on this main guitar bus to eq the 4 sounds as an entity. You know...sort of like mastering them to really shine...and that's it.

Hope you can make sense of that...if not, just ask me and I'll try to confuse help you the best that I can. :)
 
-Danny

Bookmarked this one!!


Great ideas here!!

Wow Danny - nice & detailed, and I can follow it all, no problemo.

I guess, and this should have been a forethought rather than an afterthought, but it reinforces just how imperative it is to get your guitar (strings/tone/setup) > Amp/sim/cab > Mic(?) fairly close to this type of sound before even hitting 'R'

And do these guys use drop tuning?

I bet they're not using sims - probably 5150's miked up or similar yes?

Bristol_Jonesey


Wow Danny - nice & detailed, and I can follow it all, no problemo.

I guess, and this should have been a forethought rather than an afterthought, but it reinforces just how imperative it is to get your guitar (strings/tone/setup) > Amp/sim/cab > Mic(?) fairly close to this type of sound before even hitting 'R'

And do these guys use drop tuning?

I bet they're not using sims - probably 5150's miked up or similar yes?

Whew...glad you understood that. :)
 
Yes, you must have a sound that is close coming out of the gate or you will either waste loads of time trying to cop it or just fall short. Yeah, strings, tone, set-up amps, mic cab, sim...whatever you got, you gotta work it. As for mic vs sim...with my rig, I can't tell the difference between mic'n it or sim'n it...the core of my tone is always the same. The only time I hear a difference is if I use two mics on my rig. Like maybe a 57 on one speaker and a 421 on another or some sort of mutli-mic thing. But to be honest, my speaker sim sound (supplied with my tube pre-amp) is what I like to use because it's consistent and really does sound nearly the same as when I throw a single 57 on my cab.
 
They could be using amp sims....they are so good today, it's tough to tell. I can tell you this much...if you search Youtube for that band doing that song live, their live amp tones suck compared to the recoring. Very high endy and abrasive where the album has a lot more good mid range. The tone is way different too. So you never know.
 
Yes on the tuning. They are down to C on that song and so was I. That's how I tune all the time, so I'm stuck there anyway. LOL!
 
-Danny

trimph1

Danny Danzi


Ok Jonesey, here's what I did to get that sound. It's 4 guitars. Two recordings of me playing the same part. I compress them on each channel at 4:1 removing about -2dB of gain reduction, set attack and release to taste to work in time with the music, high pass at 120hz. Slight cut about -1.5 or -2dB at 320 hz, boost of +1.8 at 5k for a little sizzle.

Recorded two more guitars playing an octave of what I play in the pre-chorus and chorus parts with a stereo chorus from my processor destructively because nothing else can get this particular chorus. So I record the left side with the chorus on, and then the right side and each side of the chorus will waver differently so it will add to the stereo effect as well as my human timing inconsistencies. Pans at 75/75.

Same eq curve but on this I remove -3dB of 320, boost 6k to +3dB so these really sizzle. Compression the same but this time we remove -6dB of gain so these are super tight and consistent. I want them even with no dynamics like a synth would be if it were in there. The volume difference between the main rhythm guitars and the octave guitars is -2.5 dB. The main guitars are at -5.5 dB the octaves are -7.5 dB. So they just layer with the main guitars without competing with them. You're left with a little sizzle that almost sounds like keys playing due to the octaves I'm doing there. Because they aren't dominant, they mix in so well, it barely sounds like there are 2 more guitars...but when you listen close or you hear the verse come back...you can notice something is missing. So in this situation, the octave guitars where my orchestration pieces.

From there all 4 guitars are sent to a bus. On the bus you can use the 4k bus compressor or in my case, I use a UAD Precision bus comp that I absolutely adore because it just shines for stuff like this unlike anything else I've ever heard for layering. 2:1 ratio, not sure what attack I used...release was on auto.

This may sound a little tricky. Forgive me if I confuse you here...but I'll do the best I can to explain this part. I create an effects bus and put a small room impulse on it using Pristine Space. After PS is either an 1176 comp or an LA2A to squash this really good. The good thing about the impulse here is we can pan it using the send pans on each track it's sent to. If we had a verb here instead, it doesn't allow us to pan on the send pan. 

Ok, so we have the main guitar panned at like say 85 left. I send this squashed impulse to that track and set the pan on the send on the track to 60% and mix it in via the send level just until I start to hear the sound of the impulse which is feeding off of the guitar panned at 85L. When I start to hear it work it's way right into the 60% pan field, I stop. This makes the sound appear larger than it is.

I do the same to the guitar on the other side so it too grows a bit in size. So in theory, we have two guitar sounds that simulate like they are the size of 85 L to 60 L on one side, 85 R and 60 R on the other. Take the impulse away and the guitar sounds like it is sitting dead on 85 instead of having a size from 85 to 60, understand?

Once I have that in place, I either use the PC eq or drop a Sonitus on that effects bus that has the impulse and compressor and I eq it to fit the sound of the guitars. I'll high pass until it removes the blanket part of the room and sounds more natural. I'll mess with mids and some high end to get the best sound I can get because this little eq is going to taylor how this effect presents itself.

After all this is done, I'll go back to the main guitar bus and check on the Precision bus comp that's on there and may tweak things a bit further to tighten it up or maybe even open it up a bit if it's sounding restricted. Then, I may play around with another eq on this main guitar bus to eq the 4 sounds as an entity. You know...sort of like mastering them to really shine...and that's it.

Hope you can make sense of that...if not, just ask me and I'll try to confuse help you the best that I can. :)

-Danny

Bookmarked this one!!


Great ideas here!!

^^^^^  :)
 
 
Edit: pls listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LFEZkkwSO4 

Danny Danzi

Bristol_Jonesey


Wow Danny - nice & detailed, and I can follow it all, no problemo.

I guess, and this should have been a forethought rather than an afterthought, but it reinforces just how imperative it is to get your guitar (strings/tone/setup) > Amp/sim/cab > Mic(?) fairly close to this type of sound before even hitting 'R'

And do these guys use drop tuning?

I bet they're not using sims - probably 5150's miked up or similar yes?

Whew...glad you understood that. :)
 
Yes, you must have a sound that is close coming out of the gate or you will either waste loads of time trying to cop it or just fall short. Yeah, strings, tone, set-up amps, mic cab, sim...whatever you got, you gotta work it. As for mic vs sim...with my rig, I can't tell the difference between mic'n it or sim'n it...the core of my tone is always the same. The only time I hear a difference is if I use two mics on my rig. Like maybe a 57 on one speaker and a 421 on another or some sort of mutli-mic thing. But to be honest, my speaker sim sound (supplied with my tube pre-amp) is what I like to use because it's consistent and really does sound nearly the same as when I throw a single 57 on my cab.
 
They could be using amp sims....they are so good today, it's tough to tell. I can tell you this much...if you search Youtube for that band doing that song live, their live amp tones suck compared to the recoring. Very high endy and abrasive where the album has a lot more good mid range. The tone is way different too. So you never know.
 
Yes on the tuning. They are down to C on that song and so was I. That's how I tune all the time, so I'm stuck there anyway. LOL!
 
-Danny

Intersting.


I just listened to the other piece on Dropbox from the High Gain thread and that takes my breath away.


When you say you're using drop C, are you lowering all the strings by 3 4 semitones?


I seem to remember you don't tune normally anyway, I'm pretty sure it was you