Temflakes403's deeply pretentious music making delusions

[Temflakes403]

Already posted this on my blog, but reposting it here because I'm very proud of it.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...MO?usp=sharing

I made a song. It's in the above link. It took me a long time. I am very proud of it. I'd appreciate it if you listened.

That is all.

[pinetree]

That is very long.
I don't know enough about metal or even music in general to give you meaningful comments but it sounds good.

Would use it on my dnd playlist.

- - - Updated - - -

Also your link is not working, the one on your blog is though.

[Temflakes403]

Ya fucking kidding me? Let me update it then.

Should be working now.

[Snow]

I wanted to comment on your blog but the site wouldn't let me for some reason? Either way while I'm not really knowledgeable on metal it's pretty cool, and I especially like the part around 3:20 where it's like being suddenly dunked underwater. Good work!

[Temflakes403]

Thanks, I appreciate it.

[Mattias]

Just died for me right at 7:13. Or at least I think it died. There didn't seem to be any cresendo or finale in there before that. Some real good bits in there, but the drummer going off on the high hat that hard during some the guitar bits feels like it distracts away from the guitar feats.

[Temflakes403]

That's very much not the ending timestamp, do you mean a technical error?

[Mattias]

Possibly. All I know is that when it hit 7:13 everything cut off, and the timer stopped advancing, but the player was still in play mode and pausing and unpausing did nothing. Nor did advancing it to 8:43 and trying to resume it later in the recording.

[Temflakes403]

Huh, that sucks. It's supposed to end at 11:30~. Just to be sure, have you tried redownloading everything?

[Mattias]

Nope, just gave it the one shot.

[Temflakes403]

Well, I checked the link and it is working for me. If you ever feel like giving it another try.

[aldeayeah]

cool stuff! end boss theme vibes

one quipe, there's this industrial background droning sound (I think it's a rhythm guitar, but it sounds really "hollow") that I find really grating. would probably benefit from better EQ/mixing

what software/equipment did you use?

[Temflakes403]

You may or may not be talking about the rhythm bass. I used Reaper with free plugins essentially, main ones are ReaEQ, ReaComp, Tal Reverbs 2 & 4, Valhalla Supermassive, ReaDelay, and TDR Nova for most sidechaining endeavors thanks to its multiband capabilities as a compressor, as compared to ReaComp. ReaXComp unfortunately doesn't allow sidechaining. The arrangement consists of two guitars, one rhythm, one lead, two basses, one rhythm, one lead, and drums. This song was mainly about making a single song, in a single style, with a single set of instruments, as opposed to a lot of the rest of my work. It was kind of a big deal producing everything, since there's a fair bit going on. But considering the character limit, I guess I'll go further into it. So, in parts:

-Drums
Drums are the first thing I tried to get right, I think. They're a fairly rough layout of plugins compared to other possibilities because I learned a lot between the beginning and ending of the making of this mix, but they're not that complicated once you break it down. So, there are three different plugins in the midi channel, which is where I store the single midi files for programming it. I used to have a separate instance and separate file for each mic. I did not yet know the limits of routing. The plugins are Sean Pandy Drums, Steven Slate Drums 5, and MT Power Drumkit 2, in that order so the midi works on all three. They're all remapped to different spots so I can have full control. MT Power is the main meat of the sound of the kit, with the pack in cymbals in standard configuration, the snare and kick drum being the main timbre of their respective kit pieces, and was the first one I started using. Then, later I integrated SSD with the cymbal's stereo image reversed to give some variety in the image, otherwise there would be things like 2 rides in the same side of the kit, which is just a bit bland. I use the free Hugo snare that came along, since it gives it a bigger sound without having to mess with reverb yet, and gives it a nice, higher pitched snapped in contrast to MT Power's more midsy meat. I tune it up though, same thing with the SSD kickdrum, which is actually a source of lower mids. Tuned up it manages to give them a piercing quality and make them stronger in the mids region, unifying it with the beater sound and giving the sub a more discernable shape. It kind of gets lost otherwise. The Sean Pandy drums are just drums, no cymbals, but I use both the snare and the kick (this one isolated to anything higher than 5k I think, maybe a bit of 3k to give it more smack) to make them both stronger and punchier. Most of the toms aren't that good, so I don't use them often and just route them to the same channels as the MT-power toms because of their fairly similar characteristics. The low tom is absolutely golden though, I like that one.
As far as EQ goes, every part gets its own channel and then its own EQ, aka the Kick gets a channel, the High toms get a channel, the floor toms as well, as does the snare and the cymbals. Then it's a bit predictable, EQs to get the best sound out of each, so kick gets a bunch of sub and highs for the lows and the beater, same thing with the floor toms but higher, more towards the bass register instead of the sub, and the high toms actually start to creep into the low mids. Then they all get comps to make the transients super powerful, then route the kick into the sidechains of the basses to make them duck out. Then they just get like, maybe some Mid/Side balancing if they're supposed to have a strong stereo image. There's little to do if it's not the snare, since EQ, balancing and Comping are like 90% of the work. There's also a second channel for the kick beater, with some saturation and exciting, to make it stand out better in bassless setups and just cut through the mix better, in metal the kick needs to be the focus but it can't just steal the whole show. Then they all get peak brickwalls. My mixing is very loud, the kind that makes the loudness wars dudes get mad and whine on forums. I try to balance it well, though. The cymbals are also not that complicated, some sidechaining with the higher register instruments, in this case just guitars, and some very important Mid/Side balancing. It's more important in the cymbals thanks to the inexistent bass content, so they can be louder and not mess with everything else. EQ is very simple, high pass at 500, some boosting in the super highs to give them that sparkle that I enjoy, and some comping to make their base level a bit louder. I find it better to bring up the lower volume stuff with cymbals, they have a nice timbre with the release and all. The snare is probably the most demanding, it has an EQ curve I so far haven't managed to replicate, some hellishly annoying compression, some saturation, and even some distortion. It makes it really shotgunny, which I enjoy, especially in a busy mix. It gets peaked like everything else, and then we move on to the kit-wide stuff. These tricks are stuff I learned in a few Nolly videos, and they're definetly the type of subtle detail that glues it together. There's one channels which is just this absurd 30:1 ratio to make it seem like the room resonance. It's pretty nice, especially with the snare. Thickens it up a fair bit. Then there's kit wide reverb, with a single channel of snare outside of the drum close mics and that isn't routed to the reverb, to make it drier and clearer. After that, just some kit wide peaking and eqing, very small stuff.

That was more than I expected. There will be even more.

Basses:
-Rhythm Bass
I actually use two basses, which has its benefits and drawbacks. The benefit is that I can make the bass image wider, which only really works on binaural, but it's also just fun because rhythm bass is slap. In contrast to the lead bass, that's meant to glue together the rhythm guitars and make them t h i c c, it plays with the drums and just grooves a shit ton. It also goes down to A0, which is big amounts of fun. It's fairly simple, double tracked, one for the right one for the left, each separated into low and high frequencies. I kill the mids to give everything else space, and take like half of the bass and low mids so that it doesn't clash too much with the lead bass. But I've been trying with letting them overlap a bit and it seems to work nicely, so maybe it doesn't need to be that tight. The low frequencies stay clearer, with just light saturation and eqing, but the highs don't have that much more, it's just that higher frequencies play with distortion nicer thanks to acoustics. I took a lot of inspiration from Fieldy's tone in Korn.

-Lead Bass
This is more elaborate, but it's just one, down center. The bass frequencies are a bit higher, but it also gets more low mids. It's also juicy as all hell. Thing is, it's 6 different tracks. Same thing with separating into highs and lows, but now there's also distorted and clean, and the distorted low is three to give some stereo. First, the highs. There's the high clean, which is just EQing and saturation, but this one gets more mids. There's the high distorted, which goes through some distortion pedals and JS plugin exciters to make it very wild, and then it's carefully compressed and balanced to make everything play along well. The lows are the clean lows, which again is very simple, bass boost, low pass at like 2k to 1k, and little if any saturation. Some compression to make it very constant with the transients. Not that it's that necessary, it's programmed after all. Then there's the low distorted, which goes into some distortion pedals to make it fuzzy, like Cliff Burton, and it's very low in the mix. It also has a variation panned right and another panned left. These are lower still, but make the lead bass very w i d e. Which I enjoy. Then, the master bass channel gets some sidechain from the kickdrum and the snare to make the lows and highs duck out at the right time.

Guitars:
-Lead Guitars
It's 4 tracked, 2 left 2 right, usually in different octaves to make it feel bigger, possibly with different articulations as well. It's fairly simple, a Tube Screamer to give it more bite, Amped Roots to distort it well, some EQ, delay to make it s p a c e y. Then the master lead gets a Valhalla Supermassive to make it s p a c i e r. Then a peak limiter, like everything else. Lead tones usually are very simple, but it works wonders.

-Rhythm Guitars
The final boss. Another one made up of 6 channels, but each matters more. First, there are 3 Amped Roots channels, each with different EQs, Tube Screamer, and Impulse Responses. Two of these are IRs I got from this youtuber that made a pack mimicking a lot of Metallica song IRs, and they work pretty well for me. First one has a Black Album IR, likes a lot of the low mids, not a lot of the treble, it's very thick, meaty but not too gritty. The second one has an And Justice For All one, that super gritty, high frequency one, also helps as well. Very gritty, but not meaty at all. Third one has the packed in IR of the Amped, makes it very fuzzy, I thought it reminiscent of the From Mars to Sirius tone. Has some mid heavy warmth to it, which is the space I give the rhythm guitars. The fourth one is a weirder one, I take a JCM800 Hot preamp into the Emissary, gives it this super slinky, metallic sound with a lot of note definition. Basically what makes the whole thing discernible in the first place, but it kind of sucks if you leave it on its own. The fifth channel is some of that chainsaw HM-2 swedish death goodness, that is pretty much the only thing giving a healthy dose of high frequencies. Also doesn't go into an IR. And the sixth is just some of that overdrive stuff, to make it thicker and give it some more transient action. There's not a lot outside of each respective amp, just some EQing focused on cutting off the bass and the super high frequencies and strengthening the mids, and comping/sidechaining to make the cymbals play nicer. There's also a send from each of the channels, where I make it very lower, give it delay, reverb, chorus and whatever else, just to make it breathe a little but take the focus away from themselves.

Then, there's a technique I'm not repeating, which is master channel reverb. Aka, I put in the reverb in the master channel. 5 actually. Sequential, different types, very low levels of mixing for each, and each one with more delay to make them feel like echoes. Makes for wonderful ambiance but it also can kill the bass, I had to do a lot of bodging to make it work. Usually is better with just a bus, so I can then kill the bass and not eliminate it from the whole mix.

I wasn't expecting to make such a lengthy post, but I like talking about this, so.