Any heavy rock/nu-metal lovers?

Ok,

So as many know I own and run a little commercial project studio here in Cape Town and work with a wide range of artists/genres. I'm drawn to acoustic singer-songwriters but work with a fair amount of heavy rock/metal acts RE tracking.

One of those bands is a young 20 something band called 'New Altum', they have been getting alot of press here in our local market and folks have been commenting on the record/quality which I tracked over at my place.

The cool thing is that is was cut largely on my DIY gear I've built over the years, vocals into a U67, my DIY Neve and LA-2A. Guitars through my R312's and the drums through a variety of my mic pres.

I'm very happy with the drum sounds. In this day and age we are so used to mutlisampled or replaced/quantized drums and I feel I was able to capture a pretty good 'raw' sound with spending time on placement/mic pre selection.

We are still working on their record and will be for some time, but the bulk of the tracks are down and they have just shot a music video for their first single "Close enough to hear your heart beat".

The audio mix is a rough cut we did, the kick is way too loud, too much verb over the kit and vocals, the guitars are not meaty enough etc. When I get a break I'll be readdressing this and then will re stripe it.

Would love to hear what you think of the video and music.

You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYzfDZ_tQaA

Cheers

Matt

Sorry guys. This really should have been in the Brewery, mods feel free to move it.

Matt

the vocals are a little high and the kick too, guitars are a bit low (the distortion part)

maybe the bass have too much low end.

seems to be a good band, I`m more in the heavy speed power metal, Nu metal is just not of my taste.
it`s a good video.

do you have a mp3? youtube quality is not good. maybe you should do a special mono mix for youtube.

cheers
Rafael

im up for the mp3 too, will listen over the weekend when i can get some speakers on this computewr

It's interesting, i agree about bass and guitars, i can't comment the rest without mp3.
Not long ago a friend came back from Cape Town, he was doing concerts with a band from Slovenia...

Yeah, i agree about the vocals, they don't sit quite right, but maybe that's just me.

Nice! By that I mean bad, and by bad I mean good, but not in any "good" way :razz:

but seriously, I like it. I like the vocals, I dont have a problem with their placement. but i am listening at a computer.

the video is cool, I guess white is the new black.

[quote author="matta"]Sorry guys. This really should have been in the Brewery, mods feel free to move it.

Matt[/quote]

I guess the rule is:

Mu-Metal -> The Lab
Nu-Metal -> Bewery
:grin:

I'd'like to have a MP3 too...

I agree... too much kick ! :wink:

eD)))

Never tell everyone 'what is wrong' with the music before they hear it. What if you have a potential investor listening and they were going to be really open to the composition and performance, and you sullied their experience by making them listen to the kick/vox mix?? :guinness:

As an engineer/masterererer I sort of agree with your assessment, but a lot of pop nowadays is BD/VOX heavy; especially since half of everyone is listening on their IPOD through earbuds...

I think that a lot of modern metal B.D. attack is mixed not in the 1-3k range but instead in the 3-5k and heavily expanded for that 'thin papery attack' sound.


@ 1:32 when the music breaks down the mix is good. Maybe this speaks of your experience with acoustic acts...

I'm also still trying to discover the secret of the proper 'harshness' cut during the very loud passages. I hear it on the radio.. It's completely counter-intuitively distorted and distant sounding but it works for screamers.

Oh yeah, good music.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the kind words and comments.

RE the mix I can't claim it as mine as I was just responsible for tracking, but I gave a list of my mix comments to the engineer who occasionally works out of my place which include those above and in addition the vocal rides, I feel the vox get lost and come tot he fore in places they shouldn't.

I'm just happy with the 'sounds' we got. It is common trend the world over to add samples/layers or even replace the drums to get the 'natural' drum tones for this genre. I heard of an engineer using 25 snare samples to get that 'one' snare sound on a well known bands record.

Other than a blended a single sample on the kick and snare the rest of the kit was tracking my fairly small drum booth using my DIY gear and think I got a fairly good sound out of them.

I'm still learning, even after doing this for 10 short years and have SOOOOO much more to learn, but gosh when I hear my first records compared to this... well lets just say I've come a long way!

Cheers

Matt

fuckin' yeah man. :thumb:

vocals sound just right on my laptop - appropriately loud for a single. but then again, it's on a macbook which is nothing like what you'd ever want to listen to music on.

I love the mixed-high drums and the clicky kick.
Nice work.

My comments on the band are completely irrelevant since I am a dad and therefore my taste in"nu" music is officially null-and-void. But here they are anyway:

--> Artless, emo lyrics and 70's rock-god posturing is completely appropriate for this genre. New Altum will blend in well with a MTV2 or FUSE mu-metal rock show with the likes of My Chem Romance and at the drive in. They need something to differentiate them from the crowd of sound-alikes.

--> more hot chicks in the video would be helpful.


(just kidding)

Sounds pretty good in general. Kudos! :guinness:

Some things I hear in no particular order:

The singer sounds good, vocals are appropriate. As you said, the vox are a bit verb heavy. In this genre, I would generally use just a hair of delay set to the quarter note, just enough to gel the vocal into the space, but not enough to hear outright. It should really sound dry, but the touch of delay will make the vocal sit better and be more lush. In this setting, I'd also slam the heck out of it with something fast, like an 1176. Watch for sibilants when you do this though, they can get ugly, but occasionally ugly is good, especially in metal.

Something just doesn't work when the vocalist is screaming; it's almost coming forward too much. Additionally, it almost sounds clippy to me, but my speakers here at work are not optimal by any means.

Great snare sound. Could use a little more pop during the verses. Maybe some parallel compression?

Kick sounds good to me here. You might try moving the boost to 3-4k for a more metal type click to the kick. Or maybe it's already there and I'm just off my rocker (which happens more than not).

Guitars sound great to me. If you need extra balls, a wide Q right about 250 seems to do it for me, provided there's not too much mud there already. Another trick is to almost have the bass guitar and crunch tracks sound like one set of sounds. An integrated bass is crucial to keeping it heavy and tight.

Instead of a hall type verb on the drums, you might try something more med-room-ish with a 40-80ms pre-delay to keep them up front and center while still adding that drum room vibe. Drums love plates as well.

Again, my speakers are crap right now, but I'll give it another listen at the studio if I get a minute.

-Matt

Great job, Matt! I'd say the mix is absolutely on par with anything I've heard in the genre, and the sounds of individual instruments are better and more organic than most of the shite floating about (such as anything with Rosss Robinson's imprint). The high bass drum level doesn't bother me, but I've grown up in the era of albums trying to sound like the live concert experience, complete with upfront kick and low to barely existent cymbals.

I'm not one for the nu-metal, but the melodic metalcore (hair splitting enough for you?) of the late 90's was fun, such as Poison the Well, Everytime I Die, Eighteen Visions, or anything else released by Trustkill or Ferret during that era. They all had terrible sounding recordings, but it was about the emo-tion.... dude.

Funny thing, Poison the Well finally made a great sounding recording with their third album, that their fans all seem to hate. I think it was their best songwriting, which they traded youthful enthusiasm for. Regardless it was very well recorded:
http://www.trustkill.com/webstore/music.php?id=582

Ooh, ooh! You gotta check out Harvest's song "Epicure." Nothing compares for great heavy yet raw and organic sounds. Hit the mp3 link on this page (it's really a little Flashplayer popup):
http://www.trustkill.com/webstore/music.php?id=224

I Like Mu-metal!

I like the drums!! the toms sound great!!

It's hard to hear what the verbs are doing through the youtube crunchy digital mess, but overall it sounds good to me.

I like my kicks up in the mix so I'm not bothered about it being where it is.
But I am listening on headphones so it may not be the best to make that call......

Any more details on the tracking? Like what drum kit/amps/mics etc?
I'm always interested in the finer detais when I hear sounds I like :green:

Hey Steve,

Thanks for the input/comments. I plan to get up the latest mix on my studio site ASAP in a much higher quality Mp3 format which will make it easier.

RE Tracking...

Drum Kit was as follows:

Pearl Masters Series with Evans EC2 heads.

Kick drum: 22″, Tom 1: 12″, Tom2: 13″, Tom3: 16″

Sabian Cymbals: HHX 14″ Groove Hats, HHX 18″ Evolution Crash, HHXplosion 18″ Crash, HHX 20″ Evolution Ride & Handhammered 20″ Thin Chinese

B52 on Kick into Neve 'Hotrodded' 1272, MD-421's on 13/16" Toms into Telefunken V672's, the 12" was a 57 into a Spectra Sonics 101. 57's on Snare Top and Bottom into Fabio's R312's. Violet Designs Black Knights on Overheads into a pair of JLM Audio Animal Pres, Violet Design Black Finger into FETboy on Hi-Hat.

Bass was tracked Direct via a Radial Passive DI into the BLA Modded 002R mic pre, Guitars were then tracked with the same DI and Reamped into a Vox AC-30 and Peavey 6505 Head into an Ibanez 4x12 Cab with Celestion Vintage 30's.

Vocals were mainly a U67 into a Neve 'Hotrodded' 1272 into an LA-2A, the screams were done into the same pre and LA-2A but with a Shure SM7B.

I think that above covers it :thumb:

Cheers

Matt

they sound a lot like Blinside or Emery....hey but that's not Nu metal thats Emo.!
this is more nu-metal kinda sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNCoih1G9_Q

[quote author="3nity"]but that's not Nu metal thats Emo.![/quote]

Agreed, but only this year's emo, not the emo of the '90s. Time was Emo meant shy boys and squeeky clean guitars. No screaming at all. Then the Emo train and the Screamo train crossed tracks and out of the tangled wreckage emerged what we now know as Emo.

They all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Initial Records. They were doing it before it was cool.

http://www.initialrecords.com/bios.html