This is possibly one of the most game-changing metal mixing tips I could give you: Stop being a wuss! Much of the advice out there is telling you to hold back, and to be conservative with your EQ and compression. When it comes to heavy music – rock, hardcore and metal – this advice will […]
Continue readingMetal Mixing Tip: Stop Being a Wuss!
By popular demand! This instalment of Inside the Mix dives into my session for Intervals – “Mata Hari.” This is an instrumental guitar-driven record, so we’ll look at: How to smooth out & tighten up the rhythm guitars with minimal processing How to get the lead to cut through the mix and stay upfront My […]
Continue readingInside the Mix – INTERVALS: Mixing Rhythm & Lead Guitars for Metal
Mistakes are bound to happen when you’re in the studio all day, every day for years. Here are some of the worst, most embarrassing mistakes I’ve made in the studio during my engineering/producing career. If I can make a living from making records despite mistakes like this, so can you! 🙂
Here’s a look inside my mix for the Forevermore ‘Telos’ record. See how I manage low-tuned bass, smooth out an over-aggressive guitar tone, and give clean guitars and pianos their own space in such a heavy mix. I love getting to hear pro records broken down in solo and see how it all comes together […]
Continue readingInside the Mix – FOREVERMORE ‘Wormtongue’
UPDATED home studio tour for 2018! See what gear I’m using now, what gear is sentenced to the closet, and how I treated my home mixing room. Gear list: iMac 27″ / 3.4GHz i5 / 16gb RAM Pro Tools 12 (native) Apogee Duet (recommended alternative: Apogee Quartet*) Yamaha NS-10 monitors (recommended alternative: CLA-10*) Audio Technica […]
Continue readingHome Studio Tour 2018 – My mixing setup
Are you struggling to get a fat, punchy tom sound that cuts through a heavy rock or metal mix? You don’t need to spend an hour triggering or pasting in tom samples. It’s actually pretty easy to get a great tom sound even when the toms sound flat, muddy or boxy to begin with. Here […]
Continue readingHow to EQ Metal Toms to Sound 10x Better in the Mix
I just had a revealing conversation with a member of a band called The Afterimage. (I produced a bunch of their stuff years ago, and their latest single was recorded by a Hardcore Mixing member and mixed by me) He’s in the process of getting test mixes for a new side project, and he sent […]
Continue readingStop Ruining Your Mixes! 😫
This is a classic metal mixing trick for guitars! Learn how to control the low-end of heavy guitars during palm mutes and chugging… WITHOUT making the rest of your tone thin. This is accomplished using a multiband compressor that only effects the low mids… leaving the rest of your guitar tone intact.
A simple but important question: How do you work across multiple songs for the same album? I recommend AGAINST the advice to keep everything in one single session… and it doesn’t have to be a pain to work this way. Here’s how to copy your mix settings from one song to another easily using Import […]
Continue readingHow to copy your mix settings using Import Session Data in Pro Tools
The car test has long been one of the most important “final checks” for mixing engineers young and old, new and experienced. Have you ever stopped to think about why checking the mix in the car is so revealing? Why is it so easy to spot problems in our mixes when we take them to […]
Continue readingThe Car Test: Why it Works (and how to make your mix translate)