Fenzark Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 Hello, everyone! Not sure that the title was fitting, or if the word "soundscape" means something (I think it does), I'll just get on with my question .. Basically, I'm a fan at the moment of writing of two things in music - black metal, and video game music. In my head I have lots of classic videogame tunes that would fit perfectly in a black metal-ish soundscape, soundpicture, production values of a black metal band, etc. Not sure what to call it. Please not that this question is not FL-related, that's not the program I'll be using when making this. I believe that will be ProTools (I will attend a school that's using it). I want the classic, thin production along the lines of Bathory, Mayhem, Hellhammer, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, and espicially Darkthrone, which is legendary for the worst production ever in an album, "Transilvanian Hunger"! Personally I think it's great. I just want a dark, gritty landscape. Nothing fancy - I want to go for the horrible production. Instrumentation will basically be guitar, I play a Gibson Les Paul Classic fitted with EVO humbuckers, giving me lots of low end and bass. How can I make the guitar sound more gritty? Should I just boost the treble to hell? Are there any tips any of you can give to something like this? I hope I'm not boring any of you to hell, but I really would like to hear what you have to say. This is a project I really, really want to complete. I'm not familiar with editing sound yet - I just have the vision in my head. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you very much for any input, I appriciate your time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klm09 Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 Haha kick ass, I love those bands / that type of true black metal production as well! Transilvanian Hunger FTW! Some things you could try to get something similar to Transilvanian Hunger would be to roll off most low end and gently attenuate the highs as well in terms of EQ.. it's a very "middly" sound. You'll want to have a fairly sharp, heavily distorted guitar sound, with very little bass and a lot of highs. For drums, you should get some good acoustic samples (like nskit for example) and possibly distort them very slightly, and again play with the eq a lot to get them to sound sort of thin and crap. Also, apply a fairly subtle room reverb. The drums are probably the hardest part to get to sound authentic, because a big part of the sound is the microphones and room they used when recording the album. A sort of short cut for getting a sound similar to that might be if you have some VST effect or whatever with a "3 inch speaker" preset or something, and apply that on the whole mix.. but it might a bit TOO crappy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenzark Posted August 11, 2006 Author Share Posted August 11, 2006 Haha, thanks alot for the suggestion! You were right about the guitar settings; I simply erased the Low on my shitty PEAVEY Rage amp, raised the High, lowered the Mid just abit, turned up the treble, pushed the Bass all the way down .. yeah. We got ourselves some cold guitarsound. I don't think that'll be the hardest part, to be honest. This will probably be a one-man project - and I can't play drums, so I have to rely on samples. Do you guys know of any good way to implement blastbeats, and metal drumming etc? Will it be just a matter of getting some drum samples I'm happy with, and then implementing them manually? That will probably be abit tough, considering my drum knowledge is zero. Hopefully, it can get abit better in the process. Lots of blastbeats, aswell as some heavy drumming would really do. Also, since I'm basing this on video game music I won't really be needed much vocal, but some vocal rasping is needed to spice up the overall material. I guess to record these types of vocals there are different approaches, right? I could manipulate it to get the sort of voice I want. I don't want it to be edited, so should I just distort it? Oh, and by the way, Darkthrone has a mixer where there's a button called "Necro" that makes the whole production sound, well .. necro. Tr00 kvlt! Please keep the suggestions coming! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splunkle Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 I'm not sure if this is the "black metal" sound, because I don't listen to much black metal, but distortion can add edge to anything. Snares, vocals, cymbals, bass - whatever. But be careful not to overdo it, as if you overdo it everything starts to sound the same. But just distort lightly to edge everything up. Again, I don't know about black metal, but other forms of metal tend to have a lot of high end for the kick drum to give it that click. Snares tend to vary from band to band to band as far as I can see. Rides are usually high and clear, to sit on top of everything. As for samples, well there are a metric ton of acoustic drum samples. I reccomend you start with NSkit 7, google it up, as that is a very well sampled free set. Well, actually, the full thing costs 100 pounds or something, but there is a free version to use, that doesn't feature anywhere near as many samples, but its still a huge numebr for a free soundfont. Apart from that, just scour the internet for drum samples. You are probably going to want acoustic samples, not drum machine samples, but there are still huge numbers of acoustic samples. Good Luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xelebes Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 Use tricks learned in industrial: sample anything and everything and then distort the fuck out of them. Though, to have the more bizarre sounds, use electronic drums distorted supported with various industrial sounds (hums, clanks and thumping.) In black metal, only use distortion as a touch on the acoustic drums, not cranking it up. You want them to have clarity so you can actually make it out over the chugging guitars. The rhythms also use triplet-sixteenths for the blast beats. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ekm Posted August 12, 2006 Share Posted August 12, 2006 Throwing in lots of ambient crap can help. A friend of mine records in his basement and you can randomly hear the furnace kicking in on the guitar tracks. For professional work, obviously a bad thing, but it makes the best black metal sound you will ever hear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion303 Posted August 12, 2006 Share Posted August 12, 2006 Do you really want to do this with computers? Because it seems to me the easiest way to get shitty production sound would be to record the song through bad amps in a garage. -steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenzark Posted August 12, 2006 Author Share Posted August 12, 2006 It really depends, really. Just now it's nothing more than a future idea, a small project, I haven't even chosen the song yet. But all these tips are great, thanks alot guys. I really know how to bring this stuff up to where I want it, definatily. We'll see how I manage to pull this off - hopefully you'll eventually see some results. This is my first project, after all. Yipes! ;X Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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