Mixing Metal for Beginners - The Ultimate Guide

so you have decided to learn how to mix metal congratulations mixing metal will give you so much joy while simultanously crushing your last liver of self-confidence and make you want to pull out your hair why do you think me and so many great metal mixing Engineers are bald do you still want to continue all right then let me bid you welcome to the ultimate guide for beginners for mixing [Music] metal in this video I will go over the three cornerstones for metal mixing Equalization compression and saturation if you master these three techniques you will be

able to achieve Punchy clear and massive sounding metal mixes in the first part of the video I will thoroughly go over what each of these techniques does to your sound and how to use them I will then mix a track from scratch using only these three techniques to show you what results you can expect to keep keep this as beginner friendly as possible I'm going to use only stock plugins from qbase Slate digital plugins and a few from neural DSP the template that I'm finishing today I'm also going to make available for all my backers

on patreon so if you are interested consider going over there no matter what do or what plugins you use the principles that I'm going to teach you will be universally applicable and will be usable no matter the tools you're using I will have shapter markers below so feel free to jump to certain section if you're looking for something specific for each of these Cornerstone techniques I'm going to talk about controls what parameters you can change about them tone how the technique Alters the sound and problem solving which is what issues it's solving in a metal

context with all that out of the way let's jump into the first technique which is Equalization or just EQ for short if if I want to open up the EQ panel in qbase I'm just pressing this button here edit channel settings and this window is coming up I'm going to use the drum part here for demonstrating what the EQ is doing so I'm just going to press here and it's going to create a EQ point a band that is now boosting by around 8 DB at 250 HZ or so I'm going to slide the band

around around the frequency range so you can have a listen to what exactly it's doing to the sound so I am adding information I am boosting at certain points of the frequency spectrum which can be useful which I'm going to go over a bit later uh I can also do cuts so that means removing [Music] information the next control I want to go over is the Q setting and what this is doing is that if I'm increasing it it's going to make the cut more narrow so that means I can make more precise alterations to

the sound or I can make it wider by decreasing the Q value so the Bell here is a bit wider apart from these controls you also have different shapes to play with so this is the standard shape which is called a bell shape because it looks a bit like a bell this is the most common shape of an EQ you can also play with what is called a shelf so this is what is called a low shelf which is boosting low frequencies under 112 htz here in a shelf shape so it's boosting everything above or

below a certain point and you can also change the Q settings to make it a bit more uh narrow and a bit like this or make it more smooth another really common EQ shape is the cut or the pass so this is what is called a high pass because it's letting higher frequencies pass through it's a bit unedo you can also call it a low cut so that means means it's cutting everything below 157 Hertz [Music] here and of course you also have a low pass or high cut how you know want to call [Music]

it so those are the basic controls of Equalization next I'm going to talk to you about the tone aspect of Equalization so that is what is it doing to the actual sound that you're affecting the main thing is to make it brighter or darker uh so let's say I want some more symbols in this drum track then I might add a v i can just scroll my wheel to adjust the queue and now I'm bringing out a bit more sisle in the high end or let's say I want some more kick [Music] drum or some

more [Music] snare this is affecting the tonal characteristic of the sound and in general when you want to make something brighter or darker you're using a wider boost or a wider cut because if you make the queue very narrow like this it's going to sound a bit more unnatural and it's better for really honing in on problem areas that I'm going to go over very shortly I'm sure you have heard about digital eqs such as this one versus analog eqs and when you are changing the tonal characteristic of a sound it's a bit more common

to use a analog equalizer so to demonstrate this I'm going to use the virtual mix R by slate digital and analog Equalization it usually has very specific band shapes so it's imparting a certain sound in general if you are boosting say 400 htz it's not only boosting 400 htz there are other more subtle things happening like cutting above or below the bell for instance it can add some pleasant saturation that is another Cornerstone that I will go over later it's generally imparting a certain tone to the sound this is really traditional SSL equalizer let's say

I wanted to add some brightness to these drums you can see I'm boosting 15 DB but still it's sounding quite Pleasant I would say maybe some low end and here you have a high pass or low [Music] cut but the general principles are the same I still have a Q control here so let's say I'm boosting here at 3,000 htz I can make the Q more narrow or more wide so the principles are exactly the same the main reason to use a analog equalizer is if you enjoy the particular tone that that equalizer have so

for more tone shaping things I like to use more analog style equalizers next we're going into problem solving so what issues can EQ solve in a metal context for this it's generally a good idea to use a digital EQ because you usually get a visual representation of the Spectrum which can be really helpful and also you have much more control and you can really see what you're affecting so a a really good example of this is when you need to notch uh and notching is removing certain problem areas like a a resonance in the symbol

that sounds really harsh for instance then you can do a notch which is a very narrow Q EQ cut so I'm going to show you what I mean starting with adding a bell making the queue very [Music] narrow next listening for problem areas by just sweeping it up here so here is a area that's not sounding too nice so the next step is to cut it another use for this is to fit the instrument into the mix this is something that I will demonstrate later when I'm actually mixing the song but it's essentially carving out

space for different instruments and making sure that they don't Clash too much some clashing is actually needed in metal to get this glued and really heavy sound you cannot have 100% separation between the instruments in metal because it will sound really weird also when you have rhythm guitars that are literally taking up everything from 70 htz up to like 12,000 Hertz and you have the drums that are from 40 Hertz up to 20,000 Herz it's impossible to not get some overlap it's finding this balance the correct amount of overlap that will make your mixes sound

great next we are moving on to compression which actually is one of the most important techniques that I'm going over today and also one that I personally thought was really difficult to understand in the beginning so I'm going to try my best to explain this in as pedagogical of a manner as I possibly can so starting off with the controls of the compressor we're starting with the threshold which is the easiest to understand I would say a threshold is essentially a line that is now set to minus 20 DB every sound that is passing through

the compressor that is exceeding Min - 20 DB in volume is going to be affected by the compressor and what a compressor does is that is essentially compressing the sound so it's turning the volume down to illustrate this I'm going to just go into some automation here let's say I have a compressor for this rhythm guitar [Music] di so if this rhythm guitar is exceeding the threshold set on the compressor the volume will be turned down but as you can see the sound is pretty Dynamic here so it's starting a bit louder and then it's

getting more quiet so the amount that it's turned down is decreasing because it's not exceeding the threshold then here we have another blip so then the compressor will turn it down again and you see it's quite loud here but here it's getting more quiet again so it's it's going going back right and what this is doing is that it's making the volume of the sound more even and the more even sound will be easier to hear in a full metal mix so this is the foundational principle of why compression is so useful is that it's

bringing forward the more quiet parts of a sound and like I said especially in the metal context this is super crucial to have things be audible next we are going going over what is called ratio and I'm going to simplify it a little bit for this video but essentially if you have a higher ratio it's going to turn down the volume more than if you have a lower ratio so let's say that this is with the ratio of 2: 1 I'm going to increase it to let's say 6:1 what that will do is that it's

going to increase the amount that the sound is turned down that is exceeding the threshold with some compressors you can go all the way up to Infinity here on the ratio if you have Infinity to one then it's essentially a brick wall limiter and that is just everything that is going over the threshold is being flattened so it's exactly the same volume next we have the attack so the attack is how long it takes for the compressor to engage so this would be a very very fast attack because it's engaging exactly where the guitar is

hitting if we had a bit of a slower attack it would then take a little bit of time of course in reality it might look something like this but just for the sake of being clear we had it like this so it's letting a little bit of the initial hit through and this can be useful by increasing the attack part of a sound so let's say I have a snare drum it's very important for that to be quite high in attack to poke through the mix so if I'm compressing a snare drum I don't want

to kill that attack then I'm going to increase the attack control on the compressor so I'm letting more of the snare attack through it so essentially it's delaying the compression and letting more of the initial part of the sound through and likewise if you have a slow attack it's killing all of the attack in the sound so this can also be useful in some situations say you have stakato strings then you don't want them to be super Pokey because you have so many other attackyoutube the threshold and it's no longer being affected by the compression

then it starts to release and this control will adjust how long this release takes so let's say this is a 500 millisecond release if I'm now decreasing it the release will be faster so it will make the compression more Snappy those are the basic controls of a compressor now I'm going to show you how it can affect the toe of a sound as I said before it will make the sound more even in general which will make it more audible I'm going to demonstrate here with this drum track you can hear that it's clamping down

that the snare and the kick are not poking out as much and in extension you can then hear the symbols a bit more the next use for compression is to increase or decrease the punch of something so here we have a really fast attack which is then killing all of the punch of the drums if I want some more attack with this compression I'm going to increase this value so I'm going to just accelerate it first and you will hear the difference so you can hear that it's letting the kick and the snare through a

lot more [Music] right and then you find The Sweet Spot so around 50 milliseconds or so I think it sounds quite Punchy and quite good just have a listen so you can hear that it's letting through some attack but it's still clamping down so you're getting the Best of Both Worlds and this actually is increasing the amount of punch that you can get from something this effect is also known as pumping the compressors so when you get this effect that is going up and down a lot that is called pumping and it's an effect that

you use a lot when mixing metal for getting this super Punchy super in yourf face sound problem solve in what problems can this solve and yeah that is to make things more or less audible in the mix so more audible by making the sound more even less audible by reducing unnecessary spiky information that you don't want in certain instruments if you have any questions at all just pop them in the comments below and I will answer everyone now we are moving on to the third Cornerstone technique of metal mixing and that is saturation now this

is tricky stuff if you're a beginner it's usually quite subtle changes to the sound but at the same time it's super crucial for getting some Vibe into your mix and also gluing everything together it's filling out your sound a bit more it's also making it a bit more even so it's acting kind of like compression it usually has a smoothening character to your sound so it's making it a bit more pleasant to Listen to If you have a really harsh sound some saturation can really help but let's just have a look here at some saturation

that is available in the virtual mix R starting with the controls we have firstly the type of saturation you have so many different types here we have what is known as console saturation so this is emulating sound being driven through a console uh we we have tape saturation which is emulating the sound of recording to tape we have tube saturation so you have so many different styles to experiment with each one has their own unique flare and their own unique sound but the principles are still largely the same I would say the effect is just

more or less subtle a funny story is actually that when people were recording in an analog Studio before they were doing all that they could to reduce the effects of analog saturation so reducing noise reducing the effect of consoles to get as clean of a sound as possible and then when people started mixing inside of the computer inside of Doss The Sounds were 100% clean so no analog interference and it sounded so sterile and so boring so that has led to companies making emulations of of the analog gear so that we can now introduce saturation

in amounts that yeah we feel is appropriate for a certain mix let's just have a listen to what this is doing so if I'm decreasing the input it's less saturation if I'm exaggerating it here you can hear this effect that it's exaggerating it's actually now distorting the sound so removing spiky attack information we also have the drive control here so yeah pretty subtle stuff but it's increasing the effect of the saturation just have a listen I'm going to accelerate it a bit and I'm going to turn it off and turn it on again just listen

to that it's adding some information it's making it sound more full it's evening it out a little bit it's making it sound a bit more smooth I will show you one more style of saturation which is tape saturation which is used a lot in metal mixing it's adding some base it's making the highend very smooth it's yelling together and yeah just making it sound full and a bit more [Music] alive so essentially you can think of saturation as EQ and compression that are reacting dynamically to what is being inputed into the plugin but speaking speaking

of tone what tone can saturation impart on a certain sound well it can make it more or less Punchy depending on what saturation style you're using it can have an effect to yell together instruments in a mix so say you are using the same saturation style for the drums for the bass and the guitars then it has a tendency to boost similar frequencies and also make it gel then a bit more to each other it can also increase the vibe or like the alive feeling of your mix uh while at the same time then decreasing

the definition so it's like decreasing the separation between the instruments so like with everything in life a balance is what you need to find which amount of separation and definition do you want in this particular style of mixing uh versus how much analog feel do you want how much VI do you want if you have zero saturation on your mix you're going to get amazing definition amazing separation but it's going to sound super boring and super sterile in general the vibe of a certain analog equalizer or compressor is coming from the saturation style that it's

imparting on the sound so that's also something to consider if you're using an emulation of an analog equalizer you are adding saturation in one form or another and also problem solving it melding together a little bit here but it smoothens out the sound as I've already been through before and it can also bring down overbearing transients which is the attack part of a sound so say a snare drum is too Pokey saturation will mellow it out I'm going to show you here using tape saturation I'm going to play you first without it and then I'm

engaging it and just listen to the snare drum uh how much it's poking look through how much attack the drums [Music] have so here I exaggerated the effect but you can hear how the snare drum is being pressed down like from a compressor but the difference from a compressor is that it's also then adding harmonic information so essentially like an equalizer depending on how hard you push it into the saturation so you can think of it as similar to the threshold of a compressor that the harder you push into it the bigger effect you're going

to get all right let's move into mixing this track as I said before I'm going to use exclusively these three techniques Equalization compression and saturation to mix this song firstly it's a good idea to think about which style you're going for with the mix before starting anything so for this particular track I'm going for quite a heavy sound with a lot of vibe a lot of saturation so I'm not considering definition as much of course I want definition in my track but it's not the priority the priority is to get a really heavy and Meaty

sound out of this mix I'm going to first go over what I'm using for each of these sounds so a good idea when beginning mixing is to use mix ready drums so here I'm using W kit Wonder metal by ggd drums and it's sounding great Straight Out of the Box the whole point of these one kit Wonder kits is to have a mix ready tone so we can just pop it into the mix and it will sound great immediately and why this is good when you are just starting out is because this gives you a

framework for the mix so you have a well balanced drum kit already a drum kit encompasses everything from 40 HZ up to 20,000 HZ so all of the audible frequency range that you're going to have in a metal mix so if you have a really well balanced drum kit you can then use this as a framework work for the rest of the instruments next for the base I'm using the finished mix tone of GM base 2 just this disc tone here another tip use one of these mid bases when starting out and learning mixes if

you're interested in picking up gy base 2 I have a affiliate Link in the description below that gives me a kickback so it's a great way to get started and also support the channel next we have the Hydra but printed out as a dry input a Di and it sounds like [Music] this and this is actually going to be the first thing that I will do I will do a very basic guitar tone for this Di and for that I am using using the gajira from neural P you can use any amp simulator you want

there are plenty of free options available as [Music] [Applause] [Music] well okay that's good enough for now we also have a radio guitar layer and for this I want a radio effect so I want a really filtered sound and that's achieved just by copying over the amp Sim here I'm just going to use the EQ in qbase I'm going to change this to a high pause and I'm going to change this one to a low pass and there we have a radio effect for the guitar okay I would say that's all of the raw sounds

ready for starting mixing and the first step that I'm always doing is that I'm creating a so-called bus and what is a bus that's a very important concept when mixing and it's essentially when you are feeding certain tracks into an auxiliary track so I am now feeding the drums the bass and the rhythm guitar into a single grouped bus so essentially what I am then doing on the bus channel is going to affect all of them together so in cubis you do it like this I press the drums I hold shift and I press the

rhythm guitar so this is selecting all of the free tracks I am right clicking down here add group Channel okay I'm going to call this the instra mental bus and it's going to the stereo out which is perfectly fine add a track all right let's listen to what we have going on here on the instrumental [Music] bus and the first step that is super important is to add some saturation so I'm going to do this using the virtual mix rack just as before when doing saturation on a bus like this I like doing consult emulation

so I'm going to use a model here I'm going to increase the drive to have a bit of a more exaggerated effect and then I'm going to tweak this so I'm going about into the red around the Ser [Music] mark the next step is to do some compression on the bus this is super integral to the sound of any metal mix and this is what is called bus compression essentially compression on a bus here I'm going to use the FG Gray from Slate digital these settings are used by pretty much everyone that I know uh

there are good metal mixers and what I'm doing here is that I'm mainly compressing the snare drum I'm looking for around 3 DB of gain reduction on this meter on the snare drum and this will make its sound much more glued and much more cohesive immediately so adjusting the [Music] threshold so just listen here to the difference [Music] especially listen to the snare drum it's just sounding so much more Punchy and so much more glued into the rest of the mix when I remove this the snare drum just pokes out too [Applause] [Music] much super

important for a good sounding mix next we are moving to the stereo out bus and this is what everything is fed into essentially what is known as the master out bus and I have already put on a plugin here which is acting as a maximizer so what is a maximizer it's essentially shaving off the peaks of your mix and making it much more loud it's acting as a limiter mostly I'm going to just use this fgx also by slate digital so if you have the all access pass by slate digital I'm not sponsored by them

but it's a great great investment if you're starting out mixing you get so much value from this pack and I'm using their plugins all the time so you can see this shaping off some P [Music] here for now that's good enough I'm also on the stere out bus going to add some tape saturation with the virtual tape machine from PL digital and I'm here looking for a little bit below the red I'm going to feed the rest of the elements into this as well so let's add those in so I'm looking for it to go

slightly into the red that's a good starting point okay now we have a pretty cool sounding raw mix I would say just from the bus uh compression and uh the stereo out processing just have a listen if I remove the bus processing [Music] now now the next step is to go over each instruments what I like to do is to do them with the drums to get this framework sound right so what I usually do when mixing is that I start to get a drum mix going here we have this for free uh of course

if you want a bit more of a challenge try doing a drum mix on your own I have a great video on that as well that you can check out uh but for this purpose I'm going to use the finished tone of the one kit Wonder metal the only thing that I can hear initially is that I would like a bit more attack on the snare drum the low end of the snare drum so you can see here that it's around 200 Hertz adding a band making the CU appropriately [Music] wide it's just hitting a

little bit harder which I like next the base starting with EQ as well to me it's sounding a little bit too overbearing in the low on so I'm going to add here a low [Music] shelf [Music] okay let's have a look at the overall frequency balance tone [Music] wise this part is sticking out a bit to me taking next let's add some um compression to this sound I'm going to use the distressor from the virtual mix rack and I'm going to give it a slow attack so a lot of the attack is coming through I

want the initial hit of the base to really hit you in the face and make it punch really hard I'm going to also have a fairly fast release which will make it so that all of the initial hits are affected equally because the compression has time to to release before the next [Music] one here we don't have a threshold control but instead we have input and output so you can look at this as if the threshold is set and if you push it harder you're going to get more compression because it's going beyond the threshold

of the plug-in so I'm looking at around three DB maybe 2 DB and now because this does not have a automatic gain feature which is matching the output to the input you need to do that by ear and then you're adjusting this output knob here so let's just have a listen without it first now you can listen it's a bit too quiet so I'm going to increase the volume here [Music] it's a really common mistake that if something is louder it always sounds better so when you are making changes you need to match the input

and output volume so you're not fooled by the loudness so we can only listen to the effect the compression is having and it's not just a volume [Music] boost so what I'm hearing is that it's increasing the attack slightly it's also bringing down the slides which I felt were poking out too much [Music] before making it more even so with the drums listen to the slides before the compression and now with it it's keeping it much more in line I would say next I like to do tape saturation on base because it's just making the

low end so fat and [Music] nice so here's a good point to move into something that I haven't talked about yet which is automation I'm going to do more automation towards the end of the mix but here you can listen to these notes the high notes of the base are sticking out a lot so I'm then going to use show Automation and immediately we have the volume automation here you can also select a lot of different parameters to automate but yeah for now I want the altimate the volume and I'm going to bring them down

slightly so I'm bringing them down like 2 DB as compared [Music] to okay moving on to the Rhythm guitars let's start with [Music] Equalization I think it's sounding slightly radiy so this is like this [Music] area next let's just Notch out a bit of these annoying parts of the [Music] [Music] sound I'm going to change this one to a bell because I want to remove a little bit of lowend [Music] mud next I'm going to add some saturation to the sound same as for the bass [Music] guitar and I'm also going to copy the same

compression settings before the saturation as I had for the base just making it slightly More Level and increasing the [Music] tech [Music] so I'm still not feeling the tone so I'm going to add some more Equalization before the compression here it's also adding some saturation so it's going to make it sound more fat I want to hear a bit more lowend like not the mod that I removed earlier but around 100 htz so boosting here I also am hearing something that is sounding a bit harsh maybe around 3,000 htz so let's try removing that [Music]

I'm now Hearing in the base a bit of a problem area that I would like to notch out okay let's see which one it is you can see the frequency graph here okay let's see if we can fit in the other elements now of the mix starting with this main Melody [Music] Loop let's start with some EQ firstly I'm seeing a lot of information down here below 100 HZ I don't need that in this sound so I'm going to do a highpass filter and going to filter that stuff out okay then let's just add a

boost that's what I'm usually doing slide it around a little bit and see where it's really making the loop pop out of the mix and be really [Music] audible okay that's sounding quite good and then then I just want to remove a little bit of this harsh area that is I think clashing a little bit with rhythm [Music] [Music] guitars okay you know the drill let's do some saturation to make it sound a bit more [Music] alive Also let's do compression I'm here going to use a different style of compression this is known as opto

style which is a compression Style with fixed attack and release it's a very smooth style of compression and it's great for layers like this great for vocals as well so let's just solo it and check it out [Music] okay so you can hear that it's becoming more even it's not poking out so much from the mix and also it's bringing up some of the more quiet elements of this sound so it's now perfectly audible Okay so swe we also have a percussion layer here let's do that together with the [Music] drums okay [Music] Equalization also

I'm going to remove some low end here I want the drums and base to be king of the low on so I'm removing this from this uh layer let's do the same technique boosting and see where it sticks out okay it's usually around one to 2,000 Herz in my [Applause] experience adding tape saturation and also some compression I'm going to use the opto style but going to engage the limit function and what this does is that it's cutting off the Peaks super nicely so it's not sticking out at all and not competing with a snare

okay now let's move on to the final part of this mix which is Automation and what I like to do is to begin by automating the first downbeat of each each section on my instrumental bus so like here this is a really big hit you really want this to have a big impact what I'm then doing is that I'm adding an automation point at the start I'm adding another one immediately after and then I'm doing a boost of like 2 and 1 12 DB maybe okay so it's hitting a bit [Music] harder and you can

do this is to emphasize hits throughout the mix so I have one here I want another one [Music] here and we have another one here and another one [Music] here I'm then going through the track and see if certain elements stick out too much or if I want to bring out something [Music] maybe I think the base can be a slightly lower volume for these high notes even still here's actually a good example of how much the tape sat ation is doing for the overall sound you should listen to two things one is how much

fatness is being added when I'm engaging the tape saturation and also how much glue is added so how much the instruments melt together we are losing some separation as I said before but we are gaining so much Vibe and so much [Music] glue okay next I've added some samples just to reinforce certain parts of the song so you can hear how much impact it's adding to the drop [Music] here okay and next some reverse Reverb [Music] [Applause] before okay so now what I'm hearing is that I want even more low end for my guitars so

I'm going to do this with another EQ here and I just want to add like 60 HZ like really heavy bottom [Music] end let's also try to add some extra punch to the drums by adding some EQ here for the snare drum using some analog Equalization here at like two DB I also feel that the snare now in the full context is slightly too blippy so what I'm going to do is just add some compression to smooth that out I'm still going to keep the attack fairly slow so some attack of the snare is poking

through but I'm going to compress it a bit to increase the [Music] sustain okay let's just have a listen [Music] here [Music] listen to how much more of the punch is coming through while also bringing up the quiet layers of the [Music] drums okay now we're moving on to the final part of the process which is just Equalization on the master bus I'm going to add the mix rack here and I'm going to use a great EQ for processing the master bu this is also great way to introduce some references I'm using metric AB for

referencing but you can just load your references straight into the session here it will work perfectly fine so let's just [Music] compare so my mix is sounding a bit more muddy to my ears so let's just have a look what we can do about that opening up this one I am going to find the mud and remove [Music] [Applause] it okay let's compare I think we also need to remove some 200 Herz [Music] we also need some more bites so let's add some 4,000 Hertz and some sisle at [Music] 15K Okay let's listen to the

changes it should be quite subtle changes when you're doing alterations to your master uh because if you have to do huge changes to the master bus then there is an issue in the mix that you should fix so let's just have a listen through the track and see if we want to change anything else if something is is sticking out to us as too loud or too quiet or so and I will also then export the song I will export the template so you can mix along with me and make everything available through my [Applause]

[Music] [Applause] patreon [Music] okay so something that I'm noticing here is that I want to bring the volume of the loop down a bit for the first verse okay and also I want to automate the master bus so I'm making the entire first verse slightly less loud to make it a bit more of a drastic change from the in riff [Music] [Music] another high base part here that I want to bring down slightly sweet thank you so much for following along this ultimate guide for beginner mixing as I said before if you have any questions

just ask them below and I will do my best to answer in as clear of a way as possible all of the raw multitracks the mixed stems the fault song and the template for qbase will be available on my patreon if you are a backing supporter there if you want more indepth and more advanced mixing tutorials make sure to subscribe to the channel if you're looking to mix drums then you can check out this video next and I'll see you there