ON METAL PRODUCTION
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 2:13pm by Vince Neilstein
It’s a sad state of affairs indeed when a line like this is actually news, from producer Tue Madsen about recording The Haunted’s new album:
“No click tracks, no triggers, no faking it… just good old making music the way it used to be back when you had to actually be able to play your shit to do it.”
Metal production itself has become a pretty sad state of affairs. Pro Tools has been both a blessing and a curse to the recording profession. The benefits are obvious; increased fidelity (though this is debatable), unlimited tracks and buses, precision mixing through advanced automation, and the ability to record as many takes as you’d like until you get it right. But it’s a double-edged sword; some might argue that these assets actually remove the “human” element from the recording process. After all, no one is perfect every time.
Which brings us to Madsen’s statement. What exactly qualifies as “faking it”? This is where the lines get very blurry. I, for one, do believe in click tracks — they make the performance tighter and make editing later in much, much easier. But what about triggers? Just about every metal band these days uses drum triggers (Roadrunner Records is even rumored to have a “triggers only” policy.). Are triggers cheating? If you argue that they are, then how is running an electric guitar through an amp and distorting the fuck out of it NOT cheating? What about mic’ing an amp with three different mics and recording each part multiple times for that “wall of sound” guitar effect, as most metal bands these days do?
What about “fixing” errant drum hits of an otherwise pristine performance? Vocal overdubbing? Sequencers?
Lots of folks argue that all this should be done away with and that recording should be live with the band members all standing in a room together to get the “true” sound. But it gets tricky here, too. Because the minute you plop a mic in front of an amp or a drum, that mic shapes the sound to something different than what it actually sounds like to stand in that room. And so does the mixing board and other cabling. There is no such thing is a “true” recording.
So where does that leave production for metal in the year 2008? Triggered, cut, layered and fake? I say why the hell not.*
-VN
*Just turn the bass up, please. Bass players have been getting the shaft mix-wise for years.
I have spent alot of time in different studios over the past 12 years and i agree with both sides of your article. Bands should be able to play their own music! If you cant cleanly play your own shit than go practice for a while before you waste your money in the studio. I have heard tons of stories of bigger rock and metal bands that have had studio musicians come in and play the parts, cause the band is too stoned or just to sloppy to get it together. On the other hand, some studios or producers tweak the shit out of every part that is played , even if the playing is good, until it is so perfect that is loses it’s soul.
I think what Tue Madsen is saying is that The Haunted can actually play their shit live, are tight enough without a click track, and dont need anything to be overly edited or digitally fixed for the recording.
That doesnt mean that they are all just playing at the same time together and using one mic in the middle of the room. They are probably playing along as a full band while the drums are being tracked and then they will go back and redo the guitar and bass parts afterwards. If they use good mics and record the drums well, than they shouldnt have to use triggers. Triggers arent cheating, they are usually just combined with the natural drum tone to get a full Vinnie Paul metal sound, so it just depends on your band if triggers are for you or not. In The Haunted’s case, i they must just want the natural tones. We’ll see if it sounds good once it is released.
What do you mean bass players have been getting the shaft for years?
Sincerely,
Jason Newsted
(…and Justice For All)
I’ve tried to record a simple acoustic guitar piece without a click track and then go back and try to sing to it. I don’t know how anybody could record without one.
That’s funny, when I was in a thrash metal band in my early 20’s (bass player, of course) I had the biggest amp in the room. We called it WATTZILLA (weighing in at 200 plus lbs and stood 5 feet tall) it was all tube and you could cook a hot dog on the cooling screen on top of it. Everybody else’s halfstacks fit in the back of the room facing inward but because of a closet mine had to go sideways by the door (where the rhythm guitarist stood) boy does it piss those guys off when your bass is louder than they are and the vibration of the 15 moved dude’s pantlegs and possibly caused permanent brain damage!
more bass. anything under 150.
Speaking of session musicians stepping in for sloppy band members, am I the only one who’s heard that rumor that Charlie from Anthrax played drums on “…And Justice for All”?
I’m getting a little sick of the over-use of drum triggers on a lot of metal albums nowadays.
I understand why bands do it, because it makes it a helluva lot easier to get the constant double-kick sound that everyone seems to love.
But jesus, some of the bands who use it just sound terrible. A lot of the more recent metal albums have just had terrible kick drum sounds, where you can tell they had been blatantly processed.
Madsen misses the major problem of metal production these days, probably because his own productions suffer from it as well. It’s too much compression. I know everyone is listening to 128 kbps mp3’s through crappy headphones these days, but I happen to have paid a lot of euros (which is even more dollars) for a decent stereo and I demand some fucking dynamics in my music.
At any rate, it sounds like the new Haunted album is going to kick ass.
in my experience, bands should just play live (bussing each instrument individually, including 10 or so mics for the drums), then do overdubs on parts that naturally need it (guitar pedal switched to distortion late, cymbal crash sounded weak)…
then from THAT decide if you need/want to layer 2nd/3rd/etc guitar tracks, vocal tracks, etc etc…
reason being, that the “finished recorded product” is what stands to judge the song, and sometimes even the band, forever…and unlike a “live show” (which is usually LOUD), a recording is usually listened to at a variety of volume levels…so in order to reach a “thickness” obtained through said live performance, you’re usually gonna have to overdub and duplicate tracking on at least guitars and vox and metal, and thus the need for drum triggers…
but then sometimes you get some overdone stuff that just sounds too abnormal…so hence the balance…and the beauty of today’s technology is, if it’s “too many” tracks…delete some…damnit! :p
I was in the studio for both Cavalera Conspiracy’s inflikted and Soulfly’s next one…
No click tracks..no triggers..
That kills your Roadrunner theory.
Too much compression AND too much gain on the guitars. Too much distortion actually makes the axes sound weaker, not heavier.
Mastodon understand this.
amen to MORE BASS!!!*
and more production like Cavalera Conspiracy – awesome album to blast in the car!!!
*yes, i’m a bass player
Ok, here is where you insert a lolcat picture saying more bass plz.
I agree, more bass!
@Martijn Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
100% correct. Compression is the biggest problem in metal production these days (well, all music production actually) it’s the quest to make something that sounds good on TV for the video and radio that causes this sameness in sounds.
Click tracks are for people who aren’t all that musically inclined to begin with, sorry. If you have half a sense of rhythm you can record without a click track. I’ve it a billion times and will do it a billion more.
Triggers = lame. Unless you are an industrial band, play your damn drums. If you can’t play it, then you don’t deserve to sound like you are playing it.
ProTools/Logic/Sonar/etc: not to blame for anything. People have been editing on analog for years the same way just taking longer. Isabella Rossilini in Blue Velvet could sing a lick and they literally had her sing every work individually and they took the best takes of each word, pitch corrected if possible and pieced it back together. It took a hell of a lot longer than on a DAW but they still did it. They have been punching in an out of guitar solos in the same way for years too. (that’s another bone of contention, if you can’t play the guitar solo in one take, you suck and need to write one that you are capable of playing)
Also re: DAW’s I hear a lot of people complain about the sound compared to analog and then proceed to give me an mp3 or CD to listen to as an example of how much richer it is. News flash: the instant your precious analog his CD or MP3 form it was digitized and has no more fidelity than the computer only recording.
Do I prefer the live sound of a tube amp to a solid state? Hell yes. Can you really tell the difference on a CD/MP3 not really if they tweak it right. You’d be shocked how many people use the solid state Marshall with tube emulaiton on for recording then bust out the tubes live claiming it’s the one they’ve used all along.
What they fail to mention is this. Alot of people dont understand that these bands that are recording albums are on a budget. He does talk about using the click track saving time in editing which is true.
When you have a budget you have to be in and out of there and when you use the click and everything is in perfect time you can play a riff once and when it comes around again you simply paste it in the spot.
It saves ridiculous amounts of time. The same thing goes for alot of other instruments. And who wants an album that has time fluxuations. Yuck!
After all is said and done it is a recording.
They cant all be Metallica and have a zillion dollar budget and build your own studio. And pay people to tell you what you are doing is good.
I’m not the pro lots of the folks posting here claim to be…but I’ve recorded in the studio several times using an Alesis DM5. The reason being not having enough cash to do it again if necessary. I counted on the same kick drum sound coming through. If you’ve got the dough to properly record….cool….use the proper drum mics to get the sound you’re looking for. Comparitively….I’m poor. Hence the triggered DM5. And you can’t plug that damn thing and automatically get great recordings. You have to know how to use it too.
And it sounds beautiful. Vinnie Paul sounding kick-ass beautiful.
AND….a click track??? Never used one in my life. What the fuck is that?
Guess I don’t need one.
Obviously I might be hearing it wrong, but as much as I love Sepultura and the Cavaleras, the CC album sounds shit, dude! I mean, fine if they didn’t use triggers, but the production is so dry, it has no dynamics or feel to it. So, rob, whether the theory is true or not, CC album still sounds shit and devoid of human expression.
The click isnt necessary, but it does help to keep things tighter or to help keep the song at the proper tempo. Alot of drummers have awesome rhythm, but playing live they get excited and speed up and breakdowns lose their groove or whatever, so it does help the recording to sound tighter. If the band is using any samples or processed parts then they have to use a click or the samples wont match up with the song.
As far as click tracks go, they should only be used to enhance the tones, not fill in the gaps of sloppy drummers and the guitarists should be able to play their parts and solos all the way through, but the nice thing about protools is that you can go back and just fix a note or two instead of having to redo the entire part, especially is the feel is great on the whole part. It just saves time and frustration.
I remember the days when I was against a click track…too
sterile, too in human. Too perfect? the click really made me look at my playing..It took me about 6 mths of practice before I could really groove inside and out of a click.
I believe that most (not all) drummers that are against a click track …. CAN’T PLAY TO ONE.
I know, I use to be one.
when you plug a guitar into an amplifier, it is recreating the sound with the same dynamics and nuances of the performance, just with an altered timbre.
generally speakers, triggers literally trigger one sound, with no regard for dynamics, volume, variation, and human-ness in general.
I like people who use triggers, and I like those who don’t. But I must honestly say I respect people who don’t use triggers more.
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“I know everyone is listening to 128 kbps mp3’s through crappy headphones these days”
you mean instead of cassettes? dubs? and records like most metal heads grew up on?
quit whining.