Metal Music Manual: Producing, Engineering, Mixing

Book Preface

Falling into a certain age bracket, I have been fortunate enough to witness the great transition from analogue recording mediums, to the current wonders of digital recording and editing technology.

In that time I have seen a huge paradigm shift in the quality of metal recordings. From a situation where only those with a substantial budget could benefit from professional production standards . . . through to the democratization of technology and the falling cost of equipment where—with a modest investment, combined with the right skills and knowledge—these standards are within reach of almost anyone. This book is a fabulous resource for those wishing to develop and acquire these skills and this knowledge.

The general distinguishing features that separate this genre from others in the popular music canon are the high-gain, distorted guitar tones that are omnipresent over virtually all subgenres within the broad umbrella of “metal.” These have a wide-ranging spread of frequencies from low to high, and make it very difficult for other components of the ensemble to cut through and scale this “sonic wall,” particularly when one takes into consideration some of the blistering extreme tempi in the drum performances that metal music prides itself on. With these restrictive boundaries in place, creating a sense of depth, width, and space would necessitate that metal music requires a higher level of extreme equalization, compression, and filtering use than may be required by other popular music genres.

This book explains the reasoning behind all these techniques brilliantly—potentially saving the reader years in experimentation. It answers all the questions the novice producer could ask: How are those performances captured so tightly? Why are those drum timbres so full of transient attack? Why are those guitar tones so distorted, yet so controlled and full? Why does everything sound so close to the front of the speakers, yet still have a defined sense of space? This manual explicitly demonstrates how all of it works, and much, much more . . . From the initial preproduction stages to mastering a final product, this tome details how professionalquality metal recordings can be produced on the tightest of budgets. With increased processing power in computers, and the ability to record at home and exchange files through the Internet, anybody with talent can make records that rival those produced in the most luxurious of facilities. This book maximizes that potential.

Dan Turner, 2016