The singer is generally the obvious “star of the show” in a lot of radio-friendly music - often sitting significantly louder than everything else in the mix. In hard rock and heavy metal on the other hand, you’ve got aggressive double (or quadruple) tracked high-gain guitars, punishing (and clicky) 16th/32nd note double kick drums, roaring & heavily distorted bass and more often than not, a ton of additional production elements like synths, loops, or even full orchestras which the singer somehow has to cut through and sit on top of. Let’s get started! Firstly, What’s So Difficult About Mixing Metal? Upper-Mid DensityĮspecially nowadays, with mainstream pop & rap instrumentals consisting primarily of subby bass synths, simplistic programmed drums and sparse, minimalist, lo-fi sounding synths, there really isn’t a huge amount of abrasive upper-midrange content present for vocalists to have to compete with.
On that note, today we’re taking a look at 12 tips which are fairly specific to mixing heavy music, and how they can be used to tackle some of the unique challenges you’re likely to come across.
You may have to opt for a more creative problem solving approach. This being said, when you’re talking about a style of music as extreme and complex as heavy metal, sometimes “traditional” simply won’t cut it.
Being that the common end goals in audio are typically things like width, depth, clarity and impact, most traditional mixing concepts like “reducing mud” and “gluing things together” tend to apply universally regardless of whether you’re working in a rock, rap, soul or even an orchestral context.
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