"Space Marine" Sound

[flmason]

Is this it? (Not what I'm aiming for exactly, but curious.)

Sorry if it's on the competition's DAW, but easily doable in any DAW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ctxX...feature=relmfu

[carbon]

Perhaps this might be more suitable for the marines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WLhv0rId5k

[flmason]

LOL!

Just so everyone knows, this is Yep's term for "wall of so many guitars you can't tell what hey it's in".

[yep]

Originally Posted by carbon

Perhaps this might be more suitable for the marines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WLhv0rId5k

That one's a lot closer to what I was thinking of when I said "space marines". Almost completely atonal. The OP sounded a bit more 90s/Marshally-- very high gain and "layered", but not quite to the point where it completely disintegrates into pure harmonics.

My typical "recipe" for this is a Les Paul Standard or similar heavy-wood, fixed-bridge, neck-through guitar (ebony fretboard if you can get it, but whatever) fitted with EMG humbuckers (I prefer the plain-jane silver-print fully-active EMGs, I think they are now called "81"), with the pups set to a height right around where they first start to clip on the palm-muted "chugs" (active pickups that are clipping slightly is a big part of getting that grainy, chirpless "crush"-- I prefer non-clipping PAFs but they won't get the same "space marine" sound). The idea is to get a completely noiseless guitar with maximum "flat" sustain, since we are going to be using gain-staging that will make any sort of "character" or "expressiveness" sound like schreechy fizz, and that will put a huge veil of "cheapness" over the sound if there is even a trace of hum or hiss.

Do you even need to ask what amp to use for this sound? A Mesa triple-rectifier, of course! Alternately, a good clue is to look for all-tube boutique amps with lots of chrome and lighted face-plates, especially if it has a channel-setting called "insane" or something like that. If there is anything tan or tweed on your amp, it's probably not what we're looking for. Could you use a Marhsall in a pinch? Yeah, but not really. Try a Pod.

Now take two SM57s (or any other mic you like, but 57s are fine), and set them up so that they are about an inch from the grille, with one pointed straight at the center of the speaker cone, and the second angled about 45 degrees, sort of pointed right at the side of the same speaker cone, and set the capsules as close together as humanly possible so that there is perfect phase-coherence between the two. This matters A LOT-- any whooshy phasiness will be a serious problem. We want extremely clean, tight, dry, grainy, on/off sound quality. No "smoothness" or acoustical "mellowing". You will later mix these two mics to taste. For maximum effect, that usually means one panned hard-left and the other panned hard-right, doing the opposite on the next take (oh yes, there will be multiple takes).

Now rough in a good amp sound and then turn up the master volume to AT LEAST the point where the power-amp starts to really "spank" the speakers. You can sort of "see" this if you look at the speakers. There will be a tipping point where they really start to visibly "jump"-- that excursion is definitely desirable for this kind of sound, assuming the amp is well-designed. Once you hit that "pain threshold" on the speakers, re-tweak your amp knobs for maximum crush.

Good preamps and gain-staging will make a world of difference with this kind of music. This is a super-demanding, artificial, ultra-modern sound we are after, and a smidgen of sonic blurriness, mushiness, or cheapness will make it instantly sound like a vortex of craptastic home-audio. There is no place here for warm, mellow, or smoky sound, and anything "lo-fi" or "authentic" is right out. We are pushing the limits of audio to achieve something super-fake and hyper-real.If you have money preamps, now is the time use them. If not, suss out your gain-staging very carefully. Please do not use dead strings, blown tubes, or noisy cables here. This is not the Rolling Stones or the White Stripes, this is millionaire metal.

That's about it (other than eq, compression, delays, and so on).

A couple of notes on what is good and bad about this kind of guitar sound:

- The good thing is, when done right, it sounds absolutely awesome at first. It completely overwhelms anything else you were listening to by soaking up the whole frequency range with a massive crush of articulated, detailed sound. That's about it for the good part.

The bad parts are legion:

- After about 2~5 seconds of listening, it starts to saturate the ears and sound static, bland, small, and annoying. It's almost impossible to listen to a 3-minute song of this "crush of sound" without either getting bored or getting a headache. Four songs into an album and it starts to sound like nothing, it just disappears as your ears get burnt. But it makes great bumper music for sports-radio stations and car commercials.

- It's impossible to reproduce live. It's a fake sound, plain and simple. It encourages and fosters a lazy mentality that someone other than the musician is responsible for making it sound good. It's marketing, not music. It's lying to the audience, in a way. To some people, this might not be a fault, and maybe it's not. Maybe we have turned the corner to where a DJ spinning mp3s with a good light-show is what makes an awesome concert, or something. I have no problem with that. But it does sort of stick in my craw whenever I am making a supposed "record" of a supposed "band", and when I know that the actual "band" sounds nothing like what I am able to "fake" in the studio. People are buying tickets to hear what the engineer did, and are instead getting a vastly different performance.

- It's a sound that is extremely limited. Jimi Hendrix, Bo Diddley, or even, say, Kurt Cobain could achieve massive differences in sonic texture and expressiveness with a single guitar and a single amp and maybe one or two stomp-boxes. That is kind of what made electric guitar such a revolutionary instrument: it allowed people with raw talent to express almost symphonic musical visions, with or without formal musical ability. As the piano was to the scale, so the electric guitar was to sonics and volume. Who knows how many visionary geniuses lived and died in the days when the only way to record music and perform music was to learn the technical arts of scoring and pay a symphony orchestra?

The electric guitar allowed anyone to buy a loud instrument with a week's wages and play at concert-hall volume, with direct and intuitive control over the sonics-- it can scream, whisper, chime, howl, moan, wail, all with just a handful of chords and a box scale. That said, it's kind of an obnoxious and off-putting instrument. What makes it awesome is that it allows a solo musician to really "mean it" in a way that no other instrument quite does. As a formal background or "pad" instrument, it is grossly inferior to strings and horns, which can get a lot more nuance and power in "composed" pieces.

The value of electric guitar is in the direct and instantaneous transduction between imagination and sound, which no other instrument comes close to. Electric guitar is worse at almost everything else, and as soon as we get into "composed" music, or especially into artificial or loop-based music, overdriven electric guitar starts to sound obnoxious and fake. Its value as an instrument is almost entirely in the expressiveness it affords to the player, which is second to none. When we take away that expressiveness, and start doing polished, perfected, sonically identical layered tracks, the difference in quality between an orchestra and eight tracks of electric guitar becomes obvious. The guitar turns into a joke instrument, a genre prop.

[flmason]

Interesting points. Now I know what you mean.

Not quite what I'm shooting for, but definetly interested in how it's done.

It's a sound that hadn't quite come about when I was young and took interest in this stuff. To be honest, I can't really figure out the riffs of that sort of music. Apparently it's tunings and whatnot that I haven't learned, LOL!

But it does sound "big" and all that. No doubt about it.

I an surprised it's not possible to recreate live? Are we not yet to a point in live sound reinforcement wherein most of the studio tools can be used live? (Honest question. Though many of the "authentic types" hate the idea... I've always been of the mind that the idea was to close the gap between the recording and the performance.)

The comment about the POD sort of confirms something I've been noticing since I first tripped over this sound. That is that the fizz PODs and the like seem to have in spades... actually works *for* this kind of music. Almost fist in glove.

To wit, seems most of the "biggest" sounding tracks I've heard done with sims are this sort of thing. Been wondering if it's an artifact of how sims tend to sound vts. something someone preconcieved.

On the other hand, Onqel posted some interesting, and to my ears, classic and good sounding tracks using his sims, down in the Collaboration section.

Have been comparing some sound clips of Metro Plexis and LePou and Onqel/TSE plugs through a 1960a impulse as of late. The differences aren't that great.

Yeah, I'm sure it sux to sit there and watch the band get credit for the engineer's work. That sort of thing always blows. Especially if the engineer isn't getting a good cut.

Definitely been in those shoes in my day job at times as well.

What really amazes me about this sound is how "craptastic" the individual tracks often sound, and yet how massive the final result is.

Not that there isn't some of that going on in the older genres as well.

No doubt, yes, it's been a bane of my existence to make electric guitar rhythm tracks sound as good, as polished and as excellent as even inexpensive keyboards and such that are used for pads. Trying to mix the two is baffling at times as well.

Can't say how many times I've put down some scratch rhythm guitar part and flipped through dozens or 100+ synth/soundfont sounds trying to find something that will mesh.

Ah well, more to learn.

[l0calh05t]

A big part of that modern "wall of sound" is the doubling, which you can't really do live. The band which gets the closest live is rammstein IMO ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLp63WBV-Ic )

[Sigilus]

Originally Posted by carbon

Perhaps this might be more suitable for the marines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WLhv0rId5k

yeah, this is it. and this is also what makes a large portion of the metal records I've heard released lately suck. The sameness works against them.

[carbon]

Originally Posted by Kenneth R.

yeah, this is it. and this is also what makes a large portion of the metal records I've heard released lately suck. The sameness works against them.

I actually like what he does, but this doesn't matter

@flmason
For a slight variation on the "space marines", you can check one track I made, where I used 2 sims on multiple guitar tracks - one of the sims providing some string clanginess and low-end thump and the other for the middle-frequencies:
http://www.kaspartorn.eu/audio/kaspa...lectrocute.mp3

[flmason]

Originally Posted by carbon

I actually like what he does, but this doesn't matter

@flmason
For a slight variation on the "space marines", you can check one track I made, where I used 2 sims on multiple guitar tracks - one of the sims providing some string clanginess and low-end thump and the other for the middle-frequencies:
http://www.kaspartorn.eu/audio/kaspa...lectrocute.mp3

Wow, that's an interesting take on it. Nicely done.

I was fully expecting the Cookie-Monster-Vocal variation of all this. Slipknot et. al.

This is more like a jazz application. Have to admit, I doubt I'll ever have you're skill with sweeps. Just curious, how you getting the clean sustain on some of those parts? Every sim I use, if you have sustain, you have fizz.

How do folks sit down and compose this sort of thing?

Have to admit though, I have no idea how I'd sit down to compose something like this. For me "composing" means "having an idea, sitting down with the freakin' guitar and finding the sound", LOL!

Or just searching for sounds without a plan, initially.

That's partly why I'm probably so aggravated with amp sims... no one track of that is going to sound "full". Never seemed to have that problem with analog stuff, live. Recording added (or subtracted) a dimension, and trying to work with it, well, have to admit, it's making me nutz. LOL!

Unfortunately for for me, composing is completely tied to who the equipment sounds and reacts. I'd started looking into recording, believing "that's where the sound was hiding". Seems "the sound" (recorded) is a bunch of layering and doubling, as opposed to recording techniques being able to make one pass sound good. (At least for hard rock and pop, sure some genres that aren't so wed to "big electric guitar", it's different.)

Can't figure out how to make the need for decent sound in one pass, and the apparent realities of recording come together.

As an example, sat there for about 4-5 hours this eve, bouncing back and forth between sims and a recording of a Metro Amp trying to close the gap.

Anyone who doubts sims have "fizz" need to run through that exercise, A/Bing the real thing and trying to close the gap. When you've put in about the 5th notch and it's still got issues... you get a bit discouraged, LOL!

[carbon]

Originally Posted by flmason

This is more like a jazz application. Have to admit, I doubt I'll ever have you're skill with sweeps. Just curious, how you getting the clean sustain on some of those parts? Every sim I use, if you have sustain, you have fizz.

How do folks sit down and compose this sort of thing?

Have to admit though, I have no idea how I'd sit down to compose something like this. For me "composing" means "having an idea, sitting down with the freakin' guitar and finding the sound", LOL!

I'm not sure what you mean by clean sustain, but if you mean fizz, then for me that comes down to this:
1) Not too much gain
2) Not too much highs
3) The right cabinet(s), mic(s) - probably the most important part of the sound.
4) HighPass anywhere from 6500 to 8000kHz with a highish Q (depending on the situation)
5) The mix any fizz remaining is greatly masked by other elements.

As for composing it can start from anything. Sometimes I have a general idea before I start playing/recording, but more often I just improvise and when something interesting comes up I expand from there.
Half way into doing I might get an overall idea where I want to go with a song.

I occasionally have these longish sound-searching sessions, when I just try to find interesting sounds, but I'm not trying to copy, because I know that then I'm going to fail and there's always many good sounds instead of just one particular.
While composing, I don't try to search for a perfect sound. Any half-decent sound will do that gets the idea recorded.
If needed, I'll tweak the sound later to better fit it in the mix.

I often don't even plug the guitar in.
So the sound is not an obstacle to creating music.

I think the best thing you can do to create music is to create music.
Lack of sound is probably an excuse to postpone failure.
Read somewhere: "Fail often to succeed sooner".

[flmason]

Originally Posted by carbon

I'm not sure what you mean by clean sustain, but if you mean fizz, then for me that comes down to this:
1) Not too much gain
2) Not too much highs
3) The right cabinet(s), mic(s) - probably the most important part of the sound.
4) HighPass anywhere from 6500 to 8000kHz with a highish Q (depending on the situation)
5) The mix any fizz remaining is greatly masked by other elements.

As for composing it can start from anything. Sometimes I have a general idea before I start playing/recording, but more often I just improvise and when something interesting comes up I expand from there.
Half way into doing I might get an overall idea where I want to go with a song.

I occasionally have these longish sound-searching sessions, when I just try to find interesting sounds, but I'm not trying to copy, because I know that then I'm going to fail and there's always many good sounds instead of just one particular.
While composing, I don't try to search for a perfect sound. Any half-decent sound will do that gets the idea recorded.
If needed, I'll tweak the sound later to better fit it in the mix.

I often don't even plug the guitar in.
So the sound is not an obstacle to creating music.

I think the best thing you can do to create music is to create music.
Lack of sound is probably an excuse to postpone failure.
Read somewhere: "Fail often to succeed sooner".

Trust me, LOL! I fail quite often.

Did so again tonight.

Finally just slapped a few riffs down with Lextac, after hours of fussing around with tones.

Tried to find a complementary tone with my L6 stuff. Nothing really worked... ended up using Lecto.

But still, no way it sounds like the stuff some of you folks are getting in here.

Same problem every time. Whenever there's enough gain to fuzz up the lows, or give me a sustained lead, it's a though there's a sound like a strip of paper across the strings.

Reduce until it's gone, might as well be playing a Roland Jazz Chorus.

Baffles me since others seem to be finding great sounds.

Here's a quick example. Not a song. Just a scratch track with some 4/4 drums keeping time. The notes are what I want. The basic sound sux.

http://wikisend.com/download/543218/LePou LeXtac Test.wmv

Basically going for a "one pass" sound. I don't think these riffs are the type one would try to closely double. But then again maybe. Obviously I don't know, LOL!

P.S. The above experiment has nothing to do with "Space Marine" sound or metal of that type. It's more of a late 70's to 80's type idea.

[carbon]

Originally Posted by flmason

Here's a quick example. Not a song. Just a scratch track with some 4/4 drums keeping time. The notes are what I want. The basic sound sux.

So, what's wrong with the sound!?
Seemed fine here.
Once you play the parts in time and use decent drums/bass it'll be good.
You could most certainly make a song using this sound.

[flmason]

Originally Posted by carbon

So, what's wrong with the sound!?
Seemed fine here.
Once you play the parts in time and use decent drums/bass it'll be good.
You could most certainly make a song using this sound.

Well, in reality it was tweaked heavily after the fact. Once tweaked, playing through the chain essentially felt like playing a 2x4, LOL! So I tossed the chain.

The second issue is, it wouldn't let me do what some analog rigs I've had would let me do. Switch between rhythm and lead without tweaking the chain. At worst using the volume knob on the guitar.

Maybe my biggest problem is, I started learning to play back when tube amps and stomps were the only game, so perhaps my expectations are illegitimate for digital models? Seems when I ran that stuff, I could cover a whole lot, with little more than tweeks to the knobs on the guitar. Didn't have EQ to notch anything, heck I didn't even own a delay pedal.

Anyway, yeah, that test is one of the better ones. And yes, actually correctly building a tune around it would help a lot. But compared to most things I listen to, it's pretty terrible as a tone, and even so, not very far removed from some tube amp tones I've examined.

Anyway, when I compare it to some of these tracks, seems the tone, and what I believe the playing response to be, falls flat. (Though I'm not hearing any real leadwork in most of these.)

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page...?bandID=792587

One thing I'm finding amp sims fail (for me and my rig) is the "turn it down test". Yep oppined in WDYRSLA that when you turn a track down, last thing to be audible is the suck part. Seems with most amp sims I've run that test on... the last sound standing is this kazoo-like sound, sort of like mic distortion (the bad kind, when you exceed it's diaphram travel) or like a piece of paper in the strings.

The above soundclick tracks don't fail that.

Notching would be fine, but seems like it's everywhere between 2.5k-ish and 8k or so. So when I end up with 3-5 notchs and it's still sounding strange, I gotta wonder what's wrong?

(Or I could just be crazy, I guess, LOL! )

P.S. Was thinking on it a little more. What's wrong with it? Well it's somehow dead and fizzy at the same time. The high end is a bit brittle, in a way that say a high shelf doesn't change. Sure the high shelf makes it louder or softer high end. But it doesn't change the character of it.

I'm guessing it's something inherent in the particular transfer function or perhaps the IR. The IR claims to be a Matchless Chieftan cabinet. But I'm wondering if it's really just an impulst of the Line 6 model of the same name?(It's the Beamsonic IR).

[carbon]

Originally Posted by flmason

Maybe my biggest problem is, I started learning to play back when tube amps and stomps were the only game, so perhaps my expectations are illegitimate for digital models? Seems when I ran that stuff, I could cover a whole lot, with little more than tweeks to the knobs on the guitar. Didn't have EQ to notch anything, heck I didn't even own a delay pedal.

Did you find the amp sound to be great while listening to the recording of it or playing in front of it full volume?

To emulate the latter while playing, you would have to do just that - blast the heck out of your monitors/headphones/cabinet and of course ears

Originally Posted by flmason

Anyway, yeah, that test is one of the better ones. And yes, actually correctly building a tune around it would help a lot. But compared to most things I listen to, it's pretty terrible as a tone, and even so, not very far removed from some tube amp tones I've examined.

I would build a song and then revisit the sound later when I have gathered new knowledge or make another song.
In fact this is how I go about it, otherwise because the search is endless you end up not making a tune at all.

I'm not sure if my sound is even better while soloed.
I made a couple of tests, trying to get a wet "'80-s" sound:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24456137/HyB...2011-07-25.mp3
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24456137/HyB...2011-07-25.mp3

[flmason]

Originally Posted by carbon

Did you find the amp sound to be great while listening to the recording of it or playing in front of it full volume?

To emulate the latter while playing, you would have to do just that - blast the heck out of your monitors/headphones/cabinet and of course ears




I would build a song and then revisit the sound later when I have gathered new knowledge or make another song.
In fact this is how I go about it, otherwise because the search is endless you end up not making a tune at all.

I'm not sure if my sound is even better while soloed.
I made a couple of tests, trying to get a wet "'80-s" sound:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24456137/HyB...2011-07-25.mp3
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24456137/HyB...2011-07-25.mp3

I like your sound better.

With my old analog rig, I ran it pretty low, despite having a Marshall 2203 (100 watts) and Pro Reverb (40 watts) in it. I was going for a sound and not volume. Used a Boss DS-1 a lot as well.

It did, however, sound fizzy when mic'ed and recorded. Not at all like the posted Metro Amp sounds.

So what are you using for a guitar and pickups in the above tracks?

Sound a bit higher gain with respect to the pickup than the cheap-o Epi humbuckers on my track.

[carbon]

Originally Posted by flmason

So what are you using for a guitar and pickups in the above tracks?

Sound a bit higher gain with respect to the pickup than the cheap-o Epi humbuckers on my track.

Ibanez Prestige 7-string, DiMarzio Blaze Custom or something
I don't think low output from the guitar is an issue - you can always increase the input level on the soundcard and later tweak the input level on the amp VST to get it optimal.

You can also try how your guitar pedals will affect the sound if added before the soundcard input.
I sometimes use a T-Rex Møller with low gain settings.
Or you can use the various pedal VST-s: TSE808 et al.

[flmason]

Originally Posted by carbon

Ibanez Prestige 7-string, DiMarzio Blaze Custom or something
I don't think low output from the guitar is an issue - you can always increase the input level on the soundcard and later tweak the input level on the amp VST to get it optimal.

You can also try how your guitar pedals will affect the sound if added before the soundcard input.
I sometimes use a T-Rex Møller with low gain settings.
Or you can use the various pedal VST-s: TSE808 et al.

Wasn't so much thinking of output as being the issue as the tone of the pickup. Some non-distorted tracks I've done, melodic stuff, actually sounded better with the high end rolloff of my ESP's, along with the added sustain. (Using a JC-120 sim, no less.)

I think I probably need to learn to play with and live with less gain overall in the recording sphere. Though I don't really know how you can for some "speed riff" styles.