Producing Modern Metal with Virtual Instruments
If you're a fan of modern metal but you don't play a stringed instrument or have access to the gear you need, this course is for you! Production guru Gary Hiebner shows you how to create incredible modern metal tracks using nothing but virtual instruments. A feat that was unheard of a decade ago, it's now possible to realistically emulate all these sounds without ever strapping on a guitar or bass. You'll learn invaluable tips on maximizing realism with MIDI tracks, most of which will be applicable in any genre, as well as arranging and mixing concepts along the way. These videos are for metal fans who want to create modern-sounding tracks using the tools they have available.
Videos
• Instruments Being Used (04:35) - Gary starts off by explaining what's going to be covered in the video series, followed by what virtual instruments will be covered. This includes virtual drums, bass, guitar, and synths.
• Drums (06:31) - In this video, we take a look at the types of drum parts you can program for your metal productions. You see how to edit the velocities for more impact, along with what types of drum hits work well in metal songs, cymbals being the key to adding more energy to your productions.
• Drum Mixing Techniques (10:06) - Learn how to mix a multi-output set of virtual drums with this video. First, see how the routing works and then dive into processing and mixing the kick, snare, toms, hats, overheads, and room mics. We mainly use EQ and compression techniques to hype up these drums.
• Bass Parts (06:19) - Next, discover how to add bass parts that accompany the drums and guitars. We're using low-tuned guitars, so we want a low-tuned bass that's an octave lower than the guitars. Plus, Gary demonstrates why a picked bass works better than a finger-picked one in this genre, as it allows for more attack from the performance.
• Bass Tone (05:28) - In this video, you'll see how to create a blend between a clean and saturated bass tone. First you see Gary use Neural DSP Parallax to get the fundamental bass tone. Then he'll build up a saturated bass tone using buses, EQ, and a guitar amp sim.
• Adding More Expression to Your Bass with Velocity Editing & Articulation Switching (09:04) - To add more realism to your virtual bass parts, you'll need to explore velocity editing and articulation switching. This will help make your MIDI performances sound more authentic and less like a robotic performance.
• Drum Fills (08:20) - Jumping back to the drums, in this video you'll see how adding drum fills between sections in your songs can make the transitions smoother and can add interest. The basic idea is that the drum fills add anticipation to the next section. We also look at editing the velocities of these fills for added realism.
• Guitar Tone (05:01) - Here we take a look at the virtual guitar instrument we're going to be using, and Gary walks you through the interface and shows how to use it, including choosing the right high-gain amp sim. Plus, we talk about the double-track feature in the virtual guitar instrument.
• Guitar Single Notes & Chords (04:17) - Discover the difference between using single notes and chords in our modern metal MIDI productions. You'll see how forcing your notes to use legato also helps the performance and how to turn your single notes into full guitar chords.
• Guitar Velocities & Keyswitching (05:16) - Learn how adjusting the velocities and using keyswitches in your virtual guitar instruments can trigger different articulations, again resulting in a more convincing performance.
• Other Guitar Articulations (04:21) - Here we'll look at other types of articulations that can really add interest to your guitar performances, such as tremolo picking, string bends, and pinch harmonics - all very characteristic of metal guitar performances.
• Pitch Bends & Extra Noises for Guitar Release Effects (05:06) - Expanding on the realism of a MIDI guitar performance in this video, you see how you can add extra subtle guitar noises as guitar string release sounds.
• Changing Tunings & Note Pitch Drops (05:08) - A common practice in modern metal is to have pitch-dropped sections in your songs. If you were using real guitars, you would either have to tune down your guitars for those sections or use dedicated pitch drop effects. But with virtual instruments, it's as easy as shifting down the MIDI notes. This works great for breakdowns in songs.
• Clean-Tone Riffs (06:13) - Here, we see how to create some clean-tone guitar riffs to contrast the heavy, distorted guitars. What works well is to create an ambient-style clean tone, so when it hits, it has a big impact.
• Leads & Octave Notes (07:46) - See how we can get our lead guitar performances to sound more interesting by using pitch bend to create string bends and vibrato. Creating random varied amounts of vibrato with the pitch bend lane can really help humanize the performance. After this, we also look at creating octave lead effects with our single-note lead lines.
• Heavy Saturated Synths (09:02) - What also works well in this genre is to layer your guitars and bass with heavily saturated synth instruments. It adds an extra complexity to the mix and can make your heavy songs sound hyper-real. In this video, I show you how to use the Vital synth with some sawtooth waveforms and some effects like chorus, EQ, and distortion to create a heavy, saturated synth for the mix.
• Mixing Techniques with Guitars (09:49) - Explore how to mix all our guitars together using groups and buses. We add bus processing in the form of EQ, compression, saturation, and sidechain compression to tighten up and glue the guitars together. We also see how to create a LoFi effect for the guitar using EQ and bitcrushing automation. This is a great way to create contrast between the guitars.
• Arranging the Song (07:56) - To finish off the series, we see how to combine all the ideas we've worked through into one complete song. Since the ideas are in different keys and tempos, we consolidate by moving them to the same key, and getting the jumps closer to each other. That's the beauty of working with all MIDI instruments; you can easily edit anything you'd like!