<pony><original><metal> Rainbow Power

[TheAljavis]

So this song is basically about the season 4 finale. I intended to release this at least a few weeks after the finale, but... laziness and real life happened. Anyway, tell me what you think of this song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwDs-Xo ... fB0LKTmZiA

[GhostXb]

The song for the most part is well put together. Has a very trashy vibe to it. I'm not sold on the guitar tone though. It's a little too fuzzy and distorted. I suppose this is an infamous characteristic of software amps. Don't be afraid to lower some of the high end on the guitars with an eq, and it sounds like you already did it, but generous amounts of mid boost help too.

As for amp settings, I don't know what you are using, but in general, you can get a good metal tone with a distortion pedal with modest amounts of gain, and modest amounts of gain on the amp. They compliment each other well. Relying too much on one or the other by cranking the gain to get distorted tones tend to give you fuzziness. That combined with some mid eq boost should get you a good tone.

[TheAljavis]

Thanks for the tips. I'll try doing them in future songs.
By the way, I don't use any software amps. I get the sound straight from the amp, although I will say that its a very cheap amp, like $30-$40 cheap.

[Astral]

I've never been able to pull off a good sound using my mic to record an amp even though I have a decently high-end one. I would suggest getting an interface and using a program like Guitar Rig 5 or Line 6 Pod Farm. I would also suggest having a decently powerful computer, too.

This is a very solid and standard audio interface. It will do everything you need unless you need more than 2 channels.
http://www.amazon.com/Focusrite-2i2-USB ... +interface

[GhostXb]

I agree with Astral. You can get a pretty decent tone with software amps, which by comparison, getting a similar sound with cabinet mic'ing will cost you a lot. Some studio's spend thousands of dollars on mics and fancy amps and cabinets, but you can get the same sound for like...$50.

I relied on Guitar Rig 5 for years, but I recently switched to amplitube, and I'm super impressed. For $50, you can buy credits from their custom shop to buy specific amp models, cabinets, and mics. I use the soldano amp myself with the diode overdrive disortion petal, and I get some pretty good results. The fact that you can download anything from their custom shop and test them for a few days really helps you make a decision.

Another thing I like to do is use ghost kicks to add subtle sidechain compression to the rhythm guitar and bass. Helps add more punch to the mix.

Check out this little exercise I did. The guitar is a pre-recorded phrase from 8dio's progressive metal library with bass and drums added. I re-amped it with the previous mentioned plugins.

https://soundcloud.com/ghostxb/zeus-dru ... -5/s-P6VvX

Of course, there is also hours (and hours) of miscellaneous mixing going on too, but it should give you an idea of what plugins can do.

EDIT: I just realized I shared a closed link. Fixed it.

[EpiPony]

I'd like to add to both that there are a plethora of FREE amplifier simulators out there that are just as good if not better than guitar rig/amplitube imho. Especially for gain sounds i'd recommend LePou amplifier simulators.They also have really useable clean channels but are mostly known for the great high-gain sound. Of course these simulate just the head's output and do not emulate cabinets yet, so the initial sound wíll be really horrible and fizzy. So you'll have to use some simulation of Cabinets. Luckily there's some really great free ones of those out there as well. You'll have to load them in an impulse loader, like LePou's LeCab. I'll leave links for both, and also a video on how to use them.
Have fun experimenting!


LePou: http://lepouplugins.blogspot.nl/
on the right you have a bar with 'Amp sims pack', download the one which is right for your PC.
LeCab is also in the bar on the right.

Cabinets: http://forum.fractalaudio.com/axe-fx-ii ... -wavs.html
On this page are a ton of cabinet impulse responses.

A tutorial on using the plugins:

In this video a plugin package is also included, but the used plugins are pretty dated. The pack is still pretty useful though, and has nice cabinet impulses. The link in the video description is http://www.mediafire.com/download/d8yi6vtrrpqww8d