Also, not scooping the mids, and not using excess gain helps to keep some clarity at those low tunings. heavy strings, too - I currently use a .056 for my lowest. And for rhythms, I only use 2 tracks, which also helps keep things clear. Musically, I come from a thrash background, so keeping clarity at fast tempos is something I work on a lot. A fender scale length can help brighten things up a bit and enhance clarity, but I've grown to really like the shorter 25 and 24.75 inch scales instead, so whatever. Whenever I tune to B standard though, I use a guitar with a Fender scale length, and that helps. Overall though, lowering the gain, not scooping the mids, and cutting the bass (when mixing) are in my experience the best ways to enhance clarity at low tunings.

Right now, I'm working on getting my chops up like mad on the drums. I'm also writing riffs and trying to learn good ways of generating strange, atmospheric sounds for my grindcore band. If anyone has any suggestions that don't involve me spending unnecessary monies on guitar pedals and shit, that'd be awesome.

I'm also fucking around with breakcore in Reason (sigh) and making dumb tunes.

My new wave band put out a new 2 track digital single and video today. It's our 8th video, but only 2nd attempt at a storyline with no band performance. Check it out! (assuming you don't hate synthpop with a passion haha)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzo3EuDU ... e=youtu.be

Trying to get around someplace to record vox, you'd be surprised how few people are thrilled with the idea of somebody screaming unintelligible hate at a computer screen around there house.


EDIT; Also just got done with the instruments for my demo.

I released my first solo black metal album a few weeks ago and recorded a new song for the project today
http://soundcloud.com/pj-famicom/chains-to-sleep

My band's got another battle coming up on the 20th that we're busting ass for. Hopefully my wireless will be in by then. Hopefully we'll win this one as well, seeing as the cahs-prize is $500, which we could all use. I ordered a Line 6 G50 based on the rave reviews form pretty much every place I've looked. Pretty expensive, but the wasy thing have been going lately, it looks like it'll prove to be a good investment

I love random spurts of inspiration. I just came up with a heartbreaking fingerpicked melody. I plan to use it as an interlude in a DSBM song.

Working on vocals for a song im doing for my buddies band Hymnorg. Im doing guest vocals on a song.

Trying to find where the bloody hell I can find a hornpipe in America...you know, those things almost every Russian pagan/folk metal band seems to use.

Had a practice with the doom band tonight. We have our new song down. And it is fucking brilliant. Orange Goblin/Cathedral type grooviness.

Recorded some Blackened Powerviolence/Sludge stuff with a friend today...he's on vox, I did guitar and drum machine tracks (gonna add bass and layers tomorrow). Can't wait until we can get some shit done with a real drummer...

Wrote lyrics for my doom EP, including the song I'm doing for the songwriting challenge. I'm quite pleased with them, it probably helped that I had an overall concept. So next up is recording vocals, then humanising drums, mixing, mastering, and then sorting out artwork. Fun times.

Planning a gig - we need another one or two metal bands to play with us, or alternatively we must extend out setlist by about 70 minutes. I doubt we could play for nearly two hours considering how inexperienced we are.

Yeah, that is really long. I go pretty hard when performing and around an hour is about as long as I'd want to do. Hell, even bands I really like I don't usually want to watch play for much more than an hour and a half.

I was at an Anathema show in Helsinki where they played their longest set ever according to Vincent, they managed to make it quite entertaining despite playing for about two and a half hours, probably by virtue of the diversity of their material. Still, nobody was screaming for encore when they played the last song.

wrote and recorded 2 54r songs for a split, wrote and reocorded 2 more yzord tracks one for a split.
Currently mixing my stuff for the challenge.

and I agree with Corpsefister, I don't even like watching huge headlining bands I enjoy play that long. Unless you are getting paid to play like at a bar all night and need to do some huge long set like that, like my friends that will do like 15 covers plus their originals cause they have to play for 5 hours cause they were hired as the backgrounb/houseband for the event.

If you are talking a typical set, I would make sure to miss you if I had prior knowledge of it.

Can anyone lend me a hand here, I'm in the midst of recording guitars via a Focusrite soundcard and ProTools. When I use a guitar with SD Invaders, my source sound is rather distorted and it keeps clipping. With the exact same settings, a guitar with SD Blackouts doesn't have this problem. I'd rather use the latter because of the more pronounced playing dynamics you get with passive pickups but this is a headache :@

Turn your guitar's volume down a tad, that should fix it. I have a similar problem with the old Ibanez V-5 pickups on one of my guitars. They're so hot that the input signal clips and gets that distorty sound.

I just got my first CDs for "Premeditated" in the mail today, and I'm really excited. They look great! This is the first time I've had physical CDs professionally made. I got 5 copies for myself, and to make sure everything checks out, and now I'm going to order 50 copies and send them to a friend of mine who runs a small label.

For anyone else wanting to print their own CDRs, kunaki is a great site. Cheap, high quality, and very fast shipping. And when I say cheap, if you order 5 CDs or less, it's a dollar each. More than that, $1.75 each.

Very awesome! i'm glad to hear you went on and got those copies. They do great work.

Ah okay, didn't think of trying that. I'm just worried I might lose a bit of punch by doing so but I guess I'll find a middle ground. Invaders always felt distorted rather than hot to me.

it's a fine line you'll have to ride, with hot passive pickups. It's definitely doable, though. Just roll the volume back a bit at a time until the distortion/clipping is gone, then roll it back a tiny bit more, for safety's sake.

Right now in addition to working on the songwriting challenge with my friend I am learning guitar, since I already play bass. It's going pretty well so far.

It's great reading through this thread and seeing how many bands are coming together! Lots of stuff for me to listen to as well.
Been considering starting a death/doom band in the style of Winter, Ophis etc but finding musicians may be difficult. Apart from that I've been working on my main band The Institute*. We play acid-prog, and I think the best way to describe it would be that we try to mix old-school prog like Rush and King Crimson with modern stuff like the Mars Volta and Russian Circles, but there's enough Sabbath and Slayer there to hopefully arouse some interest here. Just released a CD and lined up for a radio show soon.


Here is a link to our Bandcamp: www.theinstituteni.bandcamp.com

Here is a viceo, I couldn't get the URL formatted:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... aN4lGE88Hw

My band got another awesome review on Axis Of Metal, from MA forum member UndisputedSol, for our latest single. That's on top of this review by autothrall(who needs no introduction) on his blogspot and the archives itself, and all in all I am STOKED!

http://axisofmetal.com/2012/10/oshiego- ... on-review/

Congrats, somefella!

I finished another black metal song (my third) last night, and I think it's a good one. I figure one more song and I'll have enough for a split with a friend of mine. I also recorded some vocals for two old school death metal songs of mine, so that's good. I could release another full length album right now, but I think it would be wiser to see how far I can take "Premeditated" first. I'm slowly but steadily gathering positive review for it, and I've had a small record label contact me, wanting to hear more. Plus with the extra time, I can really polish up the production of my next album, as well as the cover art and make a new logo, because my current one sucks haha.

very cool deal mans!

currently starting to write for my second session for the doom challenge. going all out and above. hopefully i can get it all completed in time. I'll be home for 2 weeks starting the week after next. I plan on completing it then.

Very interesting time for me. Next Thursday I am getting a free bass, plus some lessons from my father in law that just moved here from Texas. He's very adept at blues so it should be a fun experience. Besides that, I recently came across some extra money and ordered a decked out audio interface with plenty of frills, and tons of software apps to run on my daw. Plus a decent mic to start with. Hopefully by this time next year I will have the metal project I am aiming for in full gear.

I've got a show tomorrow night in Belchertown, Massachusetts with Blacksoul Seraphim. The first show went excellently and I expect this one to do so as well.

sounds great! good luck. . . hopefully you'll have better luck than I've been having lately.

I just found a great deal on a bass on eBay, so I bought that one. I've been needing a 4 string lately. I have a 5 string, but I tune down to C standard for most of my music, so the low string is pretty guttural when it's that low. I don't use it, so I've been wanting to get a 4 string. The smaller neck would be a welcomed change.

I hit a super inspiration streak last week where I wrote about 5 songs at the rate of one song per evening. Now I think my inspiration tank is empty. I hate it when that happens.

Oh, and I built a new 2X12 cabinet just recently. The speakers I put in it are some old alnico 12s from the mid 1960s. They sound really nice, and they have a low sensitivity, so I can turn my amp up louder and it's still quieter. And also, I have too many guitars, so I'm going to sell a few for dirt cheap. As much as I enjoy having almost a dozen guitars, I simply don't need that many.

You sound like me about 5 years into playing guitar. I had close to 16 guitars at that time. I've wittled it down now to 9 that I use most often for recording on projects and I have a few I need to repair... I just haven't since I still have many. But at least I got rid of what I wasn't using as much.

I've tried to sit down and decide how many I actually "need" (need is such a subjective word, haha). I have it down to 5-6 guitars and 1 bass for myself and 1 bass for my wife (which will secretly be for myself as well). I need to focus on the things I really need, like some decent studio monitors instead of these $20 computer speakers, and a new computer.

The Forestfather MCD is done and uploaded to Souncloud to be heard:

The Album
http://soundcloud.com/forestfather/sets/hereafter *fixed!

The release date is unknown, since we don't want to release it as an only digital album but I hope it'll be out soon!

Let me know your impressions!

I wish I had more guitars :/ My main axe has a great live sound and plays real nice but as I mentioned before there's that little clipping problem when lining in, and the sound is a little distorted as well.

Yes yes I know, save up and buy. Too bad my current (mandatory)job doesn't pay so good :/

Well I didn't sit down and decide what guitars I needed, I just started selling off the ones that I rarely ever touched or really didn't like playing all that much, or wanted to get other gear with. With what i have left they all have certain characteristics that make them more suitable for one project or another. Some do double duty in bands but I have 4 that are only used for one certain project and that's it cause a lot of the sound and tone created is specific for that project.

Kveldulfr
the link doesn't work! At least not for me.

FIXED!!

Hah! I only have four.

1. My main Jackson RR1.
2. The backup at rehearsal is a butt ugly Washburn with a flaming skull motif and a pink JBJ that I put in instead of the stock pickup.
3. The one next to me which I write all my stuff is the first crap guitar I got, a cheap Stratocaster knock off that's made of plywood (well almost).
4. And an acoustic that I hardly play.

i never bothered with acoustics. never was too interested in them.

Excellent Kve!

I've owned acoustics twice, and never for longer than a month each time. I just don't enjoy playing them. Oh, almost forgot, about two weeks ago I purchased a nice Iceman body off ebay. Alder, quilted maple top, binding. I just need to refinish the top a bit, and that's fine with me. I've always wanted an Iceman, so I'm excited to put this one together.