# The Only Thing They Fear Is Mick Gordon - DOOM-style attempt



## visiblenoise (Jul 26, 2022)

I've been obsessed with Mick Gordon's music for a while now, and it's inspired me to try something in that style. I'm no pro, so this was a sound design/mixing learning project for me. Took me a long time to get the bass in particular just to sound fine. Would love to get some criticism on it!

Sorry, no orchestral samples on this one. Also no guitars, as I haven't been able to coax a good enough tone out of my humble 7 string.


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## Trash Panda (Jul 26, 2022)

I’m getting a mid to late nineties NIN vibe from this. 🤘🏻


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## Pincel (Jul 26, 2022)

visiblenoise said:


> I've been obsessed with Mick Gordon's music for a while now, and it's inspired me to try something in that style. I'm no pro, so this was a sound design/mixing learning project for me. Took me a long time to get the bass in particular just to sound fine. Would love to get some criticism on it!
> 
> Sorry, no orchestral samples on this one. Also no guitars, as I haven't been able to coax a good enough tone out of my humble 7 string.



Heavy! It's sounds very Doom-ish, well done on the composition! I don't have much to say, I think the overall sound is pretty close, but I feel that it is maybe a bit narrow image-wise compared to the Doom soundtrack, which sounds really wide and immersive. But other than that I think you pretty much nailed the feel, congrats!


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## MartinH. (Jul 26, 2022)

visiblenoise said:


> I've been obsessed with Mick Gordon's music for a while now, and it's inspired me to try something in that style. I'm no pro, so this was a sound design/mixing learning project for me. Took me a long time to get the bass in particular just to sound fine. Would love to get some criticism on it!
> 
> Sorry, no orchestral samples on this one. Also no guitars, as I haven't been able to coax a good enough tone out of my humble 7 string.



Great work man, you nailed it! I've dabbled with this stuff as well so I know this must have been a shitton of work and experimentation. 

If you still enjoy the style, you own Reaktor and you haven't tried the two metasonix emulations and the swarmatron from the reaktor user library yet, check this out:





REAKTOR User Library







www.native-instruments.com




Hard to control, but they have a unique touch.


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## visiblenoise (Jul 26, 2022)

Pincel said:


> Heavy! It's sounds very Doom-ish, well done on the composition! I don't have much to say, I think the overall sound is pretty close, but I feel that it is maybe a bit narrow image-wise compared to the Doom soundtrack, which sounds really wide and immersive. But other than that I think you pretty much nailed the feel, congrats!


Hmm that's a great point, I kept a lot of the bass patches relatively narrow out of habit but it was overdone. My only strategy for width was just to hard-pan a few sounds here and there, but the bass sounds on the Doom soundtrack do have a lot of mid-lows spread around. Something to keep in mind next time. Thanks!


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## visiblenoise (Jul 26, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Great work man, you nailed it! I've dabbled with this stuff as well so I know this must have been a shitton of work and experimentation.
> 
> If you still enjoy the style, you own Reaktor and you haven't tried the two metasonix emulations and the swarmatron from the reaktor user library yet, check this out:
> 
> ...


Thanks for the recommendation! I don't even know what metasonix and swarmatron are, but I see someone in the comments mentioning Mick Gordon so I'm definitely going to try them.

I actually used Reaktor here, but in the most boring way - I made the fast bass pluck in Blocks and then just tried to make it more interesting with post processing.


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## marius_dm (Jul 26, 2022)

Love it! Definitely late 90s video game vibe. Some of the most memorable game music from that era for me is Sonic Mayhem's (Sascha Dikiciyan) work for Quake 2.


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## Henu (Jul 28, 2022)

This is really well done gordon-esque stuff, even without the guitars!

Which percussion did you use for those knocking kicks, was that Damage?


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## visiblenoise (Jul 28, 2022)

Henu said:


> This is really well done gordon-esque stuff, even without the guitars!
> 
> Which percussion did you use for those knocking kicks, was that Damage?


Thanks! I assume you mean the "kicks" that hit with the bass, like during the chorus/climax part - a naked kick does play a few times elsewhere, but that's a rather standard dance kick from BreakTweaker or something. Mostly it's coming from the bass patch itself, which is a poor man's "DOOM array" in an instance of FL Patcher (plain sine bass running through parallel chains of effects, then into a compressor). But what I got with that process wasn't punchy enough on its own, so I used a transient shaper on it and also layered in a lowpassed kick sample to make the low-end punch more consistent during the chorus thing.

I'm sure a lot of DOOM fans are already familiar, but here's the talk about this: 
At some point he specifically talks about setting the compressor on it to maximize the percussive effect.


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## MartinH. (Jul 28, 2022)

OTT is also good for processing these kinds of things. I have it in a ton of my Doom inspired fx chains.


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## karelpsota (Jul 28, 2022)

visiblenoise said:


>



I think you got the sounds and the arrangement really close.
The only thing missing is the mixing. More subtractive EQing, sidechaining and transient control.

A few years ago, I was referencing his work a lot. He does some very ear-candy EQing on very aggressive sounds. 

That's the closest I've ever gotten:


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## Dr.Quest (Jul 28, 2022)

visiblenoise said:


> I've been obsessed with Mick Gordon's music for a while now, and it's inspired me to try something in that style. I'm no pro, so this was a sound design/mixing learning project for me. Took me a long time to get the bass in particular just to sound fine. Would love to get some criticism on it!
> 
> Sorry, no orchestral samples on this one. Also no guitars, as I haven't been able to coax a good enough tone out of my humble 7 string.



Well done! Try some Mid/Side EQ widening and Plugin Alliance ADPTR Sculpt for the transients. It'll kick it out of the park!


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## visiblenoise (Jul 28, 2022)

karelpsota said:


> I think you got the sounds and the arrangement really close.
> The only thing missing is the mixing. More subtractive EQing, sidechaining and transient control.
> 
> A few years ago, I was referencing his work a lot. He does some very ear-candy EQing on very aggressive sounds.
> ...



Beastly! The bass is so much deeper you're putting me to shame.


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## visiblenoise (Jul 28, 2022)

Dr.Quest said:


> Well done! Try some Mid/Side EQ widening and Plugin Alliance ADPTR Sculpt for the transients. It'll kick it out of the park!


Mid/side EQ is a genius suggestion, I always forget that it's a possibility. Next time I do a similar DOOM bass thing again I'm gonna try leaving phased/chorused layers wide and EQ the sub from the sides.


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## bobby b (Jul 29, 2022)

...the same what I already said, well done.


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## visiblenoise (Jul 29, 2022)

bobby b said:


> ...the same what I already said, well done.


Hello fellow FL Studio forum-goer!


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## MartinH. (Jul 29, 2022)

karelpsota said:


> He does some very ear-candy EQing on very aggressive sounds.


Do you mean he's cutting out all the harshness from even the most distorted synths, so that they kind of all sound pleasant on their own, like a purring cat etc.? That's the impression I got. If you mean something else I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. 
Great mix and track! How did you manage to get it so punchy and what's your strategy for the "transient control" you mention?


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## karelpsota (Jul 29, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Do you mean he's cutting out all the harshness from even the most distorted synths, so that they kind of all sound pleasant on their own, like a purring cat etc.? That's the impression I got. If you mean something else I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
> Great mix and track! How did you manage to get it so punchy and what's your strategy for the "transient control" you mention?


That's pretty much it. EQ and (multi-band) compression into satisfying shapes.

Also, Mick understands what sounds pleasing from a *tonal balance* perspective AND an *overtone *perspective. The choices of source and distortion are already tailored to make pleasing sounds. None of his distortions sound like BOSS Metalzone. He doesn't play power chords either, he's always distorting single notes.

By transient control, I just mean: thinking about the attack and tail of hits separately. Some frequencies are desired on the attack but not on the tail.


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## Emanu1674 (Jul 30, 2022)

Needs more lawnmower and then it will be perfect


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Jul 30, 2022)

visiblenoise said:


> I've been obsessed with Mick Gordon's music for a while now, and it's inspired me to try something in that style. I'm no pro, so this was a sound design/mixing learning project for me. Took me a long time to get the bass in particular just to sound fine. Would love to get some criticism on it!
> 
> Sorry, no orchestral samples on this one. Also no guitars, as I haven't been able to coax a good enough tone out of my humble 7 string.



This sounds great! I get a lot of Frontline Assembly vibes from it!


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## MartinH. (Jul 30, 2022)

karelpsota said:


> That's pretty much it. EQ and (multi-band) compression into satisfying shapes.
> 
> Also, Mick understands what sounds pleasing from a *tonal balance* perspective AND an *overtone *perspective. The choices of source and distortion are already tailored to make pleasing sounds. None of his distortions sound like BOSS Metalzone. He doesn't play power chords either, he's always distorting single notes.
> 
> By transient control, I just mean: thinking about the attack and tail of hits separately. Some frequencies are desired on the attack but not on the tail.



Thanks a lot, this is super helpful! 

I'm surprised though you mention the Boss Metalzone as a no-go, since that has been (in plugin form) a staple of some of my argent metal sounddesign attempts. What's wrong with it?


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## visiblenoise (Jul 30, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Thanks a lot, this is super helpful!
> 
> I'm surprised though you mention the Boss Metalzone as a no-go, since that has been (in plugin form) a staple of some of my argent metal sounddesign attempts. What's wrong with it?


I assume he's referring to the reputation it had when it was predominantly used by novice metal guitar players running it into something like a Line 6 Spider... I was one of those kids...


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## karelpsota (Jul 30, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> I'm surprised though you mention the Boss Metalzone as a no-go, since that has been (in plugin form) a staple of some of my argent metal sounddesign attempts. What's wrong with it?





visiblenoise said:


> I assume he's referring to the reputation it had when it was predominantly used by novice metal guitar players running it into something like a Line 6 Spider... I was one of those kids...


Yeah, I meant it more as a joke haha. I just remember using it as a kid thinking it was the secret sauce but it just made harsh noise. It's probably still a good pedal in the right hands.

Would love to hear the tone you get out of your metal zone!


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## Trash Panda (Jul 30, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Thanks a lot, this is super helpful!
> 
> I'm surprised though you mention the Boss Metalzone as a no-go, since that has been (in plugin form) a staple of some of my argent metal sounddesign attempts. What's wrong with it?


Metal Zone is fine if you use it correctly.


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## MartinH. (Jul 30, 2022)

karelpsota said:


> Would love to hear the tone you get out of your metal zone!


Sure! Let me know what you think. 

The more highfrequency one gets a little unpleasant, but that could be improved with something like DSEQ, I still only have that as a trial version though.


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## karelpsota (Jul 30, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Sure! Let me know what you think.
> 
> The more highfrequency one gets a little unpleasant, but that could be improved with something like DSEQ, I still only have that as a trial version though.


This is so sick. Sounds great to my ears!


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## visiblenoise (Jul 30, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Sure! Let me know what you think.
> 
> The more highfrequency one gets a little unpleasant, but that could be improved with something like DSEQ, I still only have that as a trial version though.


Oh my... how do you get those short sine-sounding feedback notes? e.g. the one that comes right before the onset of the note at 4 seconds?


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## karelpsota (Jul 30, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> I'm surprised though you mention the Boss Metalzone as a no-go, since that has been (in plugin form) a staple of some of my argent metal sounddesign attempts. What's wrong with it?


I downloaded a free Metal Zone emulation and just wrote a quick track with it. Super fun stuff, thank you for the rec! Way better than what I recalled.

In hindsight, I think it has a bad rep because it sounds linear/digital. Not a lot of movement in the overtones.

Ola's tones are well balanced, but there's still that "static noise" sound.

For sound design with a lot of movement in the sources, works great!

For guitars in modern production. I would only use it for overtone consistency and make sure I have another instrument with more interesting overtone movement.
A bass that rings nicely at 2K is always a good move for contrast. Mick does that a lot too.

All the guitars below are Metal Zone only. No cab. A lot of EQ.


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## MartinH. (Jul 30, 2022)

visiblenoise said:


> Oh my... how do you get those short sine-sounding feedback notes? e.g. the one that comes right before the onset of the note at 4 seconds?



Sometimes I'm not quite sure, because these chains are so long. Half the plugins are bypassed remnants from experiments.






Several things make that feedbacky sound disappear if I deactivate them. But I can tell you it's not actual feedback coming from another track, it's just some artifact from the synth that is getting amplified a lot. The first OTT and the hm2 emulations in tsex50 are probably pretty important:






The shape of the release curve in FM8 is also important. Just changing the angle in which the amplitude curves off from the sustain phase of the ADSR envelopes changes that sound significantly. And I should note FM8 is not just outputting a sinewave, it's already modulating the sound.



karelpsota said:


> This is so sick. Sounds great to my ears!


Glad you like it! 



karelpsota said:


> I downloaded a free Metal Zone emulation and just wrote a quick track with it.


This is dope! And thanks a lot for posting the guitar track soloed too with the sidechain compression baked in! You have this great punch in the drums again and I wouldn't have dared to be this aggressive with the sidechaining, I need to try that myself.


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## Daniel James (Jul 30, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Sometimes I'm not quite sure, because these chains are so long. Half the plugins are bypassed remnants from experiments.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


A lot of that high end chaos is usually pulled out by OTT. Just keep adding it in at different stages. OTT - Distortion - OTT - Delay - OTT - Verb - OTT. See what that gives you 😂

One technique a lot of these guys use is to press record then experiment with turning knobs and dials while the full processing is on. Record that live to a separate track then slice out all the cool 'happy accidents' Then make a kontakt patch out of that.

But genuinely a lot of this kind of brick wall noise with chaos is down to multiple layers of OTT.

Oh and OTT, like any compressor needs silence for full effect. So cut out any tails of notes you don't want so that the compressors get to retrigger, which will give you that THUD. Putting a rhythmic noise gate or a trance gate in the signal path will give you some of those gaps. 

Also there is some secret sauce in the shadows of sounds (that's what I call them) so like the reverb tails or the bits you are not supposed to hear at the end of a sample. It all becomes audible with multiple OTT's so sometimes you will find that you don't even use the original sound, but the reverb tail and delay tail might have a badass tone when mixed with the distortion and OTT's. Thats why its good to always be in record. Some of my best sound designs come from these shadows!! And you don't always know what you will find!

-DJ


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## RudyS (Jul 31, 2022)

visiblenoise said:


> Thanks! I assume you mean the "kicks" that hit with the bass, like during the chorus/climax part - a naked kick does play a few times elsewhere, but that's a rather standard dance kick from BreakTweaker or something. Mostly it's coming from the bass patch itself, which is a poor man's "DOOM array" in an instance of FL Patcher (plain sine bass running through parallel chains of effects, then into a compressor). But what I got with that process wasn't punchy enough on its own, so I used a transient shaper on it and also layered in a lowpassed kick sample to make the low-end punch more consistent during the chorus thing.
> 
> I'm sure a lot of DOOM fans are already familiar, but here's the talk about this:
> At some point he specifically talks about setting the compressor on it to maximize the percussive effect.



This is the best thing I watched in a while. informative and hilarious. Thanks for sharing.

Does anybody know how in his " Doom array", he got these transients. It indeed sometimes sounds like there is a kick drum. I tried running sines with noise to all kind of distortion (hardware pedals and VST), but it never got that oomph.

EDIT: ow, he answered about the attack in the end of the clip. very interesting stuff!


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## MartinH. (Jul 31, 2022)

RudyS said:


> This is the best thing I watched in a while. informative and hilarious. Thanks for sharing.
> 
> Does anybody know how in his " Doom array", he got these transients. It indeed sometimes sounds like there is a kick drum. I tried running sines with noise to all kind of distortion (hardware pedals and VST), but it never got that oomph.
> 
> EDIT: ow, he answered about the attack in the end of the clip. very interesting stuff!


Try throwing in a couple instances of OTT like Daniel James said. You can use multiple instances in one fx chain.

https://xferrecords.com/freeware


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## RudyS (Jul 31, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Try throwing in a couple instances of OTT like Daniel James said. You can use multiple instances in one fx chain.
> 
> https://xferrecords.com/freeware


Thanks, I did that, but still don’t get the results I want. I guess just have to experiment a little bit more.


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## RudyS (Jul 31, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Try throwing in a couple instances of OTT like Daniel James said. You can use multiple instances in one fx chain.
> 
> https://xferrecords.com/freeware


Is it normal that you get a lot of noise from the OTT in extreme settings? I tried a noise gate to get it away, but it give's artefacts at the end of the sounds.


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## MartinH. (Aug 1, 2022)

RudyS said:


> Is it normal that you get a lot of noise from the OTT in extreme settings? I tried a noise gate to get it away, but it give's artefacts at the end of the sounds.


It shouldn't introduce much new noise since it's not an analog emulation with a noisefloor, but if there is the slightest hint of noise in the incoming signal, it's gonna amplify the fuck out of it, that's part of the whole point of using it :D. So you gotta put the noisegate before OTT if you want to get rid of that. But keep in mind that even a rapidly closing noisegate is sort of a sound that might get amplified. If you want to avoid that as well try adding another noisegate after OTT and trigger that with the sidechained unprocessed signal to get it to close sooner. Depends on the input signal if that helps. If it doesn't, some DAWs have time adjustment delays that can take negative values so that the sidechain signal gets fed into the gate before the processed signal so that the gate closes sooner. In Reaper that's as easy as putting a timea adjustment delay jsfx plugin into the sidechain (it comes with Reaper), other DAWs might need negative track delay and a regular 100% wet no feedback delay in the processing signalpath with the sidechain having no delay.


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Aug 1, 2022)

MartinH. said:


> Sure! Let me know what you think.
> 
> The more highfrequency one gets a little unpleasant, but that could be improved with something like DSEQ, I still only have that as a trial version though.


This sounds wicked! Total trailer-like sound


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## RudyS (Aug 1, 2022)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> This sounds wicked! Total trailer-like sound


Yes, it's awesome. Would love to be able to make those sounds.


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## xepocal (Aug 1, 2022)

What are you struggling with? You mentioned the transient/kick drum earlier. One way to get a kick is to take a sine, have it start off somewhere between +18 and +36 semitones and add a very short envelope (~40-60ms) that drops the pitch back down to +0 semitones. That should give you a pretty good kick instantly. Add plugins to taste. Saturation and OTT are great to fatten up the sound. In the example I attached, the wobbly reverb tail comes from a spring reverb at 4% wet before OTT.

View attachment kick.mp3


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## Daniel James (Aug 1, 2022)

RudyS said:


> Thanks, I did that, but still don’t get the results I want. I guess just have to experiment a little bit more.


You need to treat all that noise and chaos as part of the new sound. Remember a tail is as important to a rhythm as the transient. So having a hard cut after a beat will make the next beat feel more powerful. And trust me OTT is the way. It was the key to making a bunch of sounds in my project Chaos based around this 'strong gritty compressed' low end sound. Here is an example of the types of sounds I made using the chain I was talking about above.

-DJ


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## RudyS (Aug 1, 2022)

Thanks all, I will experiment with it! Love this place!


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## MartinH. (Aug 2, 2022)

I was asked about some more details on the fx chains for the example I posted and I thought I'll just share a Reaper project here, since I really can't properly explain _why _I put all the fx into their places. The whole thing was a happy accident among many days of unstructured experimentation. I couldn't reproduce it from scratch if I wanted to. 

First a safty warning:* you should always have a limiter on the master bus if you make such crazy experiments! *Unexpected volume spikes are to be expected. You use this project at your own risk.

In the file there are 3 fx chains. The first one only uses 3 paid plugins (fm8, heavy pedal, bx_metal2)

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/8001-FM8 (if you have any NI Komplete you likely already have this)








Heavy Pedal mkII


Heavy Pedal mkII, Heavy Pedal mkII plugin, buy Heavy Pedal mkII, download Heavy Pedal mkII trial, Audiority Heavy Pedal mkII




www.pluginboutique.com




or https://www.audiority.com/shop/heavy-pedal/ (includes trial download)
https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_metal2.html (should have a trial as well)

The first two are on sale and the bx_metal2 can be replaced with this one till it goes on sale again, but it will sound slightly different:





Mercuriall Audio Software







mercuriall.com





Settings for the bx_metal2:





The first chain needs the plugins next to the ticked checkboxes: 






The rest can be ignored as they are bypassed. I'm leaving them in because I had them there during my experiments. Feel free to flip them on or off and see if it changes anything. Go nuts, there are no rules in this! Except maybe "You need OTT in there!". 

The second chain uses more paid plugins:






TSE x50 is important here. Ozone 8 advanced and Fabfilter Saturn 2 are optional.

The third chain is just a variant of the second where I've quickly replaced TSE x50 with tsb and 2 heavy pedal instances (it does sound a bit different though): 







These things are so finicky even if I screenshot every single setting you'd likely get a somewhat different result just from minimal differences in eyballing the dials. All the OTTs and pedals make changes in the input signal obvious, that at the point of origin you couldn't even hear as a difference in sound. 
So you'll just have to download the trial version of Reaper ( https://www.reaper.fm/download.php ). Install it as a portable version and you can just delete the folder when you no longer need it. Installing Reaper will be way faster than copying all settings from dozens of screenshots too, trust me. 

The most non-obvious thing I did was map the modwheel to a simple volume adjustment after the first OTT instance in all 3 chains, and it goes from -150db to 0db... and you can still hear the synth at -150db! That's probably the most "trick" kind of thing to learn from this, don't always just amplify the signal, dial it down a lot in one place too. 
If you want to migrate the effects to a different DAW, you can find ReaXComp here: 


REAPER | ReaPlugs


You'll have to replace the "volume adjustment" jsfx plugin with something that... adjusts volume.

The track layout might confuse you at first sight: 






You really only need the folders starting with "mw", this is where your modwheel cc data goes too. You can use the massive x tracks for an alternative synth input signal (simple sinewaves iirc). And you can try using the "guitar" tracks to record something with a bass or downtuned 8 string guitar. A regular 7 string isn't low enough.


The minimal plugin list you need is: 
W1 Limiter
FM8
OTT
TDR Nova
Heavy Pedal (if the heavy pedal mk II doesn't come with the old plugin just called "Heavy Pedal" for backwards compatibility, let me know and I'll screenshot the settings)
ReaXComp
bx_metal2
bx_subfilter
TSB-1 (ignite amps)

highly recommended:
TSE x50

bonus:
Fabfilter Saturn 2
Ozone 8 advanced


I'll also attach an mp3 of how it should sound. 

Hope this helps!


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