# Blend of Orchestral and Hard Rock



## Bullersten (Dec 7, 2019)

I have been fascinated by Metallica S&M album since I first heard it. The idea of properly mixing Hard Rock and Orchestral is a little underused in my opinion, so I had a go at finding out how it could be done. I quickly realised how difficult it is to mix and arrange this style. I wanted to keep the bite of Drums and Overdrive guitars to lead the piece, while leaving room for orchestral harmonies to shine through.



I am not very advanced in MIDI programming or mixing, so any production or arrangement pointers on what could be improved would be greatly appreciated.


----------



## shawnsingh (Dec 8, 2019)

Music feels great, but overall feels very muffled and the guitars and orchestra are both missing a critical mid-high frequency range that gives those instruments clarity and aggressiveness. Bass guitar and drums feel much louder than everything else, not sure if that's a different view of the same issue, or a different issue entirely.

Is it possible things got muffled as you kept trying to separate the guitar and orchestra in the mix? If you bring back mid and high frequencies from the guitars and orchestra, you might find they don't conflict as much as you're worried about. There actually *should* be some degree of feeling like they blend really well together. And then you rely on other tricks - like inaccurate performances, slight EQ scoops in different ranges that still keep them sounding natural, stereo placement, tweaking guitar tone, etc - to make them really feel discernible.

Actually, I'm really not sure if my feedback is any good. Not like I have much experience mixing this kind of combination... but hope it helps anyway


----------



## Bullersten (Dec 8, 2019)

shawnsingh said:


> Music feels great, but overall feels very muffled and the guitars and orchestra are both missing a critical mid-high frequency range that gives those instruments clarity and aggressiveness. Bass guitar and drums feel much louder than everything else, not sure if that's a different view of the same issue, or a different issue entirely.
> 
> Is it possible things got muffled as you kept trying to separate the guitar and orchestra in the mix? If you bring back mid and high frequencies from the guitars and orchestra, you might find they don't conflict as much as you're worried about. There actually *should* be some degree of feeling like they blend really well together. And then you rely on other tricks - like inaccurate performances, slight EQ scoops in different ranges that still keep them sounding natural, stereo placement, tweaking guitar tone, etc - to make them really feel discernible.
> 
> Actually, I'm really not sure if my feedback is any good. Not like I have much experience mixing this kind of combination... but hope it helps anyway



Thank you very much for the pointers, they are very useful. Could the muffled sound come from the parallel reverb? If I tone it down, I am getting more clarity, but I am losing cohesion between the different tracks. Is the best way to proceed to apply a first reverb to the bus of each orchestral section, then apply a parallel reverb overall to get cohesion across sections?


----------



## CoffeeLover (Dec 8, 2019)

its bit difficult to use metallicas S&M as a reference to metal fused with classical music .

you should maybe check the band "Therion album Vovin" it has great arrangements and decent mix given it is from the late 90's.


----------



## Bullersten (Dec 8, 2019)

CoffeeLover said:


> its bit difficult to use metallicas S&M as a reference to metal fused with classical music .
> 
> you should maybe check the band "Therion album Vovin" it has great arrangements and decent mix given it is from the late 90's.



Excellent, I did not know this band. They are experts at mixing heavy guitars and drums with a symphonic choir it seems.


----------



## CoffeeLover (Dec 8, 2019)

Bullersten said:


> Excellent, I did not know this band. They are experts at mixing heavy guitars and drums with a symphonic choir it seems.



yeah they were pretty good band
i grew up in the metal scene in iceland 
so i sort of got the best from both worlds 
and symphonic hardrock/metal was my thing late90s to early20s .
there were quite allot of bands that were at the top of their game back then. 
Therion being one of them 
i can also mention "Nightwish" fronted by a soprano being one of the big names back in the day along with symphonic black metal outfit "DimmuBorgir".

also if i would recomend a library for this sort of thing then Audio Imperia Nucleus would be perfect for this sort of arrangement.


----------



## MichaelVakili (Dec 8, 2019)

I love mixing heavy metal with any other genre to be honest but sadly it is not really common. About your track /What I would do /- gain stage the bass and the kick drum - after that choose which instrument will hold the lowest hz ,usually in metal it is the kick around 40 hz and high pass / low shelf the other instrument to 80 hz. Cut some of the low mids on the kick / around 250-350 hz /. I would also boost with high shelf shelf the kick around 5 k and add some parallel distortion on the bass guitar. Also if you haven't - high pass/shelf the reverb bus around 100-150 and cut some of the low mids. Usually orchestra tracks and heavy metal are really greedy mid area and don't tolerate a lot of excessive bass. If you still find problems after dealing with the low end - start messing with the low mids.


----------



## shawnsingh (Dec 8, 2019)

Bullersten said:


> Thank you very much for the pointers, they are very useful. Could the muffled sound come from the parallel reverb? If I tone it down, I am getting more clarity, but I am losing cohesion between the different tracks. Is the best way to proceed to apply a first reverb to the bus of each orchestral section, then apply a parallel reverb overall to get cohesion across sections?



I'm not sure about parallel reverb causing this. To me it really just sounds like the 800 hz to 3 kHz region is simply mixed to softly. Chances are the reverb is done just fine. If you first tried to EQ it on the master bus while mix referencing, then you might agree with me... And after that, you can find a better way to bring out the individual instruments in the mix in that range instead of just a bus EQ.

Did you have much EQ on some of the instruments? Which virtual instruments (or real gear) did you use?

Cheers!


----------



## Bullersten (Dec 8, 2019)

MichaelVakili said:


> I love mixing heavy metal with any other genre to be honest but sadly it is not really common. About your track /What I would do /- gain stage the bass and the kick drum - after that choose which instrument will hold the lowest hz ,usually in metal it is the kick around 40 hz and high pass / high shelf the other instrument to 80 hz. Cut some of the low mids on the kick / around 250-350 hz /. I would also high shelf the kick around 5 k and add some parallel distortion on the bass guitar. Also if you haven't - high pass/shelf the reverb bus around 100-150 and cut some of the low mids. Usually orchestra tracks and heavy metal are really greedy mid area and don't tolerate a lot of excessive bass. If you still find problems after dealing with the low end - start messing with the low mids.



Great guidelines. Implemented them and got rid of much conflicting low end (uploaded the remixed version). However, there are conflicting instruments in the low mid as well e.g violas and rhythm guitar for example. It requires more work, and I will probably learn a few tricks trying to sort this out. 



shawnsingh said:


> I'm not sure about parallel reverb causing this. To me it really just sounds like the 800 hz to 3 kHz region is simply mixed to softly. Chances are the reverb is done just fine. If you first tried to EQ it on the master bus while mix referencing, then you might agree with me... And after that, you can find a better way to bring out the individual instruments in the mix in that range instead of just a bus EQ.
> 
> Did you have much EQ on some of the instruments? Which virtual instruments (or real gear) did you use?
> 
> Cheers!



Guitars are real and plugged through amp modellers, rest is virtual. Not many EQs in use, I have limited mixing knowledge so I do not even know how to mix reference... I will find more info about it


----------



## shawnsingh (Dec 9, 2019)

Bullersten said:


> Guitars are real and plugged through amp modellers, rest is virtual. Not many EQs in use, I have limited mixing knowledge so I do not even know how to mix reference... I will find more info about it



Definitely don't worry about limited mixing knowledge, it'll come =) Mix referencing is not anything technical, it's just the concept of comparing your mix to something you like the tone and mix already and that you believe is well produced. Having a handful of mix reference tracks to hear spontaneously is valuable to help remove a lot of psychological bias and poor room acoustics problems from the mixing equation. Just try to mix to have a similar tone and balance to something you like. Here's a random metallica track

So if you recorded the guitars DI and used amp modelling, I'd say the mix aspects of it are all under your control, which may come in handy.

I did a quick search for 2 minutes and found this video at 46:40 has a more open clear sound that I think you might want. Especially for the orchestra, but then it follows that the guitars should be a bit brighter too.

Also, I can't tell if you updated the soundcloud link - it actually feels like it improved, but maybe that's just a mind trick? I'd still feel it should be a bit brighter, but the kick/bass/snare feel pretty nicely balanced now.


----------



## shawnsingh (Dec 9, 2019)

oops pressed send too soon, I also meant to say, I'm enjoying this track


----------



## Bullersten (Dec 9, 2019)

shawnsingh said:


> Also, I can't tell if you updated the soundcloud link - it actually feels like it improved, but maybe that's just a mind trick? I'd still feel it should be a bit brighter, but the kick/bass/snare feel pretty nicely balanced now.



Thanks for the link, I find the mixes in the symphonic metal genre very clear and bright indeed. But I do like a Live feel in Rock tracks which would be missing if I went for this level of polishing. Not that I would be capable of achieving it anyway =:]

The soundcloud track was updated, so it is definitely not a trick. I re-recorded some guitar parts and took care of some of the sonic battles I had in the low end (Double bass vs Kick drum vs Bass vs Rhythm guitar...) using MichaelVakili's great tips. It could definitely be brighter, I would need to comb through the sections to find out where the low-mid conflicts happen and adjust.


----------

