Yeah I used to play in lots of metal bands so that's really the stuff that got me into music. I just haven't ever been in any extreme metal bands, so even though I've learned a bunch of songs over the years I've never really written anything in this style. Doing this video made me want to though, maybe I'll do an EP or something.
Yeah man that is something I could do some LifeLover / Advent Sorrow black metal style vocals to. Especially that lead I can almost hear a Rhys King lower end vocal over it & when the drums pick up go into the ghostly howling vocal & then into the bat demon vocal. Lyrics - basically the 1980’s BBC nuclear disaster movie “Threads”. Bleak post apocalyptic wasteland where there’s no happy endings.
@@f_c_r_ Yeah sure man I’ll send ya an email. Tonight I’ll switch on Threads & All Quiet On The Western Front, write some lyrics & when it’s all done & recorded I’ll send it back to ya & you can do whatever you want with it.
Hell ya good job man. I love making black metal stuff, just messing around. Cool video man and cool song. U need vocals though bro even back ground vox.
@@f_c_r_ i get that. I didnt like mine at first also. Just drown then in reverb hahahahaha. Really like ur videos. The one u made a tape cover etc on was perfect. Good job keep up the good work.
This is great, I'm new to dungeon synth and black metal and this scratches my itch! Keep the videos coming please! Have you tried doing any ambient dungeon synth? Im into Ghoëst and stuff like that at the moment but am having lots of trouble with sound design for my own songs in that genre. (Edited for spelling)
Hey, thanks for watching! I actually have been thinking about doing a video on creating music more in the vein of something like Ghoëst, doomy droning heavy DS inspired stuff. I'll try to get around to that soon, life keeps getting in the way haha!
Btw more mid range did in fact make it sound less thin. Thanks! I also found that using a super aggresive eq on the induvidual dedicated high and low waves helped too. Synths are awsome, im using vital, i got a midi controller to map the features to, only reason i bought it was to use it with vital, more fun to use sliders and knobs that mouse and keybaord in soft synths.
this was pretty cool ... the downside for me is that I only know keyboard playing ... and I actually started doing a track that is black metal using only keyboard ...gonna upload it on this channel in a few days or so .... your approach is pretty cool and I can relate a lot
Yeah there's some sounds that are very tough to recreate without a string instrument. Honestly though some of the newer sampler based guitar plugins I've tried sound pretty much indistinguishable from real guitar if you're just doing chords or if you're careful about note choices (mainly avoiding chord voicings that are uncommon or impossible on guitar)
I wish I had the motivation to set up mics and do that for a video here! I love using amps and mics and stuff but it requires so much more production value to do in a video. Thanks for watching!
The project is set to 140bpm. I'm deciding tempo in this type of track based on the vibe of the blast beats; Some songs benefit from slower "scissor beat" style blasts and some want faster ones for really extreme drum roll type sounds. Most tempos should be fine plus or minus 3-5bpm to maintain the same vibe, so you can more closely match what you're going for with other instruments that might sound too slow or fast.
I like this track, it sounds like a video game epic track,, reminds me of halo ost. Did you not double track the guitars in order to not ruin workflow, or are you not planning on double tracking them?
Oh I guess that wasn't clear, I was just setting up a track for the second guitar that ends up playing the melody part. So just copying the track, not the part.
@@f_c_r_ yeah i know you didnt double track the guitar, i was wondering what the thought process was in chosing to not double track them? Im not trying to criticize the decision to not double track the chord progression. Im just curious about why you didnt?
@@Flen-vf9yx Honestly the decision not to do (or even experiment with) production tricks like double tracking was actually primarily to keep the video length shorter, both for the finished product and the time commitment to film and edit haha (I had plans later so I was in a hurry to make the video). For this style I'd normally also spend quite a lot more time with the guitar tone. I like this type of stuff sounding like a raw demo so it doesn't bug me here and I actually might often end up leaving it this way, but I'd usually at least experiment with things like double tracking if time isn't an issue.
@@f_c_r_ Gotcha! Yeah sometimes its nice to leave things minimally edited/quantized i find that sometimes i prefer live recordings to the album versions of music, beacuse of this.
In terms of metal. i feel like the synth has the potential to be the heaviest instrument, beacuse of its insane sound design capabilites. But there are very few good examples of people using synth to make hard hitting heavy music. (which makes sense,why work so hard to make a heavy gnarly synth,when you can just use a guitar instead) Mick gordon, and the guy called sludge goat on youtube, are the best examples of heavy synth tones ive found. Now a heavy metal guitar set up, is pretty much a synth anyway, people run their guitar through big pedal boards which to me just seems to be equivalent to a synth. Now the string attack is a huge thing in metal guitar, but it shouldnt be to hard to make an attack similar to the string pick in a synth. I mean ive tried many times with vital just running some low pitches waves through a amp sim, with a high attack distorted white noise, to replace the guitars string attack. It sound pretty heavy. I wonder if there is some inherent characteristic that a guitar has that makes it more suitable for really heavy music, than a soft synth and a midi controller. I remember in an old video, you said someting about one reason alot of people preffered guitars over synths or piano was beacuse of the guitars wave shape and how it detunes a bit, maybe that has something to do with it. There is something about the guitar that just hits different, idk what it is, and idk why its so hard to replicate. Here is sludge goat, idk if he uses a heavy metal guitar for the guitar tone, in the description he sais he uses FM8 which leads me to belive that he built his tone from scratch in the synth ua-cam.com/video/xkFaRCrCUak/v-deo.htmlsi=3FTqW8l9MO8_tAnU Idk why i wrote this long ass message, i just find the topic interesting, I guess one could say that techincally the synth is the heaviest instrument, if the synth uses a guitar as a controller lol
It's actually relatively common for producers to double or support heavy guitar parts with synth. The earliest example I can think of of metal with synth support is the Painkiller album by Judas priest, and it's just gotten more aggressive from there. One thing I'd like to see less of is dishonest producers pretending like they didn't use synths, since a lot of guitarists can be a bit embarrassed about not being heavy enough or something. Kinda like tuning software on vocals haha. People get embarrassed that it was used for some reason. Anyway fm8 is amazing, I use it relatively often. Haven't tried it for guitar support yet though, I'll have to give that a shot.
@@f_c_r_ interesting! i did not know that. I checked out a video about that, after reading this. And the synth makes a big difference.. My main reason for going on this quest of making heavy music without an actual guitar, is just that i dont feel like learning to play the guitar at the moment. I know there is some good heavy guitar vst plugins, ill probably get one of those and play on keys instead. Also yeah, it be better if theyd just be open about using synths.
problem with using a distorted electric guitar is that then you have to admit you're playing an electric guitar and there's really a limited amount of lockers to stuff nerds into and the ratio of electric guitar players to lockers is wildly disproportionate
To be honest, I always thought you were at least black metal adjacent, so not a surprise but definitely a treat. I think you nailed it btw 🖤
Yeah I used to play in lots of metal bands so that's really the stuff that got me into music. I just haven't ever been in any extreme metal bands, so even though I've learned a bunch of songs over the years I've never really written anything in this style. Doing this video made me want to though, maybe I'll do an EP or something.
@@f_c_r_ very good; a marriage between bm and your classic dungeon synth stuff will be amazing. Planning on doing some vocals, too?
@@axax329 probably not doing vocals, I don't like the way my screening vocals turn out and that seems to be the right approach for this style
Good quality music, and nice tutorial Francis!
Thanks for watching!
It's just shoegaze with blastbeats! NGL a pretty solid video showcasing the fundamentals of stylistic composition.
Thanks man!
Yeah man that is something I could do some LifeLover / Advent Sorrow black metal style vocals to.
Especially that lead I can almost hear a Rhys King lower end vocal over it & when the drums pick up go into the ghostly howling vocal & then into the bat demon vocal.
Lyrics - basically the 1980’s BBC nuclear disaster movie “Threads”.
Bleak post apocalyptic wasteland where there’s no happy endings.
If you want to add vocals to it you can email me and I'll send you the track
@@f_c_r_ Yeah sure man I’ll send ya an email.
Tonight I’ll switch on Threads & All Quiet On The Western Front, write some lyrics & when it’s all done & recorded I’ll send it back to ya & you can do whatever you want with it.
Hell ya good job man. I love making black metal stuff, just messing around. Cool video man and cool song. U need vocals though bro even back ground vox.
I never like my screamed vocals, I felt like clean vocal would be weird in this song
@@f_c_r_ i get that. I didnt like mine at first also. Just drown then in reverb hahahahaha. Really like ur videos. The one u made a tape cover etc on was perfect. Good job keep up the good work.
This is great, I'm new to dungeon synth and black metal and this scratches my itch! Keep the videos coming please!
Have you tried doing any ambient dungeon synth? Im into Ghoëst and stuff like that at the moment but am having lots of trouble with sound design for my own songs in that genre.
(Edited for spelling)
Hey, thanks for watching! I actually have been thinking about doing a video on creating music more in the vein of something like Ghoëst, doomy droning heavy DS inspired stuff. I'll try to get around to that soon, life keeps getting in the way haha!
@@f_c_r_ awesome I wait with bated breath! Good luck with life stuff 😄
Btw more mid range did in fact make it sound less thin. Thanks! I also found that using a super aggresive eq on the induvidual dedicated high and low waves helped too. Synths are awsome, im using vital, i got a midi controller to map the features to, only reason i bought it was to use it with vital, more fun to use sliders and knobs that mouse and keybaord in soft synths.
Awesome, good to hear. And Vital is a great choice!
this was pretty cool ... the downside for me is that I only know keyboard playing ... and I actually started doing a track that is black metal using only keyboard ...gonna upload it on this channel in a few days or so .... your approach is pretty cool and I can relate a lot
Yeah there's some sounds that are very tough to recreate without a string instrument. Honestly though some of the newer sampler based guitar plugins I've tried sound pretty much indistinguishable from real guitar if you're just doing chords or if you're careful about note choices (mainly avoiding chord voicings that are uncommon or impossible on guitar)
Awesome, just slap in an acoustic interlude and it wouldn't seem out of place on an Agalloch album!
I wish I had the motivation to set up mics and do that for a video here! I love using amps and mics and stuff but it requires so much more production value to do in a video. Thanks for watching!
If I may ask you, how many BPM did you choose to set in reaper to record that?
The project is set to 140bpm. I'm deciding tempo in this type of track based on the vibe of the blast beats; Some songs benefit from slower "scissor beat" style blasts and some want faster ones for really extreme drum roll type sounds. Most tempos should be fine plus or minus 3-5bpm to maintain the same vibe, so you can more closely match what you're going for with other instruments that might sound too slow or fast.
I like this track, it sounds like a video game epic track,, reminds me of halo ost. Did you not double track the guitars in order to not ruin workflow, or are you not planning on double tracking them?
Oh I guess that wasn't clear, I was just setting up a track for the second guitar that ends up playing the melody part. So just copying the track, not the part.
@@f_c_r_ yeah i know you didnt double track the guitar, i was wondering what the thought process was in chosing to not double track them? Im not trying to criticize the decision to not double track the chord progression. Im just curious about why you didnt?
@@Flen-vf9yx Honestly the decision not to do (or even experiment with) production tricks like double tracking was actually primarily to keep the video length shorter, both for the finished product and the time commitment to film and edit haha (I had plans later so I was in a hurry to make the video). For this style I'd normally also spend quite a lot more time with the guitar tone. I like this type of stuff sounding like a raw demo so it doesn't bug me here and I actually might often end up leaving it this way, but I'd usually at least experiment with things like double tracking if time isn't an issue.
@@f_c_r_ Gotcha! Yeah sometimes its nice to leave things minimally edited/quantized i find that sometimes i prefer live recordings to the album versions of music, beacuse of this.
In terms of metal. i feel like the synth has the potential to be the heaviest instrument, beacuse of its insane sound design capabilites. But there are very few good examples of people using synth to make hard hitting heavy music. (which makes sense,why work so hard to make a heavy gnarly synth,when you can just use a guitar instead) Mick gordon, and the guy called sludge goat on youtube, are the best examples of heavy synth tones ive found. Now a heavy metal guitar set up, is pretty much a synth anyway, people run their guitar through big pedal boards which to me just seems to be equivalent to a synth. Now the string attack is a huge thing in metal guitar, but it shouldnt be to hard to make an attack similar to the string pick in a synth. I mean ive tried many times with vital just running some low pitches waves through a amp sim, with a high attack distorted white noise, to replace the guitars string attack. It sound pretty heavy. I wonder if there is some inherent characteristic that a guitar has that makes it more suitable for really heavy music, than a soft synth and a midi controller. I remember in an old video, you said someting about one reason alot of people preffered guitars over synths or piano was beacuse of the guitars wave shape and how it detunes a bit, maybe that has something to do with it. There is something about the guitar that just hits different, idk what it is, and idk why its so hard to replicate. Here is sludge goat, idk if he uses a heavy metal guitar for the guitar tone, in the description he sais he uses FM8 which leads me to belive that he built his tone from scratch in the synth ua-cam.com/video/xkFaRCrCUak/v-deo.htmlsi=3FTqW8l9MO8_tAnU Idk why i wrote this long ass message, i just find the topic interesting, I guess one could say that techincally the synth is the heaviest instrument, if the synth uses a guitar as a controller lol
It's actually relatively common for producers to double or support heavy guitar parts with synth. The earliest example I can think of of metal with synth support is the Painkiller album by Judas priest, and it's just gotten more aggressive from there. One thing I'd like to see less of is dishonest producers pretending like they didn't use synths, since a lot of guitarists can be a bit embarrassed about not being heavy enough or something. Kinda like tuning software on vocals haha. People get embarrassed that it was used for some reason. Anyway fm8 is amazing, I use it relatively often. Haven't tried it for guitar support yet though, I'll have to give that a shot.
@@f_c_r_ interesting! i did not know that. I checked out a video about that, after reading this. And the synth makes a big difference.. My main reason for going on this quest of making heavy music without an actual guitar, is just that i dont feel like learning to play the guitar at the moment. I know there is some good heavy guitar vst plugins, ill probably get one of those and play on keys instead. Also yeah, it be better if theyd just be open about using synths.
Roland Alpha Juno, "What the" presey
problem with using a distorted electric guitar is that then you have to admit you're playing an electric guitar and there's really a limited amount of lockers to stuff nerds into and the ratio of electric guitar players to lockers is wildly disproportionate
whats a locker?@@shanehall1387
Ins...instrah...instrumints??
Hahaha I do play them quite a bit, synths are just easier for video making
boring
Yep, the elevator music of heavy metal. I still think it was fun to make
Make dungeon synth again