How to give your kick some extra punch and color with saturation
Welcome to the “From Start To Finish [Metalcore]” series where I’m digging into a Metalcore mix I recently completed and explaining some of the lessons I learned and tools I used along the way.
What’s this all about?
2020 is a great time to be creating your own music. There are so many digital tools on the market, and more being offered at accessible price points every day. I myself have frequently worked with low cost, digital recording equipment during my music career. While these tools have served me well, I find when it comes to mix time, I am occasionally looking for a little more “color” to fill-out and shape the sound of my tracks.
In the big studio days, you could do this by hitting an analog preamp or tape machine during the recording phase. When those tools aren’t available (as is often the case for me in mobile recording sessions) I like to turn to saturation plugins to help me shape my tracks in a few areas where these tools they really shine.
In this video, I talk about how I used the Massey TapeHead saturation plugin to add some oomph to the live kick-in track in this mix. As a fun bonus, I also show how I would go about achieving similar results using a different plugin if I didn’t have this one.
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