How to achieve guitar sounding like the demos of shreddage 2?

[Studio Digitalik]

Hello, I bought Shreddage 2 and I'm an amateur studio artist. I'm wondering how to achievea guitar sound to sound like the demos of Shreddage 2 because they sound awesome and incredibely realistic. I own the same gears than in the tutorials videos (shreddage 2 , shreddage bass, Revalver 3.5, etc.). I've been mixing a lot these past years without much info about it and I've been able to achieve good mixes but there's a point where I can't do better. So my question is, to achieve these type of quality like Shreddage 2 demos or bands like In flames, is it a matter of mixing or a matter of mastering? I have a mastering application called T-racks deluxe edition and I'm not yet shure how to use it well. So if anyone can give me some tips to achieve better quality recording it would be great! Now, to know how I can sound like you can go to my soundcloud page. Any constructive comments or tips would be welcome and I'm shure that this would help other artists too. To see my soundcloud profil folow this link: https://soundcloud.com/search?q=Louis-A ... 20Lapointe

I thnik the best song to take for exemple is Nothing to Hate because I did this one with Shreddage 2 and Shreddage bass and revalver (Demon amps with metal makers preset). It does not sound as realistic as the demons of Shreddage 2 and would like help to know wich tools I need to use to find a good quality and realistic sound.

I use Cubase 6 as recording application

Thanks and Take care guys!!
Louis-

[zircon]

Hey Louis, there are a few things that go into realistic guitar parts. To some extent it is less about the plugins and more about how you sequence things. I'm planning on making a video (perhaps today) demonstrating some of the techniques that contribute to more realism.

Is there a particular demo you're curious about? For example, here is what Ian Dorsch wrote about his track "Subterrenea":

- Double track the rhythm guitars. I recorded the rhythm guitars twice with different instances of Shreddage, panned one hard right and one hard left, and used different amp sims on each one. I think it was Guitar Rig 5 with Van51 on one channel and Amplitube 3 with one of the Jet City amps on the other one. Then I duplicated both tracks, panned them to the opposite side, set them as 'double track' in Shreddage, which triggers alternate samples, and then picked a different set of complimentary amp sims. The end result is two different tracks hard L and two different tracks hard R--a pseudo-quadruple tracked wall of sound.

- Distorted bass. My track cheats a little, since I played live bass tracked through a SansAmp Bass Driver, but you can get a similar result with a lib like Shreddage Bass and some nice, gritty overdrive. A lot of the low end heft comes from the bass, not the guitars.

- Bend like crazy. Guitarists use vibrato and string bends to add vibe and tension in a lot of ways that may seem counter-intuitive to a keyboard player. I rode the pitch bend pretty much constantly, Jan Hammer style. Shreddage 2 includes some useful sampled vibrato, and I found that to fit nicely sometimes. Other times, when I found myself wishing that it sounded more like the way I play guitar, I just played it manually with the pitch wheel. Pretty much all the vibrato in the solo stuff in my demo is just pitch wheel.

Basically, you just have to produce your Shreddage tracks the way you'd produce a real rock/metal guitarist.

[Studio Digitalik]

wooohaaawwww! Thank you so much for these answer I really appreciate that kind of information. By the way his songs sounds so good.

The second question that comes into my mind is what do you mean by different instances of Shreddage? What I did is loading two seperate Shreddage into the same kontakt with different output. I loaded the file double track with 2 differents out. Is that what you've explained or is it more complex than that.

On the second hand, I did not try "quadrupling" the tracks with different amps. I'll do that for shure!!! thx for the tips.

The other problem I found is, my power chords stops in my song Nothing to Hate sounds very artificial and I did not find tools in Shreddage 2 to kind of humanize it. Is there an other way to do it into the host application?


Is there a particular demo you're curious about?

I will explore the process of Dorsch and make tests to try to achieve this kind of sound. For the videos, maybe give a exemple of Dorsch techniques on video would be great if he agree with that.

Again!! I really appreciate your help it is very usefull for me.

Louis-

[Studio Digitalik]

Also, did he used reverb on guitars and bass and what type of reverb?

[Studio Digitalik]

The problems I find with the Dorsch's technique is I have two differents guitar melody so does it means I have two quadruple the track two times? cause I'll need more outputs.

[Studio Digitalik]

An other thing that would be usefull is to know how to set up these to amps that Dorsch used and to know wich cab he used.

[zircon]

He did mention he was using Guitar Rig 5 with the Van51 amp, and Amplitube 3 with Jet City As to reverb, I'm not sure... I'll have to ask him. As for the double-tracking, I think his technique was done before we technically had double-tracking implemented. Now you can just use two instances DT Guitar 1 & 2.

[metalheart]

one thing is for shure...Shreddage 2 sounds divinely,fat and dark,even better than the old Shreddage.The more I use it,the more I like it.Slowly but surely I continue discovering little details and nuances that make it equal to a real guitar...indeed,it sounds better than my real guitars
thanks again to all the guys at IS! you rock!

To achieve a good sound,I think a good starting point (just for the overall sound) could be a matching eq software like Izotope Ozone or Voxengo Eq,which allow to equalize your mixes based on the spectrum or frequency response of another recording.
Have you ever tried this kind of softwares?

[Studio Digitalik]

No but can you explane how it works. You said EQ based on the spectrum or frequency response of another recording. What does it mean exactly? I have T-racks maybe it can do the same job?

thx

[metalheart]

I haven't T Racks so I don't know if it has eq matching function.However remember that with this tool you can achieve the overall sound of another mix,not the exact sound of a guitar and so on.

check this out for more informations,it may help you.

http://www.voxengo.com/product/curveeq/

[music2go]

I know this is old but I found it in a Google search. I would really LOVE to know how to get that guitar sound like in Ian's song "A minor case of whiplash". To try, I replicated the notes (not to steal the song, just to learn from) with drums and all. But can't seem to figure out how to get that sound.
I'm using Shreddage 2 IBZ
Does anyone know how he has his guitar set up to get that sound? Or know a way I can write to him to ask? It's absolutely the perfect sound for what I'm looking for.

Many thanks

[DarkFlameSquirrel]

I don't know what's going on in his signal chain but I can definitely tell you there's plenty of free tonecrafting plugins on the net that can help you get a similar sound. There's also a vast amount of YouTube videos on them. You basically mix IBZ the way you would mix DI recorded guitar. I have an upcoming shredtorial series that will briefly cover this and hopefully be a good starting point so you can feel comfortable exploring on your own.

[Ravel]

oh me too I can't never achieve a good sound as the demos of Shreddage. My songs sound always muddy and 'in face', not well spatialized. The demo songs of Shreddage sound like professional stuff, well widened-stereo enhanced instead. I think in my case it's a matter of bad compression/bad use of mastering plugins or something like that.

I'm waiting for Shreddage 3 and I hope it will be released with some complete midi files (in metal style!) with stock amps\cabs and mastering tools to take as starting point for users like me who dont know how to master a song.


I know on the web there are many tutorials but for people who can't speak english very well it's hard to understant them.

[DarkFlameSquirrel]

I will definitely have a video covering wide rhythm sounds as well. That's actually the subject I've been most anticipating making a video on.

Sorry that you have trouble viewing tutorials in English. I'll do my best to make things easy to understand. Do you think subtitles will help? I will consider it although it is not high priority since it takes a very long time.

For Shreddage 3 I actually plan on sharing some MIDI. I may even share some with S2 a bit before that. I just need some time to plan everything out. I'm not so sure what else it will come with though, I can't comment on that since I am not an ISW developer.

[music2go]

Yes more tutorials would very awesome and much appreciated. I think my biggest issue right now is not just inability to get that deep sound without it sounding so pitchy like a fake guitar, but also can't get Revalver to work to try the crunchy deep chugs like in a tutoral I saw. I keep trying Guitar rig with all of the combinations I can think of (which I know there's more than I'm realizing)... still can't quite get that sound I want. but over all it's pretty awesome.