Studio Journal
Behind-the-scenes perspectives on the art and craft of modern metal production.
Dialing In Amp Settings for Metal is about developing a consistent workflow that produces tight low end, articulate mids and controlled high-frequency bite at any volume, with any guitar, on stage or in the studio. This guide gives you practical starting points for gain structure, EQ, presence/depth, boost pedals, gates, and tuning-specific tweaks, alongside quick [...]
Prepping Your Guitar for Recording is the difference between fighting noise and pitch in post and capturing takes that drop into a mix cleanly. This step by step guide gives you a reliable checklist you can follow before every session so your tone records consistently, edits quickly, and translates across monitoring. You will learn practical [...]
The Magic of Double-Tracking Guitars is not a myth or a trick reserved for big studios. It is a repeatable process that widens riffs, clarifies rhythm parts, and lets vocals and drums breathe without losing weight. In this guide you will learn why doubling works psychoacoustically, how to prepare tight takes, the panning and phase [...]
Killer Tone with Less Noise is a realistic goal when you treat noise as a system problem and tone as the result of many small, consistent choices. In heavy music, high gain exaggerates every flaw, so hum, buzz, and hiss creep in from pickups, cables, power, gain staging, and computers. This guide gives you a [...]
Guitar Amp Sims vs Real Amps is a decision about tone, workflow, and repeatability that directly impacts how fast you track, how tight your doubles sit, and how reliably your rig translates on stage. This guide cuts through opinion to explain where each approach excels in modern metal, how to set levels for clean DIs, [...]
6-String, 7-String, or 8-String? is a practical decision that shapes your tone, your writing vocabulary, and how quickly your guitars track in the studio. More strings extend range and change tension, scale length, and pickup response, but they also affect arrangement choices, editing effort, and mix headroom. In this guide you will learn how to [...]
Active vs Passive Pickups for Metal is one of the most argued topics in heavy music, but it does not need to be. Pickups are just front-end gain and filtering devices that change the way your strings excite amps and sims. Once you see how output level, magnet pull, inductance, and onboard preamps shape attack [...]
Tuning Down: Setting Up Your Guitar for Drop Tunings is more than twisting machine heads. To make heavy riffs track tight and mix clean, you need the right strings, a measured neck relief, precise nut work, accurate intonation, and sensible pickup height for your gain structure. This guide walks you step by step from string [...]
Choosing the Right String Gauge for Metal Guitars is one of those deceptively simple decisions that shape everything else you do as a player and as a recording artist. Gauge affects how hard you can pick before things flub out, how stable your tuning stays under palm mutes, how easy big bends feel, and how [...]
WORLDAWAY
MODERN MISERY
Production, Writing, Mixing, Mastering