Melodic Death Metal tone?

Sammetal91

Sammetal91

Power User
Hey guys I'm looking for a melodic death metal tone like The Black Dahlia Murder, Dark Tranquillity, At the Gates. I don't wanna just be GIMME GIMME GIMME, I wanna learn how you got the process going so I won't be a noob forever. I could just get the syx. file and look at it, but I haven't actually gotten around to hooking up the standard to my computer with MIDI.

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
 
I don't know how much help these will be. I didn't create these to be on par with Black Daliha, but these are some tones that I created which I use with all types of metal (Kalmah, Bodom, Suffocation, Metallica e.t.c)

I know you said you wanted to learn by looking at patches and how they are created. I am by no means an expert though, there are a lot more knowledgeable people on here as far as using filters and controllers and many other aspects of the Axe FX that I have really yet to explore. I usually just go with what sounds good to me though, and if I can achieve that without using all the other fancy stuff then I'm cool with it. However it can only help to have that knowledge.

I just kind of "went with it" when I created these patches. I figured I would post them since nobody else responded so at least you have something to work with. Hope you get some use out of them.

I know you dont have your axe hooked up to the computer yet but I dont really know how to take a screenshot of the axe edit to show you the blocks that I used.
 

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  • Black Metal.syx
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  • Candle Doom.syx
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  • Suffokate.syx
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  • Thrash 2.syx
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  • Thrash.syx
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It's all good man I really appreciate this effort. I'll just stop being a lazy mustard and get on with getting axe edit and MIDI setup. :lol
I saw kalmah. Yes! Hey I guess I was asking for a lot when I mention the black Dahlia murder :p its all good. I'll let you know how it goes. If I alter them ill put the patches up. Just gotta wait to go home.... no sleep tonight! :geek

As for filters and controllers, hey I just got my standard a week ago. I'm still broke so I can't really buy me some spiffy pedals and I have yet to experiment with the filters much.
 
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Hi sam,

i know the starting problem to get some good patches together ... i always tried to learn from examining patches from the other ... but as they posted their guitars ... hmmm ... i know now that it is hard to get a sound out of a patch made for a les paul, schecter, blackmachine or whatever if u use an ibanez1527 ... though i ve got better results now since i have a bkp aftermath i have always difficulties to get good sounds from patches here ...

anyway ... it helped a lot for me to get to know the basics of using EQ
... and to realy concentrate on A/B listening to the sound you wanna mimic and the IR you have or wanna use ... i for some reason made the most patches based on the Cali since i found out that i got much better results from the Ownhammer IR ... but i had to listen A LOT to them to found out wich one are the best ...

if i found the IR i like i reset the ampsim i wanna use and try to get the best ballance between master and gain (without getting too flubby boomy or whatever) and of course without loosing much distortion (hehe) ...

as i always block the frequencies at 80 hZ i put an paraEQ at the second last position of my chain (the last one is a reverb to give it some 3D feel) ...

and as i always do a slight boost in front of the amp i put a distortion to the first position of the chain (if it is not a lead sound) ...

if i got a good ballanced distortion without boomines and the chunks don t break my monitors and the chords have a fat sustain then i start to mess around with the tone shaping ... with the tone controls of the amp and a GEQ put between amp and cab sim ... the GEQ makes realy the difference for me for some reason

in the end i reduce some mids with the blockin paraEQ at the end of the chain and switch the reverb on ...

this is how it works best for me ...

if you want i can show you one of my patches i made for my latest song

Greatz M
 
That would be very interesting M if you would post one of your patches so we can inspect your method a litle bit closer.

To the OP, like M mentions the gear differences makes it very difficult to achive a good sound from someone elses patches and exploring different IR's like Ownhammer is a good idea because they have a hughe impact on the sound.

If you want to try a dual setup I can recommend trying one amp with a fat low end sound and one with a crisp mid / high end. If you do this right you should be able to get a very massive heavy sound.

You should not add to much gain thinking that it will improve the aggresiveness of your sound (especially if you want to record it). Try different amounts of gain and master volume and see what sounds good to you.

Like M says you should add a distortion block before your amp to tighten up the sound and push the amp. I can recommend using the T808 OD, set the Drive to 0.00 and experiment with the EQ to alter your sound.

EQ's are great to shape your sound but you should not need to boost or cut to many freqs because it can kill your sound if you don't know what you are doing.

Good luck on your patch making :)
 
Oh hey I remember you! You were asking for opinions on how your mix sounded not too long ago. Yeah it seems like a lot of people have les pauls or blackmachines. As for me, I have an esp ltd ec-1000 and a Schecter c 7 hellraiser. Yeah those peqs really make a difference. I guess I'm still just having trouble dialing in with all the options available. So you use ownhammers? I know everyone raves about them but is the difference between ownhammers and stock cabs really that noticeable?

bodomarmy666 I tried those patches. I've never really been one for slayer, but it made me wanna play raining blood really bad. That is a good thrash patch. I have two questions for you though: how do you monitor your axe? Monitors? Cab? DAW? And second what kind of guitar or guitars do you use?
 
@ slave yeah youre right about the different guitar translating into another thing. I actually tweaked bodomarmy666's black metal preset but I still feel like it needs more work. So ill probably invest in ownhammers. Or how about redwirez?
 
Sammetal91 said:
Oh hey I remember you! You were asking for opinions on how your mix sounded not too long ago. Yeah it seems like a lot of people have les pauls or blackmachines. As for me, I have an esp ltd ec-1000 and a Schecter c 7 hellraiser. Yeah those peqs really make a difference. I guess I'm still just having trouble dialing in with all the options available. So you use ownhammers? I know everyone raves about them but is the difference between ownhammers and stock cabs really that noticeable?

bodomarmy666 I tried those patches. I've never really been one for slayer, but it made me wanna play raining blood really bad. That is a good thrash patch. I have two questions for you though: how do you monitor your axe? Monitors? Cab? DAW? And second what kind of guitar or guitars do you use?
Click to expand...


yea sorry I been meaning to put my gear setup in my sig. My gear is as follows :)

Guitars: Switch between an Esp F-200 and a BC Rich Beast
Monitors: Two Mackie MR8's
And an Axe FX Ultra
 
@ bodomarmy666 aha! I monitor my guitars with akg 240 studio headphones going through pro tools le. And what I find interesting is that when I play the axe through monitors, it sounds a lot less muddy or as some have described it a "blanket over the cab". But since I go direct into DAW through an mbox 2, it sounds muddy. Which made me wonder why all the stuff I got was really dark sounding.
 
Sammetal91 said:
I tweaked your black metal patch so I'll be putting that up and see how that translates to your speakers :D
Click to expand...

Looking forward to it!

I wish I could give you some insight on how and why it sounds "muddy" through headphones but I can't seem to find mine. If I do I will be sure to test them out and see what I come up with.
 
Here's the modded black metal patch. I wonder if it's because i'm using stock cabs that it sounds muddy through Pro tools. Well let me know how it translates to your gear bodomarmy666 or anyone else for that matter.

@monsterhulk yeah I'd like to see how you got your patch going. Also which ownhammer ir's you were using would help. Maybe I'll invest into those.
 

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  • Black M3tal2.syx
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hey ... yeah i ll try to upload one of my patches in this thread if i am at home (at work now) ...

if i remember correctly i used greenback impulses from ownhammer for those but it can be a mixture of some also ... i forgot to write it down ... sigh ... it is realy difficult to overview all these ir if you bought them cause if you start your journey thru all those folders and different possibilities you ll soon get lost ...

i ve bought redwirez and ownhammers and i can say they are all worth this small amount of money and i ve never regret any cent ... but you won t never ever exploit all options they offer ... hehe

i recommend to buy at least all the 8 4x12 cabs from ownhammer ... you cannot do anything wrong with em ;) ... redwirez i bought the whole bigbox collection ... but i am always short in time so i after a while i gave up examinin them :( ... but i think the mesa, soldano, bogner and marshall of course of the modern classic series are worth a try ... i dunno ... if you have realy no money left you should try some threads over in the ultimate metal andy sneap forum ... they have (catharsis i think) a lot 4 free ir ... but i stick to ownhammers for the last month ;)

Greatz M
 

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  • DiezelRy.syx
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Thanks for the info greatz! I'll buy the ownhammers and some redwirez today since they're like three bucks anyways :p
 
ok ... it s not even easy to get helping hands on tweakin death metal patches

ah and before i forget ... please let me know if you can use the patch and if you can develope a better one out of it let me know even more :D

Greatz M
 
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