When it comes to getting crushingly heavy guitar tones on record, Periphery’s Misha Mansoor is an expert. In fact, Periphery has made a name for themselves in the DIY and home-recording world, tracking a good portion of their albums at their home studios.
Mansoor is also a terrific friend of Sweetwater and a veteran of our annual GearFest celebrations. At GearFest 2018 this past June, he was gracious enough to host a workshop where he pulled back the curtains a bit on his recording process. From the gear he uses to what he’s learned through years of trial and error to the techniques he’s adopted, here are a selection of tips and tricks as shared by the multitalented guitarist.
Getting started
When I started recording, I started with basically nothing. I was recording into a gaming computer that happened to have an audio input where you could actually plug a guitar cable in. And that was good enough to get me started. But I think it’s very easy, especially with all the gear out there now days, to think, “I’m not getting the results I want because I don’t have the right gear.”
Mixing into a master bus
Another thing that I do, which is a cool trick that Nolly [Getgood, former Periphery bassist/producer] taught me, is mixing into a master bus. The philosophy behind that is, most source tones tend to be kind of dull, especially from what you’d expect from a commercial mix. So if you know you’re going to be boosting high end, or you know that you’re going to be doing general moves, you might as well do it at the end.
Panning while multi-tracking
Generally, if I’m only doing two tracks, I’m probably hard-panning it. And if I was going to do something a bit more raw, then maybe not. Or I’ll maybe do uneven panning. And if you want it to sound more raw, you can go with completely different guitar tones. You’ll be surprised how much your ears make up the difference. I think a good example of this is, if you listen to Slipknot recordings, if you just listen to one side, you’ll see how drastically different the guitar tones are and what you can get away with.
About writing for the band vs. for the song
We treat writing and the live shows as two completely different things. Let’s say we have one guitar part that’s double tracked, and that’s what sounds good. I wouldn’t want to be like, “Well, we have three guitarists, so let’s write two more parts.” That doesn’t serve the song, in my opinion.
When we’re in the studio, the product is sacred. There’re people who get all worked up about studio tricks or say that it’s cheating if you do this or that. But none of us in the band cares about that at all. The live show is its own thing, and the studio thing is this ideal idea of a composition.
The value of experience
Some people hope that there’s one plug-in that’s like, “Dude, that’s THE plug-in!” You get that, and it’s all good. But there’s so much that goes into mixing. There’s no secret setting that will work. The truth is, it’s how you interpret the information that you’re given. And the other thing is just spending time with it. At the end of the day, nothing beats the 10,000 hours. I wish I could tell you that there was a lightbulb moment that turned that into 5,000 hours. But that’s just not true.
Getting palm-muted tracks to sit in the mix
One thing is the multiband trick for palm mutes. What happens with palm mutes is, you introduce a lot of low mids. So what you can do is to just compress those frequencies. That’s precious space for your kick and your bass. So if your guitar’s occupying that, it’s just going to be mud. This is kind of a cool way of doing it without having to EQ that out.
Keeping high-gain guitars clear and punchy
My go-to is a 5150-style amp with a boost in front of it with a cab with a Vintage 30, and you’re miking that up with a [SM]57. I’ve always loved the way I sound through Mesa cabinets. And a large part of that is the Vintage 30 speaker captured with a ’57. It’s a $99 microphone on a speaker that a lot of people consider to be broken. However, that combination has been used for so many metal albums, it’s what our ears tend to associate [with the genre].
Boosting a high-gain amp
One thing that I like to do is to put an overdrive in front of the circuit. What it’s doing is basically removing the low frequencies from hitting the amp. When you tune low, have thicker strings, or do palm mutes like that, the amp’s not really designed to handle that as well. So this is a way to give it frequencies that it can represent in a tight manner.
Dealing with writer’s block
Changing tunings, you’ll be shocked at how much that can inspire you. Another thing I’ll do is cover songs. It has you recording, but not in a context where you’re writing. And sometimes that can be really helpful. And other times, you just have to wait it out. I hate to say it. But just do other things.
There you have it. Tips for getting the most from your recorded guitars, straight from one of the most influential players in guitar, metal, and digital recording. It was an honor to have Misha here at Sweetwater, and we hope to have him back soon for even more insight into his career. But until then, enjoy the full video of his GearFest 2018 How to Record Guitar workshop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eNWAgsZmhE
And if you have any other questions or comments, please feel free to give your Sweetwater Sales Engineer a call at (800) 222-4700.