Inspired by an article I read in the New Scientist about Leafcutter Ants

Some of the timing is a bit ropey, mainly because I recorded the majority of it at about 4am and didn't want to wake my flatmate


Lossless .wma (86mb)

.mp3 (18mb)

No-one?

Wow man. I cant believe no one commented on this. I dig it!

It's got an old school feel to it, but not to the point where its a cheap copy of what has been. Not bad on the production side either!

Loved that little ambient part between the soft and heavy transition.

Am I hearing some of that Meshuggah ambiance influence? I'd say so.

Overall, good stuff! Nice mellow ending too. Keep it up man!

Cool stuff! Reminds me a lot of some older instrumental Metallica stuff actually. One thing though, the snare really HURTS in the loud parts! had to turn it way down lest it stab my ears too much. I think it's taking the modern metal snare snappiness overboard a bit. It's that kind of aural sting that makes you unconsciously clench your teeth and give yourself a headache. (also a little bit weird that the kick and snare seem to be hard panned or delayed to full stereo... but it works decently) Good tune though!

~Josiah

Yeah, that snappy DFH snare gets on my nerves too - it isn't that versatile, I think it fits the most for agressive things (are there any non-snappy snares to choose in DFH at all?). Song is neat, I'd like to hear bit more energetic drums though.

Cheers all! Yeah, I do have big problems getting a good snare sound from DfH. Everything else is useable, but the snare just won't play ball - I usually roll back the velocity to halfway, but it still sounds bad

also a little bit weird that the kick and snare seem to be hard panned or delayed to full stereo... but it works decently

Yeah, I copied the drum track onto two different tracks, panned each one hard and put them about 2 or 3 milliseconds apart, I just thought it sounded cooler somehow

Am I hearing some of that Meshuggah ambiance influence? I'd say so.

Busted!


Cheers again

Keeping the drums in mono might get rid of some of the unpleasantness of the snare-- or at least make it less of an omnipresent knife jab. The reason the kick and snare are usually kept mono is so panned guitars (ala just about all studio metal recordings) have their own separate space to breathe-- everything fits together much better, and there's no empty space, either in the middle or on both sides.

That said, I certainly don't mean to naysay experimentation; definitely play around with everything. Just an example, check out the snare on SYL's "City"-- not panned, but not dead center either, it kind of comes at you from everywhere at once but still stays rooted in the middle of things. You can get some awesome effects like that by playing around with all these silly rules

~Josiah

EDIT: Huh, actually, you know what... City's snare just confuses me every time. I think it actually moves around sometimes (in Detox for example). Maybe it's doubled tracked... Didn't think the drums had that double drumming sound but maybe they tracked another snare and delayed/panned it in addition to the first? Fuck, this is so cool, I love it when I can't figure out how something was mixed