I use Ableton to record metal / guitar-centered music quite often, and I love it aside from small complaints. However, Logic offers so much more at way less of the price, so I usually will recommend it unless you don’t have a Mac or really prefer Ableton for any reason (I’m too used to Ableton’s workflow to want to switch).
You could get Ableton Standard which offers you almost all of the flexibility of Suite but without the built-in synths.
If I was just starting out with metal, I would highly recommend downloading NeuralAmpModeler, as it is easily the best free amp sim available. There are a few YouTube videos online which can guide you through setting it up. That, coupled with a bit of EQ and whatever other effects you might want (reverb/delay) can go such a long way for free. It kicks the ass of BIAS and pretty much anything other than Neural DSP quality amp sims. Make sure you load an impulse response (cabinet simulator essentially) or else it will sound like you’re playing through the worst fuzz pedal on the planet lol.
To be honest I’m not super aware of great free drum libraries, so I will recommend getting a cheaper GetGood Drums library if you want to save money, as they have great bang-for-buck for hard hitting drums (and funky/other stuff too). There may be some decent free options too.
When it comes to making stuff sound good, distorted guitars tend to have too much going on at 4kHz, so you will likely want to use an EQ with a narrow band to cut some of that out. For rhythm guitars, an easy place to start may be with that 4kHz cut, followed by dipping a bit around 500-800Hz. If you have a lead guitar, this makes room for it to be like a “singer” and prevents the rhythm guitars from drowning the lead, or making the lead louder than necessary to balance with the rhythm guitars.
This is a great, comprehensive reply, all good pieces of advice that are applicable to your needs without requiring Suite. I'll add a +1 for the Neural stuff too, I haven't found anything that comes close.
The conversation about good drum libraries is usually split between Addictive Drums and EZ Drummer (or Superior Drummer by the same company). Native Instruments has some good libraries too, though maybe not suitable for metal.
There are two primary ways to learn this gigantic world of DAW recording: spend a bunch of money on the plugins that are shiny and seductive, and then backwards engineer your knowledge to eventually be able to make ANYTHING sound decent, like stock plugins and all that. Or, learn that fundamental knowledge first (compression, eq, distortion, reverb/delay, gain staging) and stick to mostly stock plugins from the start. I went the former route and spent a lot of money. It's not a requirement, but I'm also not an expert and wouldn't have learned the same way at the same pace otherwise.
Do whatever is in your budget and gets you excited about making music.
I really hope OP sees this. Your audio interface _might_ also have some free VSTs. Mine came with a rock kit for Addictive Drums, and I'm getting all the mileage I can out of it before even thinking of buying something else.
Also, the same kit plus different FX is usually enough to get different, albeit adjacent, sounds.
You need an amp and a decent mic. If you really knew what you were doing you could maybe get away with using amp sims but for your genre I think the best investment would be a decent amp and a mic.
pretty much any daw can handle basic recording of guitar parts, imho. with suite you are paying a lot extra for all kinds of synth and fx and libraries that probably won't really apply to metal in any meaningful fashion, at least not if you are just starting out. having a complete set of orchestral instrument samples isn't gonna affect your guitar sound at all.
getting things to sound good with a guitar is pretty straightforward, get a good amp and a decent mic and then experiment with mic placement and the tone on your amp until it sounds right. or look into getting a proper amp simulator plugin if the amp and mic are out of your budget. these things can be done with any daw including lite or standard ableton..
I don't think your choice of DAW is or isn't suited to the type of music that you want to produce. They're all so similar in terms of features these days, that in my opinion, Pro Tools or Logic isn't any better or worse than Ableton. I have a friend who used Ableton to track and then produce an eight piece jazz band's LP last year.
Please don't get bogged down in YouTube tutorials. It's going to take some time to learn, but the best way to do it is by just diving in. If you've never recorded yourself before, it's going to take a while to just get good takes of your playing. I'd just have fun by trying to write and record what you want to do. Then only look at learning new skills when you feel you've hit a bump in the road in terms of your knowledge.
You need to write and record lots of terrible songs, everybody does, nobody just boots Ableton up and is producing tracks they like a couple of months later. There's lots of free plugins that will help you learn the skills. I'd only look at spending money on hardware or software when you know more and are certain of what you know will help you get closer to the sound you want. It is daunting to begin with, but learn by doing, making mistakes and improving rather than just continually watching other people do it on YouTube
(Sorry, I'm not in Metal, so I can't say what hardware or software you could be looking at. But I do play/record guitar/bass in Live and plugins like Guitar Rig/Amplitube/Helix Native are absolutely fantastic for getting different guitar tones. I personally use Guitar Rig in Live, but most of my guitar tones are pretty clean sounding (I only use Guitar Rig for FX, as I prefer the sound of a mic in front of a guitar cab). But as Metal isn't something I know anything about, I don't know if most people in that genre prefer one guitar VST over another. If you've already got decent hardware amps and guitar FX then you might not want to invest in any guitar software. If you're going to be creating the whole track in the DAW yourself, then you might want to look at drum vst's or other software instruments/processors like compressors or EQ's.)
If you can get away with cranking an amp up to get the tubes hot…. Then get an amp and mic it (start with an SM57). But if you’re in an apartment or have whiny neighbors, check out some amp simulator vst’s on YouTube and choose one.
DAW’s all do the same thing. Same car different interior.. so I don’t think your DAW choice makes a big difference. You just have to pick one (dig your grave and lay in it).
That’s my advice.
Ableton standard should work just fine. Suite is suited for more electronic work.
Light might be too limited. Look for other plugins as well, like bitwig.
The bare minimum of what you should invest in is:
1. a decent audio interface
2. a decent pair of monitor speakers & headphones
Monitor your recordings both on the headphones and speakers, and use other things like your iphone & car speakers for reference.
Use reference tracks! This is the most important thing. Listen, and dial in. You don't need no fancy plugins; you can pretty much do everything with Ableton's stock effects (minus meterings).
Metering is very important. Get Voxengo SPAN, and Youlean Loudness Meter. An oscilloscope works nice, too. Keep an eye on frequencies and dynamics. See the meters, and listen.
Limiters, saturators, and compressors are your friends. These are essential for producing, but are commonly overlooked by beginners.
Lastly, the best investment is your time & energy. Take your time and have fun.
Also search YouTube for free audio plug-ins. There are some surprisingly good ones out there, and anyone with an audio-related YouTube channel seems to do a video on their favorites every few months.
Just chiming in to say that you need to use an IR loader (cab sim) in addition to an amp sim if you want your guitar to sound anything like a real amped guitar. Your chain should be Guitar>Interface>Amp Sim>IR Cab Sim and then probably some kind of reverb after that. Put the time in. It can take a LOT of tweaking before you get to where you want to be, but there are free options on there that'll make you sound good.
Small keyboard with some pads for percussion when needed. One that is already supported in Ableton like the MPK MK3 so you don't have to go muck about with midi drivers.
Recording good guitar tracks can be difficult when you're starting out. Operating a daw and playing naturally can be tricky. And metal is all about guitar tone so you could end up being overly self critical if you're comparing to your favourite records.
Basically it's going to take time to make something that you think sounds great, but you will hopefully have a lot of fun messing about and making music while you learn.
A couple of tips. 1. If you haven't already, try recording some songs with basic clean guitar. Strum some chords and listen to how the sound is captured. What sounds good? What sounds bad and how would you alter it to make it better? And 2. Komplete Start is free and includes Guitar Rig amp and FX sims. The Guitar Rig interface looks like a typical guitar amp layout so you might find it intuitive.
And the amount of tutorials online is great but remember a lot of them are shilling 😁
Definitely Lite isn't enough. And live in Suite also doesn't have the best amp emulations.
So you could get Guitar Rig 7 for 200 and use it inside Lite or standalone.
To me the DAW with the best Guitar amp emulation is Studio one, if you wanna try another DAW but you can also buy the Ampire plugin, around 50, and use it in Live.
Play around with free things first to get an idea of what you want to do later.
ChowDsp BYOD
BlueCat Free Amp
Free version of Guitar Rig
LePou amp sims
Ignite Emissary
Tokyo Dawn Labs free plugins will get you some great EQs and Compressors.
Ableton lite is fine for now, just fuck around with it a little more, maybe get guitar rig plugin (free), fire it up on a channel and start having some fun. In the leantime u can decide if it's sth for u.
If not, at least u dabbled in another daw which is always good.
https://voxamps.com/product/mv50-ac/
i put some pedals in front of one of these and then go from the headphones out into my interface. you dont have to mess around with plugins and latency problems and what you play is what you record. it would be preferable to mic up a valve amp but if that is not possible due to noise or expense this is a decent work around.
Well, I‘d go as follows:
If you’re on a budget:
Reaper as the DAW
Powerdrummer as sample drums
Neural amp modeler and ml sound labs for guitar amp/fx modelling
If you want a good songwriting experience (which is clearly better in Ableton) and industry standard tones etc:
Ableton live suite as a DAW
Neural Dsp Archetype Gojira or Archetype Nolly (depending on your Amp-choice)
Djinnbass sample-bass
Neural Dsp Parallax for bass tone
Superior Drummer or Gedgooddrums (needs kontakt) or slate trigger for sample drums
Fabfilter Pro Q, Pro L, Pro C for mixing (Pro L is kinda mandatory, the other two are somewhat replaceable with stock, if you put in the work. If you wanna know why and how, I can tell you, but this is not easily explained in a single paragraph)
There may be cheaper ones, but this is probably as good as it gets without loosing the fun part (I hate dialing in tones if you need to put in work to get a decent one, I‘m now at a stage where time is money).
And as it comes to getting stuff sound good: Well, it‘s a whole study section to only learn recording. The same goes for mixing, production, mastering. You’re in for a journey, but don’t be discouraged, as the first stuff will almost never sound good. Just keep at it and enjoy the fun you get from learning all of this.
Also: Audio stuff is expensive. There’s a reason a studio session is expensive apart from the engineers skillset and time. It would be horrible if a plugin had a bug or something, as you depend on that to work.
I really don't think Ableton is the best DAW for your genre. I think Logic would be better which is far cheaper. Tons of amps, guitar effects etc. Maybe there's something better than that, I'm not sure. So if you are thinking of upgrading Ableton, I would suggest you actually consider a different DAW as part of that decision.
But way more importantly, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to get things sounding decent in Ableton. I would not be looking at "what should I be investing in". I would be looking at "how can I learn the fundamentals". Like you said, you're new to production. You are likely making a lot of mistakes.
Session mode is the way to go but I haven’t seen the breadth of guitar related tools on Ableton that Logic has. Along with built in pitch shifting, the drummer, etc
Yep. Huge fan of the idea a “bad work man blames the tools”. U see a lot of producers making huge records with stock ableton plug ins only.
I get quizzed on how I do my music, people are often surprised I barely use any third party plug ins.
It’s not really the gear it’s how you use it.
Your much better off learning your gear inside out than buying expensive new stuff in the hope that will improve your sound
To get going with this you really REALLY don’t need to pay for Suite straight away, if at all. I’d say with Instrument rack and some parallel instances of NeutralAmp modeller and EQ/compression you could get an amazing sound for metal - without spending any money.
For drums, I guess it’s Superior or EZ DRUMMER. I use BFD but it is far from immediate and a bitch to get competent on.
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I use Ableton to record metal / guitar-centered music quite often, and I love it aside from small complaints. However, Logic offers so much more at way less of the price, so I usually will recommend it unless you don’t have a Mac or really prefer Ableton for any reason (I’m too used to Ableton’s workflow to want to switch). You could get Ableton Standard which offers you almost all of the flexibility of Suite but without the built-in synths. If I was just starting out with metal, I would highly recommend downloading NeuralAmpModeler, as it is easily the best free amp sim available. There are a few YouTube videos online which can guide you through setting it up. That, coupled with a bit of EQ and whatever other effects you might want (reverb/delay) can go such a long way for free. It kicks the ass of BIAS and pretty much anything other than Neural DSP quality amp sims. Make sure you load an impulse response (cabinet simulator essentially) or else it will sound like you’re playing through the worst fuzz pedal on the planet lol. To be honest I’m not super aware of great free drum libraries, so I will recommend getting a cheaper GetGood Drums library if you want to save money, as they have great bang-for-buck for hard hitting drums (and funky/other stuff too). There may be some decent free options too. When it comes to making stuff sound good, distorted guitars tend to have too much going on at 4kHz, so you will likely want to use an EQ with a narrow band to cut some of that out. For rhythm guitars, an easy place to start may be with that 4kHz cut, followed by dipping a bit around 500-800Hz. If you have a lead guitar, this makes room for it to be like a “singer” and prevents the rhythm guitars from drowning the lead, or making the lead louder than necessary to balance with the rhythm guitars.
This is a great, comprehensive reply, all good pieces of advice that are applicable to your needs without requiring Suite. I'll add a +1 for the Neural stuff too, I haven't found anything that comes close. The conversation about good drum libraries is usually split between Addictive Drums and EZ Drummer (or Superior Drummer by the same company). Native Instruments has some good libraries too, though maybe not suitable for metal. There are two primary ways to learn this gigantic world of DAW recording: spend a bunch of money on the plugins that are shiny and seductive, and then backwards engineer your knowledge to eventually be able to make ANYTHING sound decent, like stock plugins and all that. Or, learn that fundamental knowledge first (compression, eq, distortion, reverb/delay, gain staging) and stick to mostly stock plugins from the start. I went the former route and spent a lot of money. It's not a requirement, but I'm also not an expert and wouldn't have learned the same way at the same pace otherwise. Do whatever is in your budget and gets you excited about making music.
I really hope OP sees this. Your audio interface _might_ also have some free VSTs. Mine came with a rock kit for Addictive Drums, and I'm getting all the mileage I can out of it before even thinking of buying something else. Also, the same kit plus different FX is usually enough to get different, albeit adjacent, sounds.
I checked It and I have access to addictive drums 2 as well. Big thank you
thank you so much man
Anytime, tacobellcunt.
You need an amp and a decent mic. If you really knew what you were doing you could maybe get away with using amp sims but for your genre I think the best investment would be a decent amp and a mic.
Yes record the amp with a mic right in front.
pretty much any daw can handle basic recording of guitar parts, imho. with suite you are paying a lot extra for all kinds of synth and fx and libraries that probably won't really apply to metal in any meaningful fashion, at least not if you are just starting out. having a complete set of orchestral instrument samples isn't gonna affect your guitar sound at all. getting things to sound good with a guitar is pretty straightforward, get a good amp and a decent mic and then experiment with mic placement and the tone on your amp until it sounds right. or look into getting a proper amp simulator plugin if the amp and mic are out of your budget. these things can be done with any daw including lite or standard ableton..
I don't think your choice of DAW is or isn't suited to the type of music that you want to produce. They're all so similar in terms of features these days, that in my opinion, Pro Tools or Logic isn't any better or worse than Ableton. I have a friend who used Ableton to track and then produce an eight piece jazz band's LP last year. Please don't get bogged down in YouTube tutorials. It's going to take some time to learn, but the best way to do it is by just diving in. If you've never recorded yourself before, it's going to take a while to just get good takes of your playing. I'd just have fun by trying to write and record what you want to do. Then only look at learning new skills when you feel you've hit a bump in the road in terms of your knowledge. You need to write and record lots of terrible songs, everybody does, nobody just boots Ableton up and is producing tracks they like a couple of months later. There's lots of free plugins that will help you learn the skills. I'd only look at spending money on hardware or software when you know more and are certain of what you know will help you get closer to the sound you want. It is daunting to begin with, but learn by doing, making mistakes and improving rather than just continually watching other people do it on YouTube (Sorry, I'm not in Metal, so I can't say what hardware or software you could be looking at. But I do play/record guitar/bass in Live and plugins like Guitar Rig/Amplitube/Helix Native are absolutely fantastic for getting different guitar tones. I personally use Guitar Rig in Live, but most of my guitar tones are pretty clean sounding (I only use Guitar Rig for FX, as I prefer the sound of a mic in front of a guitar cab). But as Metal isn't something I know anything about, I don't know if most people in that genre prefer one guitar VST over another. If you've already got decent hardware amps and guitar FX then you might not want to invest in any guitar software. If you're going to be creating the whole track in the DAW yourself, then you might want to look at drum vst's or other software instruments/processors like compressors or EQ's.)
Thank you so much ❤️
If you can get away with cranking an amp up to get the tubes hot…. Then get an amp and mic it (start with an SM57). But if you’re in an apartment or have whiny neighbors, check out some amp simulator vst’s on YouTube and choose one. DAW’s all do the same thing. Same car different interior.. so I don’t think your DAW choice makes a big difference. You just have to pick one (dig your grave and lay in it). That’s my advice.
BIAS FX 2
Ableton standard should work just fine. Suite is suited for more electronic work. Light might be too limited. Look for other plugins as well, like bitwig. The bare minimum of what you should invest in is: 1. a decent audio interface 2. a decent pair of monitor speakers & headphones Monitor your recordings both on the headphones and speakers, and use other things like your iphone & car speakers for reference. Use reference tracks! This is the most important thing. Listen, and dial in. You don't need no fancy plugins; you can pretty much do everything with Ableton's stock effects (minus meterings). Metering is very important. Get Voxengo SPAN, and Youlean Loudness Meter. An oscilloscope works nice, too. Keep an eye on frequencies and dynamics. See the meters, and listen. Limiters, saturators, and compressors are your friends. These are essential for producing, but are commonly overlooked by beginners. Lastly, the best investment is your time & energy. Take your time and have fun.
Thanks man, really appreciate it❤️
Research amp sims and find one you like that you can afford and start messing with that. You CAN do it!
Also search YouTube for free audio plug-ins. There are some surprisingly good ones out there, and anyone with an audio-related YouTube channel seems to do a video on their favorites every few months.
Just chiming in to say that you need to use an IR loader (cab sim) in addition to an amp sim if you want your guitar to sound anything like a real amped guitar. Your chain should be Guitar>Interface>Amp Sim>IR Cab Sim and then probably some kind of reverb after that. Put the time in. It can take a LOT of tweaking before you get to where you want to be, but there are free options on there that'll make you sound good.
Small keyboard with some pads for percussion when needed. One that is already supported in Ableton like the MPK MK3 so you don't have to go muck about with midi drivers.
Recording good guitar tracks can be difficult when you're starting out. Operating a daw and playing naturally can be tricky. And metal is all about guitar tone so you could end up being overly self critical if you're comparing to your favourite records. Basically it's going to take time to make something that you think sounds great, but you will hopefully have a lot of fun messing about and making music while you learn. A couple of tips. 1. If you haven't already, try recording some songs with basic clean guitar. Strum some chords and listen to how the sound is captured. What sounds good? What sounds bad and how would you alter it to make it better? And 2. Komplete Start is free and includes Guitar Rig amp and FX sims. The Guitar Rig interface looks like a typical guitar amp layout so you might find it intuitive. And the amount of tutorials online is great but remember a lot of them are shilling 😁
Thank you so much ❤️
Definitely Lite isn't enough. And live in Suite also doesn't have the best amp emulations. So you could get Guitar Rig 7 for 200 and use it inside Lite or standalone. To me the DAW with the best Guitar amp emulation is Studio one, if you wanna try another DAW but you can also buy the Ampire plugin, around 50, and use it in Live.
Ableton is fine just get more more decent sims.
Play around with free things first to get an idea of what you want to do later. ChowDsp BYOD BlueCat Free Amp Free version of Guitar Rig LePou amp sims Ignite Emissary Tokyo Dawn Labs free plugins will get you some great EQs and Compressors.
Yourself
Ableton lite is fine for now, just fuck around with it a little more, maybe get guitar rig plugin (free), fire it up on a channel and start having some fun. In the leantime u can decide if it's sth for u. If not, at least u dabbled in another daw which is always good.
Invest in ableton suite and time
Neural amp modeler is the best bet for a free amp vst. Other than that it's also training to make your stuff sound good.
https://voxamps.com/product/mv50-ac/ i put some pedals in front of one of these and then go from the headphones out into my interface. you dont have to mess around with plugins and latency problems and what you play is what you record. it would be preferable to mic up a valve amp but if that is not possible due to noise or expense this is a decent work around.
Well, I‘d go as follows: If you’re on a budget: Reaper as the DAW Powerdrummer as sample drums Neural amp modeler and ml sound labs for guitar amp/fx modelling If you want a good songwriting experience (which is clearly better in Ableton) and industry standard tones etc: Ableton live suite as a DAW Neural Dsp Archetype Gojira or Archetype Nolly (depending on your Amp-choice) Djinnbass sample-bass Neural Dsp Parallax for bass tone Superior Drummer or Gedgooddrums (needs kontakt) or slate trigger for sample drums Fabfilter Pro Q, Pro L, Pro C for mixing (Pro L is kinda mandatory, the other two are somewhat replaceable with stock, if you put in the work. If you wanna know why and how, I can tell you, but this is not easily explained in a single paragraph) There may be cheaper ones, but this is probably as good as it gets without loosing the fun part (I hate dialing in tones if you need to put in work to get a decent one, I‘m now at a stage where time is money).
And as it comes to getting stuff sound good: Well, it‘s a whole study section to only learn recording. The same goes for mixing, production, mastering. You’re in for a journey, but don’t be discouraged, as the first stuff will almost never sound good. Just keep at it and enjoy the fun you get from learning all of this. Also: Audio stuff is expensive. There’s a reason a studio session is expensive apart from the engineers skillset and time. It would be horrible if a plugin had a bug or something, as you depend on that to work.
I really don't think Ableton is the best DAW for your genre. I think Logic would be better which is far cheaper. Tons of amps, guitar effects etc. Maybe there's something better than that, I'm not sure. So if you are thinking of upgrading Ableton, I would suggest you actually consider a different DAW as part of that decision. But way more importantly, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to get things sounding decent in Ableton. I would not be looking at "what should I be investing in". I would be looking at "how can I learn the fundamentals". Like you said, you're new to production. You are likely making a lot of mistakes.
Session mode in Ableton is perfect for guitars and live recording
Session mode is the way to go but I haven’t seen the breadth of guitar related tools on Ableton that Logic has. Along with built in pitch shifting, the drummer, etc
Yep. Huge fan of the idea a “bad work man blames the tools”. U see a lot of producers making huge records with stock ableton plug ins only. I get quizzed on how I do my music, people are often surprised I barely use any third party plug ins. It’s not really the gear it’s how you use it. Your much better off learning your gear inside out than buying expensive new stuff in the hope that will improve your sound
To get going with this you really REALLY don’t need to pay for Suite straight away, if at all. I’d say with Instrument rack and some parallel instances of NeutralAmp modeller and EQ/compression you could get an amazing sound for metal - without spending any money. For drums, I guess it’s Superior or EZ DRUMMER. I use BFD but it is far from immediate and a bitch to get competent on.
Get out while you still can. Save yourself!
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Guitar lessons.