Producing Prog Metal

Create a powerful, full, and heavy progressive metal mix that’ll turn heads!

Meet Your Instructor - Glenn Fricker

Glenn Fricker is best known as the Sound Engineer and Youtube host of Spectre Sound Studios where he has been entertaining millions. He started his channel as a way to help bands avoid making costly mistakes in the studio… mistakes he has seen bands make over, and over, and over, all the while throwing countless thousands of dollars out the window. His videos are focused on getting the fundamentals and advanced techniques, all while having a ton of laughs along the way.

Over the years, He has worked with bands such as Wood of Ypres, and even got to mix a track for Queensryche. These days, he mostly focuses on helping the home recording musician get better results with their setup. Making videos based on the idea of what he would have liked to have seen when he was learning. He hopes you find what he has to offer helpful!

Learn WHY Glenn compresses the snare the way he does, not just how

See which drum mics were used and how they were placed on the kit

Find out how to mix real drums that were recorded in a small and bright room

Learn just how little you need to do to make a great guitar tone when you get it right at the source

How automation gives you the control and power to shape the listening experience

Get access to the exclusive Spectre VIP group on Facebook where you can talk to instructors and other students alike.

About The Course

Got a killer progressive metal instrumental but need it to sound dynamic, big, fat, and powerful?

This is the course you were looking for.

Glenn takes you through the entire process of producing and recording a progressive metal song fit full of guitar solos, drum fills, rhythm guitars, and a perfect bass tone that’ll glue your entire mix together.

Along the way you’ll learn the tricks of the trade for mixing real, natural drums, as well as recording real guitar cabinets, and how to make the most of every element of the mix to ensure it is a full progressive experience!

Why Top-Down Mastering?

In essence, top-down mastering is a technique where you master the song while you are mixing.

In this course, Glenn shows you his exact master bus chain that he uses not only for this mix, but for his real sessions and YouTube videos, and how to dial it in to make sure levels are in check.

The main benefits of this technique are:

Not needing to find an out-of-house mastering engineer to put the final touches on your song
You gain a solid idea of what’s happening in your mix so you don’t have any surprises and can make better mix decisions

Additionally, learn how to preserve dynamics in your music, the levels you should shoot for with your master chain, and why you don’t want to take part in the Loudness Wars.

Mic Placements & Natural Metal Drum Production

Ever been curious how microphones are placed on the drum set and why they are placed the way they are?

Watch Glenn’s entire workflow for mixing natural drums to their fullest potential, including:

How to make the drums sound bigger with compression
The best ways to bring out and define the attack of a kick drum
How to deal with drum bleed using classic gates and expander gates
Tricks to fatten up toms and make them sound like cannons
Ways to make the drums sound huge, even though they were recorded in a small room

The Magic of Snare Compression

What is the actual goal of using a compressor on a snare? Is it to make it loud? Make it snappy? Make it fat? More attack?

Yes, to all of the above… but how do you actually do that?

There is a dedicated video in this course just for experimenting with and demonstrating how a compressor works with a real snare, specifically you’ll learn:

How the ratios of compression work
What the attack and release knobs do and how they affect the snare transient and body
How to dial in the compressor to get the most out of the snare

At the end of this video alone, you’ll know exactly how to best enhance your snare drum to make it sound big, beefy, and like a cannon.

Guitars Production Worthy of Progressive Music

So, what did Glenn use on this song? Not to worry—you’ll get a full walkthrough of all the gear and settings that were used to record this song, you’ll see:

Which amp and cabinet were used
Which microphones and their placement on the cabinet
How a tight and clean guitar sound was achieved with packing blankets
The exact signal chain used to reamp the guitars into the DAW

From there, learn how to make the most of your guitar sound using simple processing techniques such as EQ and multiband compression.

Powerful Bass that Pushes Your Song

One of the biggest secrets in mixing metal is, well, a big bass sound. When you have a heavy metal bass sound, it makes the overall mix sound bigger, as well as make the guitars and drums lock in together, creating that cohesive “huge” metal sound!

As with the rest of the course, you’ll see the exact signal chain that was used to record the bass, and how to effectively process it to ensure it glues the entire mix together.

Build Your Portfolio

Many training courses provide stems and other materials to help you practice but often don’t allow you to use them to begin building your portfolio.

This is not the case here!

All the multitracks are provided for you to follow in this lesson and, most importantly, you can post your mix on your resume, portfolio, or wherever you need to start showing others your skills.

Testimonials

“I bought this course to be able to create my sound solely for live show purposes (I am using Line6 Helix LT directly to FOH and FRFR cabinet for monitoring). This course is applicable for this topic as well as for creating a guitar tone in DAW. The approach is simple, logical and most importantly – effective. After taking the course and applying the techniques, I had a killer guitar tone in 45 minutes. I highly recommend this course for recording engineers and live guitarists with modeling amplifiers as well!”

Przemysław "Exile" BachajGuitar Tone Mastery

“I'm in love with MDPM… I'm working in a free job for a possible client. He send me midi drums recorded with an electronic one. Thanks to all what I've learned with the course I'm improving the original drums and fixing several problems caused by the imperfect capture of the hits (ghost hits, missing hits, wrong articulations…). I strongly belive that the "client" will be very impressed by the improvements and that will help me to gain my first paid project . Thanks Scott!!”

Niko PachecoMetal Drum Programming Mastery

I’m so happy to be a part of the olydunk academy basketball team. I've already improved so much in just a short amount of time. ”

Jacob Burgess4th grade athlete

Do I need to use Reaper to get the most out of this course?

No, you do not. As all the plugins are either freely available online or stock within Reaper, you can follow along using the stock plugins of the DAW you use while installing the free plugins shown in the course and follow along.

Can I use free plugins?

You absolutely can. This course teaches the concepts and principles of mixing, which means you don’t need to have a specific plugin to achieve similar results.

How is the course delivered?

Once you have bought the course, you can stream it all right from our website on our custom platform that lets you keep track of your progress. But if you rather download the videos for viewing later, you can do that too.

Do I need to reamp the guitars?

You do not—DI files are provided, and you can run them through your own amp simulator of choice… and if you want, you could reamp them if you have the means!

What if I get stuck or need help?

When you buy the course, you are invited to join a private Facebook and Discord group where you can join hundreds of other course owners and all our instructors to ask any questions you might have and find help. You can even show any progress you are making and ask for feedback!

Level up For

$50.00