Full Piece - 1990s
Atmospheric Black Metal
(Completed Piece)
Vocal Technique (homepage)
Embedded Files
90s atmospheric black metal (1).mp3Improvements: Overall this is my favourite of the songs in production and the one I finished - if there were any improvements it would be to add more examples of vocals, recording at home being difficult - a priority would be to practice and record at studios at my college - especially since I have no experience in vocals - the raw recording sounding rougher than post-production. Since this recording - I have improved exceptionally at screaming and general vocals which I will record more similar tracks to and show examples on my site. Production was also worse at this time, with a bad use of distortion on the vocals.
0:00-0:22: Intro: added heavy reverb to violins, two clean guitar harmonies with a clean lead ontop, adding ambience with a dark echo to apply atmospheric tension to the dark nature of the genre, pitching my vocals down with a pitch shifter adding reverb and delay to create that iconic deathly haunting spacious sound.
0:22-0:42: Breakdown: added a repeated messy distorted riff harmonising a double melody of violin and cello to buildup suspense and further build the dreadful melancholy of the sound. For the drums I added significant ghost notes with the snare as the Tom and Toms as Tom Low, percussion set to Claps to emphasise the percussive heavy thumping rhythm of the breakdown before switching into the shattering sound of the chorus. The entire sound compressed and soaked with grainy reverb. For the gritty raw feel of the song. For the vocal screams I tried to sink my voice down to create that whisper-fried chill to the tone, adding distortion, reverb and delay for that melancholic effect. Adding atmospheric sounds in crying/heavy breathing sounds to really evoke that misery and dread which comes to the song before the more rageful tone of the chorus....(continue below)
0:43-1.36: Chorus: fully extended the distorted riff in messy power chords being downpicked harshly - for amp effects to achieve this dreadful 90s tone I chose to use a modern lead but maxing the saturation of gain and distortion, soaking the tone in reverb and eq'ing to achieve the sinister tone. I added two distorted harmonies being tremolo picked - a common theme in black metal as it adds that slow vocal-like sound. For the vocals in the chorus I instead of doing vocals myself, sung out the melody replicating it on guitar and adding vibrato and bends to replicate the pitch I had used - using the main guitar lead as the vocals for the songs chorus. For drums I had chose free snares with an open hi-hat and not choosing to add percussion to add that shattering depressiveness to the song, backed by the heavy intensity of the drums.
Outro: 1.36-2.23: Interlude and Chorus: to emphasise the emotional resolvement at the end of the song I continued the main riff to the 41st bar, adding a separate clean outro - slightly distorted, breaking up the purity of the clean tone - again replicating my vocals singing the melody and performing it on guitar, slowly descending. The drums being stripped away now isolating the focus on a more alienated sound of the guitar and whispered vocals - repeating once again with the same ambience, before ending with the same scream used before allowing it to be drawn out - hearing the raw harshness of it, switching to an isolated piano section, soaked in reverb to create that open spacious sound, arpeggiated falling back onto the final chord echoing out the song with the notes of c3 a2 and a1 signalling the melancholic end of the song.
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