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Anyone have any tips or suggestions for mixing a two piece (guitar and drums), playing in drop a flat? Noisy doom sludge with elements of lo-if black metal and occasional ambient sections.

Thanks,
Josh

How was it recorded?

It was recorded in an untreated basement. Two overheads, and individual mics on the toms/kick. Tracked simultaneously with the guitar which was running two mics close miked on the speakers. Using reaper as my daw. Because of the nature of the room and general quality of the kit, I’ve gone in and used the individual drum tracks to trigger sampled drums, blending the overheads in for cymbals and live energy. It sounds pretty good at this point. I just know that there are typically general ideas as far as cuts and boosts to perform to give all the instruments room to breathe and with the guitar falling into the range of bass, I can’t decide which way to go with those. As far as that goes, I’m not sure if it would be better to drop in a bass track to add that element or if I want to keep it more true to the original form.

If you think it sounds pretty good at this point, the guitars must've had enough bass, which would've been my main concern here. I've done plenty of bass guitar-less demos and gotten away with simply cranking the bass on the amp and not running a high pass on the guitars, rather using Reaper's EXCELLENT (imo) Reaxcomp multiband compressor with the "super tight bass" (or something like that) preset and messing around with it until I find a good medium. I then often have to boost the high frequencies on the kick drum in these situations to break it out of the mud.

Depending on the mood you're looking for, some Indian songs for example have the drums buried pretty deep in there like the opening track on Unquiet Sky. I like this, but I also like a sharp attack on the kicks, even if the rest decays I don't care. I just want to hear it, doesn't always matter to me how it actually sounds on it's own when I'm dealing with doomish stuff.

I'm guessing you're going for raw.

Thanks for the input!! I actually went in last night and tracked in a few more guitar tracks, one to pull up the melody and another to beef up the chorus. I’m liking the way everything sounds so far. With everything the way I have it, I’m gonna forgo the bass and just fatten the guitars.
Thanks for the xcomp idea, I’ll mess around with that and see how it plays out.

And yes. Open and raw is what I’m looking for. That’s how we come off live and I want to capture that same energy.