Making studio recordings sound exciting and powerful is a real skill. The loudness of your guitar amplifiers and the power of your drummer are not enough to make the recordings of your songs express the actual loudness and power of the real performance.
Working with Logic Studio, I have found out a number of methods (that are partly inspired by the tricks used in professional mixes I found impressive) to make recordings sound more powerful.
The journey starts when you prepare your recordings. There are many general things that can make a lot of difference in the end result. For instance I highly recommend you to warm up your voice before starting vocal recordings. This sounds trivial, but it is the key to a powerful and uninhibited vocal performance. The next point I personally pay close attention to is the position of microphones. You should position microphones close enough to the sound source you want to record in order to avoid significant background noise or sound reflected by the walls of the room. But I highly recommend you to position microphones (if possible) at a distance of at least 30 centimeters (one foot) to the instrument you are recording. I know this is quite the opposite of what is usually done in studios (especially with drums), but I have good reason to make this recommendation. The problem with having microphones to close to the source of sound is a very unauthentic sound on the recording. Think about it — the bass drum does not sound the same if you lean your head against it. In my opinion it is terribly difficult to restore the original sound (as you experience it from a usual distance) afterwards — especially without any reference.
Once you have done your recordings, there are different options you should consider for the editing. One of the basic (yet most powerful) tools included in practically every audio editing software is the equalizer — if you are using Logic, I recommend to stay with the easy to use, yet comprehensive “Channel EQ” plug-in. To make your mix appear clear to your listeners, one fundamental approach is to assign a ‘role’ to each instrument (or sound) in your arrangement. Decide for each element whether it should stand out, or play a supportive role. Accordingly, you might raise or lower the levels of certain frequencies, which is when the actual sound design begins. The single elements should not sound complete individually, but all of them together should. To make all elements clearly audible, it does not help to add treble frequencies to all of them, nor to raise them all to the same volume level. It is important to leave ‘gaps’ in the mix (mostly by avoiding the extensive use of certain frequencies ‘needed’ for other instruments) to embed further elements — there should be no competition among the instruments in your mix. Instead, they should seem to complete each other. Yet you should try not to disfigure the typical sound of the instruments — it takes some experience to really get used to that balancing act, but after some time you will easily find out what frequencies are typical of an instrument, and which can be neglected with one particular instrument, so they are ‘available’ for other instruments that ‘need’ them to maintain their typical sound.
Having explained these basics, I would like to focus on adding the powerful nuance to the sound of your recordings. The drums play a relatively important role in rock music generally. Making them sound powerful is crucial to get the right sound. Basically, drums profit from treble and bass frequencies, and usually should not contain too much of mid-range frequencies if they are supposed to sound powerful. The only exception are toms — they can sound more mighty with some well-chosen mid-range frequencies. This applies especially to floor toms — to make them sound more full, adding low mid-range or bass frequencies can have a surprisingly positive effect.
The snare drum can also contain additional mid-range frequencies, but usually tends to sound rather peculiar if too much of these are added. Depending on the raw material, I personally add three dB around 400 Hz to bring out the characteristic sound of the snare drum, I also tend to reduce or even cut all bass and low mid-range frequencies (up to 200 Hz) of snare drums to make them sound more tight.
A similar basic setting can also be used for the hi-hat — with the little difference that usually no mid-range frequencies should be added. In most cases, it even makes sense to lower mid-range frequencies of the hi-hat significantly. All other cymbals (in my opinion) may contain a some more mid-range frequencies, but they don’t have to. This depends on your personal preference — find out what sounds better in the mix for each song individually — well, it might seem to hardly make any difference. Generally speaking, I would recommend to lower frequencies rather than cut them. Especially bass frequencies are contained naturally in almost every signal.
For the bass drum, there is one very particular thing to pay attention to: the bass frequencies. There should be a significant amount of bass frequencies added to provide that “delicious” impulse that can rather be felt in the stomach than actually heard. Due to the individuality of the original material, I cannot give you a universal guideline here. Generally, I add about twelve dB of bass frequencies around 60 Hz, and about six to seven dB of treble frequencies (down to 10,000 Hz). Optionally, I sometimes also add about the same amount at 2150 Hz — again: the effect depends on the frequency balance of your raw material.
Otherwise I add some treble frequencies to all elements of the drum kit individually (cymbals should be the main producers of treble frequencies) to create a subtle brilliance and make single strokes of a roll relatively audible in the mix (without having to put the drums too much in the foreground) — this can be your acoustic reference when deciding how much treble you want to add. Treble frequencies should never be too penetrant, but balanced. Many playback devices add more bass and treble frequencies — therefore I recommend you to add just slightly more than enough treble. Depending on the roles of the other instruments in the mix, you might decide about the ‘shape’ of your drums more individually. This is just a kind of template I personally use for my own recordings. Generally, I always recommend to try raising and lowering different frequencies (bass, low mid-range, mid-range, high mid-range, and treble) if you are not yet content with the sound of one particular instrument — also, this helps you to get a feeling for what effect the different frequencies have on your instruments.
The use of compressors is basically the main contributor to the effect of loudness — it imitates the reaction of the human ear to loud music. That is why compressors are especially useful for rock music. Apart from that, compressors make it easier to balance the tracks, because they keep the level of the signal within a certain range. Also, compressors help your song to ‘rock’, because they can make the attacks sound hard if you set a rather long (more than 30 milliseconds) attack time for the compressor to start compressing the signal. Again, this is especially useful for drums — particularly for snare drums and toms. The tendency with toms is that their sustain gets lost in the mix. To avoid this, I recommend the use of a good compressor that has a rather low threshold and high ratio.
The higher the ratio, and the lower the threshold, the more extreme the compression will be, and the less natural your signal will sound — it is your decision. Usually I compress drums relatively hard to give them back their ‘loud’ sound, but use compression for other instruments mainly to keep the level of the signal constant. Amplified guitars usually already have a very constant level (due to the compressing effect of the overdrive provided by the amp), and therefore don’t require a lot of compression — in fact it can cause unpleasant artifacts if the distortion of the amplifier is combined with too hard compression afterwards. In contrast, vocals can profit from relatively hard compression, but this clearly depends on how much you want to compromise the natural dynamics, and how ‘hard’ you want the vocals to sound.
Astonishingly, another factor that can add the effect of power to your music is reverb. If you are using different reverbs for different instruments in the same song, you have to be careful — it might sound as if the instruments don’t belong together if their reverb characteristics or levels are too different. Yet I do recommend to choose reverbs individually for some instruments — to make bass drums sound more powerful, I often use the “1.5s Perc Room” from the Space Designer plug-in (in the “Rooms” directory of “Medium Spaces”) at a level of about -13 dB. The trick with this particular reverb is the level of bass frequencies it contains — these bass frequencies add sustain to the bass impulse of the bass drum. This does not only make the bass drum appear more mighty, it also helps to make that impulse more present — this can be very helpful due to the fact that especially bass frequencies tend to get lost in a complete mix, especially when every element of the mix contains a significant amount of them. That is the reason why you should choose different frequency focuses for different elements, or groups of elements — like melody instruments, harmonic supporters (‘carpets’), and rhythm instruments. If you add seemingly ‘delicious’ bass frequencies to all elements, you ruin the show for those that really deserve to contribute bass frequencies — like the bass guitar and bass drum(s).
Also snare drums profit very much from nice reverbs being applied to them. What sets the snare drum apart from the majority of other elements in a mix is the fact that rather long reverbs can be used with it (without creating a somewhat unnatural sound). Yet, for powerful rock songs I mostly use the same percussion room from the Space Designer as for the bass drum. This reverb actually operates as part of the sound of the snare drum, extending its sustain significantly. Again, the ideal settings depend on your raw material.
In most cases, reverb should not stand out obviously to the listener, except of course if it is used to create some sort of special effect. Usually, reverb is used subtly to create that effect of smoothness, space, and sometimes sustain, but it should never make your mix sound blurred and unintelligible. One trick to set elements apart from each other is to vary the level of reverb – for instance you might want to add more reverb to background vocals to make them sound more distant than the lead vocals that appear to come from right in front of the listener.
Doubling tracks (especially electric guitars and backing vocals) and choosing different pan settings for them (like +35 and -35) is another very effective way to add an effect of power and space to your mix. Doubling can also be interesting to make lead vocals sound bolder, but in this case I personally would not choose extreme pan settings.
Whenever possible, use plug-ins in stereo instead of mono mode to have them contribute ‘space’ to your mix.