Buster Odeholm: Mixing 'In Solitude'

Buster Odeholm runs the mix from a meticulous template with preconfigured routing and heavy tone-matching EQ, shaping individual instruments almost entirely out of context. The session is built around a strict low-end hierarchy. The kick sits at the apex with phase-aligned transients across kick, bass, and guitar; the snare is replaced with direct and ambient samples; the bass is split into sub, grit, and stereo busses; and every other instrument is sidechained to the kick to clear room for what Odeholm calls a "fist in your ear". The Odeholm session is the most overtly hyperreal mix in the set, with saturation, overdrive, and distortion used to bond the kit into a single rhythmic weight rather than to colour individual elements. Topics include kick: real mics plus one sample, snare: samples and bus processing and drum parallel buses. Watch the paired heaviness interview:    • Buster Odeholm Interview - Heaviness in Me...   0:00 Template and bus routing 1:34 Kick: real mics plus one sample 5:55 Snare: samples and bus processing 10:14 Drum parallel buses 13:44 Toms: samples and bleed removal 18:38 Room mics and drum reverb 24:19 Cymbals: EQ and Gullfoss 26:41 Bass from the DI: three buses 30:43 Ducking the lows under the kick 36:30 Bass bus tone matching 43:14 Guitars: three takes, not quads 47:36 Guitar EQ, tone match, mid boost 1:00:12 Phase alignment across the stems 1:03:27 Vocals: processing and effects 1:18:32 Master bus chain and loudness About the project This video is part of the Heaviness in Metal Music Production (HiMMP) research project at the University of Huddersfield. Eight metal producers, Jens Bogren, Mike Exeter, Adam "Nolly" Getgood, Josh Middleton, Fredrik Nordström, Buster Odeholm, Dave Otero, and Andrew Scheps, each mixed the same five-minute song and were interviewed about what heaviness means to them. The interviews and mix walkthroughs are on this channel; the full research is in Heaviness in Metal Music Production, Volumes I and II (Routledge). Principal investigators: Dr Jan Herbst and Dr Mark Mynett, University of Huddersfield. Funded by the AHRC (grant AH/T010991/1). Research findings, supplementary material, and the In Solitude multitrack: https://himmp.net Subscribe for more producer interviews and mix walkthroughs. #HiMMP #MetalProduction #HeavyMetal