Gear Gods presents Studio Pass: Kurt Ballou
Kurt Ballou
Learn Periphery's studio secrets
Periphery is one of the most influential bands in the progressive rock/metal scene. They’re known not just for being great players with great songs, but also self-producing their most recent double album “Juggernaut.” In this class, you’ll get an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at exactly how they did it, lead by Periphery bassist/producer Adam “Nolly” Getgood and drummer Matt Halpern. First, they’ll track drums live in the studio, showcasing some of the techniques Nolly uses to capture Matt’s unique, nuanced performances. They’ll cover their approach to tuning, mic selection, mic positioning, and some of their own tricks for handling mic bleed and other common challenges. Next, they’ll walk through a complete mix using an actual session from “Juggernaut” and the drum tracks they just recorded. They’ll cover their overall approach to mixing, then go into detail on approaches for compression, EQ, and effects for every instrument.
This class will also include all of the samples that Matt and Nolly record live on the air available to download along with a bonus video of Nolly showing how to mic a guitar cabinet using the technique that he used to get the guitar tones on the Juggernaut album.
Wonderfull!!, thanks Adam!, very helpfull for me!
Amazing. Fully in-depth.
I'm only mixing my own drums at the moment and this class was totally game changing for me. I've learned so much to improve and get a bigger drum sound. I can't thank you enough. I recommend everyone this class.
Just the drum tuning parts worth the whole price! and it's only the beginning. Great course, great instructor. Thank you for that
A great class for beginner recording and mixing engineers like myself to get started with. I got a lot out of it, particularly with the drum miking and mixing sections.
With just this class I can make my music have a professional quality. This class is so intuitive that it should be a prerequisite for any producer.
insanely in depth class, great information.
Great class! The fat cut off only important info given. Very informative stuff.
Amazing class guys. I recomend this call to anyone who want to start recording and mixing drums.
Amazing class! Please bring Nolly in again for a course. I learned so much from this class and will be using this as a reference for many years to come.
Absolutely fantastic. While the mixing part was more of an overview the tom tuning and microphone selection and placement was really fantastic. Loved the course. Re-watching it now!
Amazing course for prep as a drummer for studio and basic mixing techniques that are great too ! Love it !
This course is a wealth of helpful information and has already improved my mixes tremendously. It was worth every penny.
I haven't even finished the course and already my mixes have improved dramatically. Night and day difference. I haven't watched the portions with Matt as I'm using drum samples (GGD specifically), but I have no doubt it's great. Matt is always incredibly helpful and is a brilliant drummer. I thoroughly enjoy listening to Nolly, he's very articulate and his approach to audio engineering is flat out brilliant. I'm so happy I purchased this course. Before my mixes were good (balance and things of that nature) but lacked life and energy. I just wasn't getting the professional level sound I was searching for. Now, I am proud of my mixes and actually think they're getting to the point where they sound professional and don't sound like they were produced by a dude in his bedroom with about half of year of recording and audio engineering experience. The metal genre is difficult to mix as there's a lot going on and the "current metal sound" is very crisp and clear while still being very heavy and punchy. It isn't 80s dad metal where guitars are hissy and flubby. lol I am a huge Periphery fan and it's a privilege to watch Nolly share his knowledge. I really enjoy his approach as its very simple but very effective. He doesn't have insane mixing strategies, he just does what works and it's applicable to any DAW and is helpful for almost any genre of music. Brilliant course!
This class is amazing and in-depth while still making sense to the minimally trained engineers and musicians working to record their own music. I also think it is really good for even a professional engineer!
Truley one of the best, especially for drums. Thankyou Nolly, Matt and CL!
Great course, especially for drums! Nolly is amazing a explaining each stage of the process and there are lots of useful tips and tricks throughout the lessons. My only complaint is there is a lot more talking than doing. Would like to have seen a song tracked and mixed from scratch, but I understand the difficulty to achieve that. Overall, a great course for anyone who is really getting into tracking metal or any kind of rock.
For tracking drums this is an absolutely amazing course. Nolly is great at explaining his thought process behind his decisions.
I really enjoyed this course! Great detail through all different parts of the process. I particularly like his approach to tuning drums in regards to it being easy to reproduce. Mixing section was great, all sections were packed with a lot of insight and actual examples. This is a must have for anyone looking to tune and record drums. Thanks Matt & Nolly, Well Done!!
Love that guys.
Awesome awesome course. I was crying with laughter when the Pro Tools was mucking up and Nolly says "We'll roll with it for now" HAHAH
Great job! Detailed & insightful approach to mixing. Also, inspiring to see someone else mixing with the "Top down" approach (had no idea it was called this) & seems to sound great. You deserve a fabfilter endorsement if you don't already have one too :D
I've been a record producer for almost 10 years now and this is probably one the most complete mixing classe I've ever attended. If you really want to dig in mixing rock band this is the thing. Nolly doesn't a conventional approach but if you can actually understand how he achieve the sound of periphery your skill will definitely improve. "To all apprentice, this is not for beginners. Even I was lost at some point. Worth to be watch more than once to catch everything there is."
Nolly knows so much stuff about recording, and his methods are so relatable. This is a must watch for serious drummer! And producers like me get a fresh insight from Nolly's perspective.
Very useful and complete for drum miking and mixing, you can use real drums, SD2 or GGD perfectly using all this course and using the same plugins that Nolly use and the result will be a very similar drum sound compared with Periphery. Also with the Bass treament and mixing you can obtain something similar with your own DAW. But, if you want to learn how to record and process the guitars to sound like Periphery, it's completely impossible with this course. The same with Vocals and Synths. Those tracks are ready (processed outside the DAW by others), so Nolly just mix them a little bit in the entire mix. In conclusion, the part for Guitars, Vocals and Synths are useless. Finally, if you are a drummer and want to produce your sound, buy this course, it worth it. If you are a guitarist or singer, don't buy it, don't worth it. Cheers
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