MICK GORDON'S SOUND DESIGN METHOD EXPLAINED (Make it your own + Giveaway)

When the DOOM ost was released everybody freaked out. The sound was unique and Mick Gordon, who composed it, generously explained everything about the sound processing he used to get to that result.
There are already loads of videos explaining how to get the Doom sound or how to sound like Mick Gordon. So today, I would like to focus on the process itself more than anything, to understand how it works and how you can make it your own to make your own sound with it.
0:00 Intro
0:36 The plan
2:42 Sound source
3:21 Chain n°1: Hardware pedals
5:03 Chain n°2: Software effects
6:54 Drum break
7:07 Chain n°3: Feedback loop
8:21 Array setup
10:10 Finished project
10:55 Giveaway
11:39 End screen
~FOCUSRITE SCARLETT 4i4 SETUP~
When you open Focusrite Control, there's something really not handy : everything you send to your output 3 & 4 are also sent to the headphones and vice versa.
So open Focusrite control
Set output 1 & 2 in custom mix and mute the input 1 (you'll hear it through your DAW), also mute output 3
Set output 3 & 4 to custom mix and mute EVERYTHING except output 3
If you have headphones, you can't use them. Use speakers connect to output 1 & 2.
This is a setup to send the sound to the pedals via output 3 and retreive the sound via input 1.
~LINK MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO~
Doom OST: • Mick Gordon - 11. BFG ...
Mick Gordon’s conference at GDC 2017: • DOOM: Behind the Music
Doom compressor (check the description): • I made a DOOM Compress...
Also check Argent compressor, developed by Nimble with AudioFreq and Geoffrey Day (GeoffPlaysGuitar): nimble.itch.io/argent
SoundID reference: tinyurl.com/Sound-ID-Reference
Rude Mouse pedal: tinyurl.com/Rude-Mouse
Blue Skreamer pedal: tinyurl.com/Blue-Skreamer
Wave Crush pedal: tinyurl.com/Wave-Crush
See other Sonicake products: tinyurl.com/Sonicake
~FREE COMPLETE COURSES~
Sound Design: • Sound Design COMPLETE ...
Music Theory: • Music Theory COMPLETE ...
~SUPPORT & RESOURCES~
PATREON: / woochia
Website : www.woochia.com/
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Twitter: @WLewooch
Facebook: woochiamusic
Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/woochia
Vero: @woochia
Bandcamp: woochia.bandcamp.com/

[@MickGordon]

Wow, dude, this is unreal - incredible work! Here are a couple of little extra things to add/clarify if anyone is interested: -Flat Eric! -Just to clarify, I fed pulses of sine waves and white noise through the chain. The noise was super important because the amplitude of the sine wave would force the noise to modulate its amplitude at the same rate as the sine wave's note. That makes that "furry", "fuzzy" sound on top of the bass note. -The final compressor was an 1176. The "DOOM Compressor" you're referring to came about on DOOM Eternal. Even though many people assumed it was essential, I rarely used the DOOM Compressor because it was useless for anything other than sound design. The DOOM Compressor was made in Reaktor, using basic math that multiplied any drop in amplitude from 0db by the same amount (so, -1db would get +1db, -10db would get +10db, etc.). But be careful if you want to try this because you can make a DC Offset and potentially damage speakers. -I like your clever setup with the sidechain gates/compressor. I've started doing similar layouts in Bitwig with newer experiments, and it works much better than slamming the whole thing through an 1176 and hoping for magic. -I wouldn't typically add drums or too many extra sounds on top of the sinewave corruption because it was already so dense. But hey, who cares? Do whatever feels best! Rock and Roll!

[@Woochia]

Wow, thanks so much for your comment and taking the time to give all these useful details! I'll put this as a pinned comment as I'm sure this will interest everyone passing by here! :) - oh yeah, noise + sine (sine doing AM on noise)! You say at the start of the conference that's what you run in the array. But for the rest I though it was then only a sine. Good to know! - for the gate/compressor setup, it felt a bit like a cheat because I felt like I what mixing what you explained about David Bowie's sound engineer and your own process. I kind of mixed everything hoping for an elegant solution to solve what I tried to do, haha. - Flat Eric!

[@hansdampf6777]

Mick, you are such a humble, down-to-earth and incredibly talented guy! Thank you!!

[@kiambraleflore7537]

This was the last video I expected to see you comment on, but your clarifications here are invaluable. :)

[@redshiftredeemer4571]

Ok it's badass that Mick took the time to comment here. Our hero.

[@Woochia]

@@SYNDRONE to modulate the amplitude of the noise at the frequency of the note you play, you can use plugins like phase plant, that allow you to modulate things with your oscillators. Or you can use a modular setup (in VCV rack for example, which is free). Flat Éric is the yellow plushy in the background. It's a character from Mr.Oizo, a french electronic music producer (check out Flat beat by Mr oizo)

[@joseamaro9363]

Love the ghost exiting the room at 3:09

[@Gome.o]

Hey don't be alarmed, but I think there's a ghost living in your apartment? They seem pretty chill though...

[@vid2422]

THERE IS A GHOOST IN THE BACKGROUUUUND! Lol thanks for the great explanation

[@elbee7880]

damn that tutorial comes in such a clutch, I've been wanting to make doom-like music and I've been watching your sound design series for that purpose (and for other stuff too ofc) Keep up the great work !!

[@Woochia]

Haha thanks! Happy it came right in time! I also shared the ableton project on my patreon if that can be of interest :)

[@elbee7880]

@@Woochia it really did! and I sadly do not have ableton :/

[@MrKKmusic]

Another channel I’ve been searching for - very inspiring!

[@hansdampf6777]

Thanks a lot for the work you put in! Very inspiring and I appreciate it :)

[@HelicopterRidesForCommunists]

Really fucking awesome of you to show us the way. I picked up some new knowledge of Ableton from this. Thank you!

[@paulnationmusic]

Awesome video!!! thanks a lot for posting! I find that these are the bases of dubstep production as well.

[@kendoiron8015]

1000th upvote! Hope i can make this on the boas Katana bass 210. Great job

[@gunable]

underrated!!

[@DielectricFailure]

Mick is the man!!!!

[@ElijahMoore-Restfulnights]

sounds crazy/kickass

[@vj7248]

This is a treasure trove thank you so much! Bless Mick Gordon too! Honestly, this process isn't just good for creating a 'DOOM' sound. But rather is a great crash course in what Processor Rack + Bus Routing can do. Like, I didnt even know the purpose of setting up a separate processor rack outside of 'not needing to apply the same reverb to every individual track'. Also was confused on automation, like what can you automate? This concept with the virtual pedals for all the effects makes it a clear way of 'playing' automation. So that the same sound can evolve in such a striking way that doesnt require doing 20 separate automation tracks. So cool 😎

[@Woochia]

Thanks a lot! Yeah effect racks are pretty powerful for real. You can use the macro knobs to control several things at once, which makes automation easier. You can use that for live performance as well. Or you can make several parallel chains in the rack to make your own parallel processing

[@DaddaPsy]

The melody you're playing reminds so much of an old track by Propellerheads called "Take California", is that a coincidence or do you know which track i'm referring to?

[@Woochia]

Yes! I discovered them after they dropped a song in the OST for the Matrix, so I listened to their album in the early 2000's quite a lot. I had completely forgotten that track though :o

[@DaddaPsy]

@@Woochia haha same here, then my brother bought their album so was blasting that for a long time. Nostalgia trip deluxe

[@Nagazaki_hc]

Grave cool la vidéo, c'est bien expliqué (même si team FL haha), bien envie de recréer ce process! :D

[@Woochia]

Merci ! Et FL peut être grave pratique pour ça, avec l'espèce de boîte d'effets qu'ils ont où tu peux câbler ce que tu veux a ce que tu veux. Yaurait peut être moyen de faire tout ça sur une seule piste !

[@Nagazaki_hc]

@@Woochia Yes le Patcher est vraiment une feature intéressante d'FL pour stack des synthés et effets en même temps! :)

[@Sutefusama]

@@Nagazaki_hc Je serais incroyablement curieux et reconnaissant de prendre le temps d'un de vous si vous le permettez pour entrer en contact direct et voir ça ensemble (peut-être as-tu déjà fait des tests ?) J'ai un projet dans le style de Mick Gordon et j'utilise aussi FL mais j'ai aucune idée de comment tout ça fonctionne. Je vous remercierais jamais assez si c'était possible !

[@somethingfromnothing367]

I was wondering if you'd would be able to share any tips on how to do this in Garageband? Specially the feedback loop. Because I can't find anything else anywhere on how to do it. If you could please kind sir. If not I understand. It didn't look easy.

[@Woochia]

Unfortunately I have very little experience with garage band as I am not on a Mac. So I can't really guide you through the steps of how to do it 😬

[@somethingfromnothing367]

That's alright. Thank you though!@@Woochia

[@timswanson8980]

Interesting! Is there any way to do this in Reaper?

[@Woochia]

I have no Idea as I haven't really used reaper, but I assume there is a way :o

[@BabaFens]

really confused by 1:00, why would some chains stop based on the volume of the sine wave?

[@jerdnastark1399]

In the GDC conference, Mick mentions one of David Bowie's songs and how it was recorded with three microphones, one in front of David, the second at around 20ft away from it and the third another 20ft away from the second. And these two would only activate if Bowie sang loud enough. I think it's something similar, but I don't really know much about that stuff. You'd probably get a better understanding from the GDC video itself. But I hope I've managed to clear up some confusion.

[@BabaFens]

@@jerdnastark1399 true. although mick doesn’t mention the use of gates at the start of any of his chains. and instead talks about how it’s the heavy “doom compression” on the master that causes everything to duck out of the way of each other dynamically

[@Woochia]

- For the first question, that's setup with the threshold of side chain compressors, so the track where the compressor is only ducks when another track (here the sine wave) is loud enough. - for the gate, Mick didn't use it for the OST of DOOM (2016), I just thought it was cleaner this way. Then Mick commented this video and said that's what he did for Doom Eternal

[@deeforty]

Really want to get into doom style music production, i write and record metal and don't have a lot of experience with synths ect, I've recently got serum, and have been making a few dance type projects, it's a lot of fun. This is really in depth, very fun to watch and learn.

[@RAM_industrial_death_metal]

Any chance you could recreate the method in cubase?

[@Woochia]

Unfortunately I don't have Cubase. Though I'm sure you can recreate it following the same steps with compressors and gates. The only tricky thing would be to find how to do a feedback loop.

[@josephs2791]

Amazing sound track and game! Thanks for breaking it down so an idiot like myself can understand lol

[@Woochia]

Hahaha if you understood my gibberish, you're no idiot :p

[@josephs2791]

@@Woochia awe I appreciate man! Haha

[@ulybanez2297]

I give u a tip easier: Kontact libraries : Azier X / Sick 6 The Sickening / Serum / Grindhouse / Audio Imperia Dystopian dreams / and record ur guitar and drums and u r ready ! cheers

[@LuisRivera-en5or]

Ive gotta say its pretty shitty to be so misleading man. 'Signal chain #1 are all hardware pedals. These would be pedals by Sonicake.' Not only is that a lie, nowhere on this page, description, is there ANY mention of what was actually used. Which is a good chunk of the purpose of the video considering that was part of his sound design method. Which got me curious as to what could possibly be the reason for just not simply repeating what Mr. G-Money spoke about in the video YOU also referenced. Just doesnt make sense. And its not like were talking about one or two individual items here, but entire fx chains. Seems like an odd thing to do considering their importance in context of YOUR entire video lol. Now call me crazy i could be mistaken my friend but wait a second. You wouldnt happen to be using an Affiliate link at all would you? Nah probably not. Besides EVEN if you were, i doubt it would involve an effect pedal company that has absolutely zero relevance in "Mick Gordons sound design method" as youve labeled in your video title as well as having spent several minutes demonstrating said brands products as if he used them. It would be weird if his pedals were very costly, sought after and hard to find meanwhile coincidentally Sonicake produce very very wallet friendly "budget effect pedals". But you would probably mention that somewhere rather than trying to sneakily line your pockets and that my friend is why i trust you! Good friends are few and far between ya know?! Thank god for you Wooch. My sweet Wooch. Woochia. the tall ones right? Lotta hair

[@Woochia]

You are indeed mistaken and missed the whole point of the video. This is about the method Mick Gordon used. That means the techniques he used, and how you can reproduce this technique with your own effects. It is said specifically in this video that I don't intend to recreate the exact sound he had but only the method. If you were looking for the exact equipment he used, this is indeed not the right video. Though, if you're looking for this, he says what he used in his conference. To me it was not the most interesting part, but if it is to you, here's what I've taken in my notes: **Base sound** - Sub sine + White noise AM at the rate of the sub - Disto (UAD Thermionic Culture Vulture) **Chain 1** - Retro mechanical labs 432k dostortion box - Metasonix KV-100 - geiger counter - dwarfcraft fuzz - Splitter **Chain 2** - Geiger counter - Metasonix TX-3 - phaser - DOD phaser (70’s) - Compressor **Chain 3** - Tape Echo - Saturation - Akai (saturation) - Spring reverb (play with dry/wet) - Compressor **Chain 4** - Feedback - Compressor **Master** - EQ smily face - Compressor -20dB, 30ms attack, tempo synced release

[@DaedalianAbilon]

Mick Gordon is very talented in all things music but aint a genius, seems like you haven't got much talent yourself causing you to think any artist with more talent than you to be geniuses. Work on yourself dude & one day you can be as good.

[@Woochia]

To each his own, and the term genius can sometimes sound like a stretch. But composing a soundtrack that inspired so many people that it kickstarted a new subgenre of metal? That a feat to acknowledge. Looking a the awards the ost got, the way all the sound design in the game was tuned to the tonality of the soundtrack, and the thought process to get to that sound... The audio processing is quite ingenious. Even though he didn't invent the process per se, you have to give him some credit. But I intend you keep on working on my music indeed, thank you. Happy music making to you. I hope you still find time to make music between two rage crisis.