Jens Bogren: Mixing 'In Solitude'

Jens Bogren's mix is built on an empirical, performance-first philosophy. He works primarily in the box with Pro Tools, but every move serves the song's expression rather than imposing his own sonic signature. The bass is split between clean and overdriven amplifiers with frequency-bracketed distortion and a high-pass-filtered DI for an "expensive" string sound, multiband compression integrates bass with kick, and the quad-tracked guitars use a different speaker cabinet for the second pair to add low-end depth and improve phase coherence. Vocal automation is granular, sometimes word-by-word, in service of emotional nuance. The mix-buss treatment is the last layer, treating the whole song as a finished-product impression. 00:00 From the conceptual interview into the mix 03:00 Frequency range and the down-tuned guitar challenge 06:30 Re-amping decisions for guitars one and two 13:30 Stereo placement choices 17:00 EQ moves on guitars 20:30 Low-end management and side-effects 24:00 Vividness moves 27:30 Vocal sidechain ducking instruments and delays 31:00 Bass character and Ampeg core tone 38:00 Bass section-by-section sound crafting 45:00 Working with the organic recorded material 52:00 Sample blending and volume parity 56:00 Sub microphone and parallel processing 1:09:00 Vocal arrangement, automation, and de-essing 1:24:00 Stereo-buss processing as a finished-product impression 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