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. 00:00 First contact with the multitrack and phase relationships 07:00 Kick-sample blend and overhead routing 14:30 Snare replacement: direct sample, sustain sample, tom samples 21:30 Room samples and reverb wash 29:00 Distortion on the lows; bass distortion strategy 36:30 Bass busses (sub, grit, stereo) and the shared cabinet with guitars 47:30 Guitar EQ moves 55:00 Vocal chain and dynamic EQ 1:18:00 Mastering chain summing vocal and instrument busses 1:25:00 SSL Fusion and Neve master buss processors 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