No stranger to the Reverb studio, Mark Holcomb of prog metal band Periphery is back with another nugget of knowledge for us. Today, the lesson is on gain staging using the Fractal Audio Axe FX II.
As Periphery is a band packed with three different guitar players, it's important that each one closely monitors their gain stage so as not to compete with one another for space in the mix.
To do this, they run their whole live set through a Pro Tools session on a MacBook that is also connected to the Fractal Audio Axe FX II. Each guitarist has their own MIDI lane for programming their patch changes into, and then the MacBook tells the Axe FX which preset to switch to and when.
Mark explained how this works for Periphery's staccato–style of music and demonstrates for us what playing through each preset they have programmed sounds like.