August Burns Red’s Guitar Editing: Track Slower for Flawless Takes

Getting those ridiculously tight, machine-gun rhythm guitars you hear on an August Burns Red record can feel like a dark art. While JB Brubaker’s precision playing is undeniably a huge factor, producer Carson Slovak (who also plays bass in ABR) has a few tricks up his sleeve during tracking and editing that can make achieving that flawless sound a whole lot easier. We dove into some insights he shared, and it turns out a big part of it involves thinking ahead during tracking to simplify your editing life later.

The “Track Slower” Philosophy: Your Secret Weapon Against Editing Headaches

Ever battled riffs that sound great in the room but turn into an editing nightmare once you try to lock them to the grid? Carson’s got a counterintuitive but brilliant approach: track guitars slightly slower than the song’s final tempo.

Why Go Slow? Less Pain, More Gain (in Tightness)

It might sound backward, but here’s the logic:

• Eliminate Gaps: When a guitarist rushes a part (a super common human tendency, especially when tracking to just a click), and you try to shove that hit back onto the grid, you often create an ugly, unnatural gap of silence where audio should be. Tracking slightly slower gives you more “meat” on each note. If you need to move a transient earlier to lock it to the grid, you’ve got actual audio data to work with, rather than dead air. This means fewer headaches trying to fill those gaps with awkward crossfades or time-stretching artifacts.
• Natural Feel: By giving yourself that extra wiggle room between pick hits during tracking, edits tend to sound way more natural. You’re minimizing the need for drastic audio manipulation.
• Beat the Rush: Many players, whether on guitar or drums, instinctively speed up when isolated with a metronome. Tracking a bit under tempo can, funnily enough, result in takes that, once nudged into their grid positions, sit perfectly at the actual song tempo with minimal fuss. It’s a clever way to preemptively solve a common problem.

Carson emphasizes that this method significantly reduces the probability of having to create those dreaded gaps, making your life easier and the final product sound cleaner. Instead of fighting rushed takes with elastic audio or complex crossfades, you’re working with takes that are inherently easier to manipulate.

Dialing In Your Edits: The DI and Transient Alignment

Once you’ve got those slightly slower takes, the editing process begins. A crucial element here is a clean, clear Direct Input (DI) signal, tracked alongside your amped tone.

Your Visual Guide: The Mighty DI

Even if the guitarist isn’t an absolute hammer-handed “beast” (as Carson mentions, JB is precise but not necessarily the hardest picker), a good DI provides an invaluable visual reference for where each pick attack, or transient, occurs.
In the session shown, the DI signal was running through an API preamp, adding a little color and gain. This isn’t a totally sterile DI, and that slight saturation can actually help make transients even more visible, which is a plus for editing.

When editing, especially if you’re locking everything tightly to the grid as is common in modern metal, you’ll be looking at these DI transients constantly.

1. Tempo Mapping: Set your DAW to the actual target tempo of the song. For instance, if you tracked at 184 BPM but the song is 190 BPM, your editing environment will be at 190.
2. Visual Alignment: With your DI and amped tracks grouped, zoom in and use the “Tab to Transient” function (a common feature in DAWs like Pro Tools) to quickly jump to the start of each note on the DI track.
3. Grid Lock: Separate the region at the transient and snap the beginning of that new region to the desired grid line.
4. Nudging: Sometimes, a note might be generally in time but needs a tiny shift. This is where nudging comes in handy. Carson mentions sometimes setting his nudge value to around 200 milliseconds (or an equivalent sample/tick value depending on your DAW’s nudge units) for these fine adjustments, using keyboard shortcuts (like Control + Plus/Minus in Pro Tools with Nudge set to Timecode) to shift regions slightly forward or backward. It’s almost like quantizing individual guitar notes by hand, ensuring every chug and riff hits with pinpoint accuracy.

While this meticulous editing gets your guitars super tight, there’s one more crucial step to ensure they don’t sound sterile or lose their aggression. For those looking to dive deeper into how these foundational editing choices interact with later mixing stages, like EQ, be sure to check out some expert strategies for carving out your core EQ in modern metal.

The Critical Final Touch: Restoring Pick Attack with the Nudge Trick

Here’s a pro move that can make a huge difference: when you align the visual transient of a DI signal directly to the grid, you often inadvertently cut off the very beginning of the pick attack as it’s heard through a heavily distorted amp. The actual audible “scrape” or “click” of the pick often occurs a few milliseconds before the main body of the transient you see on the DI waveform.

Carson has a slick Pro Tools workaround to batch-restore this crucial pick attack across all his edited clips:

1. Batch Fades: Once all your individual note regions are chopped and aligned, select them all and apply a very short batch fade – Carson typically uses 5 milliseconds. This prevents any clicks or pops at the edit points.
2. The Nudge Setup (Pro Tools Specific):
   • Set your Nudge value. For this specific “pick attack restoration” technique, Carson mentions using a value around 600 milliseconds in his Pro Tools setup. (Note: This value is specific to his workflow and how Pro Tools’ nudge functions with slip editing; the actual amount of pick attack you’re revealing is much, much smaller, likely in the single-digit millisecond range. The larger nudge value in Pro Tools allows for a specific type of batch edit).
3. The Two-Step Nudge (The “Trick”):
   • Step 1: Nudge Clip Contents Left: With all the edited guitar clips selected, use the Pro Tools command to nudge the audio content within the clips to the left (earlier) by your set nudge value. On a Mac, this is typically Control + Numpad Minus (or Control + Option + Comma if using keyboard commands for nudge). This effectively slips the audio earlier inside its clip boundaries, revealing the pick attack that was previously ahead of the DI transient’s start.
   • Step 2: Nudge Entire Clips Left: Immediately after, without deselecting the clips, use the command to nudge the entire clips (the clip boundaries themselves) to the left by the same nudge value. In Pro Tools, this is just Numpad Minus (or Option + Comma).

What this does: This two-step process effectively moves all your edit points (the start of each clip) to the left by the nudge amount, ensuring that the previously cut-off pick attack is now included in each clip. It’s a batch operation that keeps everything consistent and saves a ton of manual dragging. The result is a more natural and aggressive guitar performance where the initial pick sound connects properly with the note.

This whole process, from tracking slower to the final pick attack restoration, is how August Burns Red achieves those razor-sharp, yet natural-sounding guitars on albums like the one featured on Nail The Mix with August Burns Red.

Beyond the Edits: Crafting World-Class Metal Tones

Nailing these tracking and editing techniques is a massive step towards professional-sounding metal guitars. Imagine learning not just these foundational skills, but also how to sculpt those edited guitars with EQ, blend them with thunderous drums and bass, and apply final polish, all guided by the pros who mixed the actual albums.

That’s exactly what Nail The Mix offers. Every month, you get the raw multitracks from huge metal songs and watch world-class producers like Joey Sturgis, Eyal Levi, and guests like Carson Slovak himself mix them from scratch, explaining every plugin, setting, and decision. If you’re serious about taking your metal productions to the next level, seeing these techniques in action on a full mix is invaluable. You can even check out specific sessions like the August Burns Red one to see these concepts applied in a real-world scenario. And if you’re ready to go beyond presets and truly unlock your sound for mixing modern metal, there’s a wealth of knowledge waiting for you.