Research Approach & Methodology

Research & impact statement // HiMMP is all about the song 'In Solitude', composed, recorded, mixed, and mastered by our research team. Not only have we documented every step along the way of creating the song and made the media files publicly available, but we also took the recording (multitrack) to world-leading metal music producers to mix and produce their own versions of the song.

Video interviews with producers about heaviness and their mixing of 'In Solitude' not only provide a wealth of data for researching heaviness but are also an invaluable educational resource for interested metal music producers and artists. Our comprehensive documentation and systematic analysis offer deep insights into the core quality of metal, with the potential to revolutionise how practitioners understand and achieve heaviness.

Watch our interview with producer Andrew Scheps to get a better sense of our research approach.

Further outline of your approach and desired output (impact)

Our research centres around the song 'In Solitude', which was arranged and recorded by the HiMMP team with the help of well-known artists in the metal scene: Ralf Scheepers (vocals; Primal Fear, Avantasia, Gamma Ray); Aaron Stainsthorpe (vocals; My Dying Bride); Rich Shaw (guitar; ex Cradle of Filth); Luke Appleton (bass; ex-Iced Earth, Blaze Bayley); Dan Mullins (drums; My Dying Bride); Mark Deeks (orchestration; Winterfylleth). The HiMMP researchers created their own production of the song as a version that can be compared with those of world-leading metal producers participating in the project.

The multitrack provides various options (e.g., drum samples, clean and unedited tom tracks, various bass guitar layers, different guitar tones) to allow producers to customise their mix. The professional producers mix the song in their regular working environment, followed by a video interview about heaviness and their approach to producing 'In Solitude'. Each producer's original mix, along with video documentation and interviews, forms a rich dataset for exploring the phenomenon of musical heaviness. This comprehensive material allows us to study how heaviness can be controlled and achieved in metal music production, examining the interplay between creative freedom, engineering and acoustic constraints, genre expectations, and trade-offs between attributes such as sonic weight vs clarity and separation vs cohesion.

Our outcome is an empirically grounded framework of heaviness derived from industry practice. This framework is not only theoretically but also audio-visually comprehensible through our extensive audio and video documentation. Aspiring producers can apply this framework to their own tracks, or mix and learn from the publicly available multitrack of 'In Solitude'.

Research timeline

Phase 1 // Song creation (completed)

We wrote, arranged, recorded, and prepared 'In Solitude' for production, all with the help of known artists in the metal scene.

Phase 2 // Producer sessions (completed)

We took 'In Solitude' to eight leading metal music producers and asked them to produce their own version of the multitrack and to give insights into their mixing approach and decision-making process, all documented on video.

Phase 3 // Data analysis and dissemination (completed)

We analyse the video interviews and producer mixes, write our findings up for the academic readership, and summarise them for various interested parties (metal music producers/artists; educators).