kev
Im guybrush threepwood
I assume you guys are going for very shallow inclines on the filters if you're going as low as 7k? Surely anything too steep is going to be just nasty?
Dull guitars rock
- Thread starter Ermz
- Start date
I like quite bright guitars, last few projects I did I actually used a high shelf boost around 11-12k. Not massive and it added a bit of fizz but I preferred it in the context of the mixes so I went for it. Happiest I've ever been with guitars mix-wise so I guess everyones different!
TheWinterSnow
Den Mørke Natt
haha so I was off a little bit. Anyway, it still proves my point though, as in my experience with my amp, there is no fizz ever remotely in or near 6K, its all 8K+, so it really changes from amp to amp and again depending on the mix, this will change how much you will control it.
As you said in a later post, some of that fizz is more of a sizzle if used right, it should be attenuated but be there just enough to add some brightness for clarity, but not loud enough so that the listener goes, "hey thats fizzy".
It really comes down to the mix. Usually I like darker guitars, however in Devin Townsend's "Addicted" The guitar have no bass, little to no low mids and are absolute fizz city, but in the mix you can never tell, as it really works for THAT mix. Same goes for Mercenary's "Architect of Lies", Friedman technique, very scratchy scooped mids, almost nothing but highs.
Kind of funny how this thread was put up after I was mucking around with some guitars on a new song I was mixing. I was referencing the new "Electric Horse" (mixed by forrester savell) with my mix and really wanted the guitars to have a similar tone. Everything I did seemed to cluter everything else, by adding a low pass to about 9k, the mixed finally opened up and everything seemed to come into place. A dip in the mids with a high pass and some saturation was all that was needed after that.
Thanks guys
Thanks guys
ahjteam
Anssi Tenhunen
kramer1309
Member
reg3n
Señor Miembro
i found my fav mixes lack a lot of highs in guitars, but yeah i was a chicken and after Ola's awesome video i started to think on my tone differently too, and it's gotten better yep. I don't mind the tiny details of processing each could make, i guess it's just a matter of lowering that range, and making stuff fit. Cool thread.
jangoux
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- May 9, 2006
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We've got a Royer at the studio I work on, and for clean and low gain stuff, it rocks. But for hi-gain, it is meh...
Btw, I am happy this thread was started. Like Nate, I was always affraid to go further than 12k, but I've always felt 12k was not enough but never tried lower because i thought something else was wrong on my mixes. And to add to the fact, I get so few rock/metal projects that is really hard to practice. Anyway, Like Ermin, I usually low passed at 12k, but ended up adding some very narrow cuts at the extreme hi end to smooth out things a little.
Btw, It is funny how this extreme hi end can screw things up really bad, making the guitars sound thin/overgained. A few years ago, before i started to work to bein an AE, my band travelled to the biggest city on the country to record our first full lenght. I listened to a few great releases of theirs, so I trusted 'em 100%. When the moment to track guitars came, I found a tone I liked and suddenly the AE came and said with confidence 'PRESENCE ON 10, ALWAYS!'. I was like 'wtf', but hell, he recorded dozens of nice records in there, so I thought that was fine. At the end, everything sucked, had no body at all, and was fizz city. At this moment I figured out this extreme hi end was the one area that could screw your tone very easily.
Btw, I am happy this thread was started. Like Nate, I was always affraid to go further than 12k, but I've always felt 12k was not enough but never tried lower because i thought something else was wrong on my mixes. And to add to the fact, I get so few rock/metal projects that is really hard to practice. Anyway, Like Ermin, I usually low passed at 12k, but ended up adding some very narrow cuts at the extreme hi end to smooth out things a little.
Btw, It is funny how this extreme hi end can screw things up really bad, making the guitars sound thin/overgained. A few years ago, before i started to work to bein an AE, my band travelled to the biggest city on the country to record our first full lenght. I listened to a few great releases of theirs, so I trusted 'em 100%. When the moment to track guitars came, I found a tone I liked and suddenly the AE came and said with confidence 'PRESENCE ON 10, ALWAYS!'. I was like 'wtf', but hell, he recorded dozens of nice records in there, so I thought that was fine. At the end, everything sucked, had no body at all, and was fizz city. At this moment I figured out this extreme hi end was the one area that could screw your tone very easily.
lolzgreg
Cereal Shipping Sneapster
I used to HP my guitars at 8khz, but then things were too dull. A week or two later, I got better at micing amps, and also switched to HP at 12khz again. It really depends on the amp and mix in question.
I definitely need to think about this some more. Narrowing any instrument in the mixes bandwith in most cases is good news. Cheers on the useful comments.
I definitely need to think about this some more. Narrowing any instrument in the mixes bandwith in most cases is good news. Cheers on the useful comments.
ahjteam
Anssi Tenhunen
Nebulous
Daniel
When going from a 12-10kHz filter to a 7-9kHz filter mindset, do you guys who have been doign this for a while compensate by tracking brighter or with more mids?
Harry Hughes
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- Apr 25, 2009
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One thing you should keep in mind the high pass filtering is about getting rid of the junk, not to really darken the tone as such.
If you track the guitars fairly dark (which I prefer to do and of course you can only track it so dark before it's just.....well, too dark lol), then boost the upper mids, setting the low pass filter to 7 and then removing the low pass filter wont make much of a difference to the real brightness of the tone, because the brightness and sizzle (the guitar's "air"), the bulk of the brightness as I mentioned on the first page, seems to lie within 5.5-7KHz. You really gotta boost that region for the real brightness to come in.
So when you take the 7KHz LP filtering off, the tone wont get any brighter, but rather just more harsh with more tonal crap characteristics to it.
Of course, that is still technically being "brighter" but by brighter I mean in a way that's pleasing to the ear and beneficial to the guitar tone and mix, while that 7KHz and upwards brightness is largely just a lot of crap.
The same as how if you tracked the guitar with way too much upper mids, putting on 7KHz LP filtering isn't going to help much. Yes, it will a lot of the junk beyond that, but ultimately you're still left with that excessive and nasty chunk of upper mids (which I've found from personal experience is harder to remove from an overly bright tone than it is to add upper mids to a fairly dark tone).
Nebulous
Daniel
It's interesting you say that Harry. I find that when I record at home, or my own playing any where I seem to stil with 12kHz filtering because any lower than that it starts to really make the tone too dull.
I will have to experiment with this when I have the time.
I will have to experiment with this when I have the time.
Mikaël-ange
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- Nov 7, 2008
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Harry Hughes
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You probably have too steep of a filter going on, because it definitely should not start to suddenly go really dull below 12KHz.
Definitely try boosting in the 4.5-6KHz region to get some good brightness going.
It's tricky though, because it's quite easy to tread very quickly into harsh sounding territory when doing that.
Always pays to just reference against stuff that has very controlled upper mids in the guitars.
As far as Sneap stuff goes, I've found The End of Heartache to be good for that.
Just listening to the intro of the title track, you can really hear those upper mids giving the guitars plenty of air, and good presence in the mix, yet it's never ever harsh (although the somewhat overbearing lower mids are perhaps not the best bet for reference lower mid levels though
)
Yeah, EoH is a great guitar reference. Just have to mind those low-mids impacting on mix clarity, as stated.
TWoAF is also a good reference, as is Nickelback's 'All the Right Reasons' (has mixed guitar tones, so you can reference the one you want). Disturbed's 'Ten Thousand Fists' isn't bad, and 'Clayman' can be cool too.
Anything mixed by Randy, it's kinda hard to go wrong.
Probably a good example of a guitar tone that's 'bright' and 'edgy' in the correct areas (ie. still sounds like a recto but without the filthy fizz):
TWoAF is also a good reference, as is Nickelback's 'All the Right Reasons' (has mixed guitar tones, so you can reference the one you want). Disturbed's 'Ten Thousand Fists' isn't bad, and 'Clayman' can be cool too.
Anything mixed by Randy, it's kinda hard to go wrong.
Probably a good example of a guitar tone that's 'bright' and 'edgy' in the correct areas (ie. still sounds like a recto but without the filthy fizz):
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Marcus, since you brought it up, your EP still gets regular windmilling around here, though I still regret you not taking me up on that stem mastering offer, haha. I think if you took on board some of those posters' suggestions in the original thread about fleshing it out with more production/drum velocity work it could easily have pissed on most 'pro' releases of the last few years.
TheWinterSnow
Den Mørke Natt
As I have been saying in almost every post in this thread so far is that every amp setup and mix will be different, which is why I don't look at arbitrary numbers, and in my opinion any number is arbitrary because the more you fall into that habit, the more you are mixing by numbers. Personally I like to set the most shallow slop possible on my eq and then start dragging the low pass until all the aliasing unmusical noise disappears, then I try to add a small boost right before the cutoff frequency of that low pass and I will move is around to see where it is most effective for that tone.
I know what you mean though, the last big tone shootout that I did I found the guitars to be extremely dark in the mix. In terms of the LPF, all I had to go down to was about 14K when all the noise went away. It still needed a presence though, which I boosted at about 7K, anything lower, like 5-6K while sounding good, made the low end of the entire mix sound extremely boxy and wooly, making the bass and the extreme low mids out of control. And even though I have those settings where they were the resultant mix still had really dark guitars, about as dark as the Nickleback YT video Ermin posted.
