Getting A Punchier Guitar

[NSGUITAR]

Yeah, so recently, I've been very happy with my mixes.

However, while showing a friend one of them (a friend who has no musical knowledge), he stated "Sounds fucking fresh dude, but the guitar riffs aren't punch enough."

At first I didn't believe him, but then the more I listened to my mix, and then compared to to other things like As I Lay Dying, stuff like that, I realized that he was right.. The mix sounded pretty good, but the guitar tracks themselves could be much more punch.

I've tried adding a compressor to guitar tracks, and cranking the Ratio---No good, didn't really make a difference.

Do you guys have any tricks to acquire this?

 

[Uladyne]

What are you using for your guitar rig?

 

[NSGUITAR]

What are you using for your guitar rig?

Carvin DC747---->Pod X3 (Only recording the dry signal)---->Pod Farm---->Lots of plugins.

 

[coreysMonster]

post a clip of the song so we can hear what you're talking about?

 

[ahjteam]

do you have drums and bass guitar in your mix?

 

[NSGUITAR]

Here's one of my newer mixes.

It's not EXACTALY what I want for my mix, but it's good enough for showing people:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4985090/NickMetulz2.mp3

 

[coreysMonster]

Here's one of my newer mixes.

It's not EXACTALY what I want for my mix, but it's good enough for showing people:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4985090/NickMetulz2.mp3

my main problem with that is the guitar sounds overedited. punch can also come from impurities.

 

[NSGUITAR]

my main problem with that is the guitar sounds overedited. punch can also come from impurities.

The thing is-- It's not that edited at all lol. The only thing I've done is added a few silences in between chops. Other than that, no quantizing of guitar or anything like that..

 

[coreysMonster]

The thing is-- It's not that edited at all lol. The only thing I've done is added a few silences in between chops. Other than that, no quantizing of guitar or anything like that..

holy shit, you're tight as fuck man!!

hm, lemmo go look up the guitar.

 

[ali3]

-edit-

 

[zackpennington]

A. If there is no quantizing, you are a fucking tight player.

B. I'm all for editing out silence, but your edits are too close. There's a sound that happens when/after you mute the strings that makes it sound real. You've cut too early. Have you tried quadtracking, or multiple amp sounds?

 

[NSGUITAR]

A. If there is no quantizing, you are a fucking tight player.

B. I'm all for editing out silence, but your edits are too close. There's a sound that happens when/after you mute the strings that makes it sound real. You've cut too early. Have you tried quadtracking, or multiple amp sounds?

Thanks mangggg.


Well actually when we play this together at practices, we crank our gates, so we actually get that effect of cutting off too fast. It will sound sweet with vocal overtop of it fo shooooo

 

[ahjteam]

but yeah, punch has definately a few things to it... dynamics. if there is none, it will sound like shooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. If you use a compressor, that is what you get. Heavily distorted guitars themselves don't have much of dynamics, so snison playing with rest of the band help, especially the kickdrum and bass. If you want it more "in your face", you could try to add slight amount of compression to the presence (1-6khz range) with multiband compressor, but leave rest of the spectrum range as is.

 

[NSGUITAR]

but yeah, punch has definately a few things to it... dynamics. if there is none, it will sound like shooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. If you use a compressor, that is what you get. Heavily distorted guitars themselves don't have much of dynamics, so snison playing with rest of the band help, especially the kickdrum and bass. If you want it more "in your face", you could try to add slight amount of compression to the presence (1-6khz range) with multiband compressor, but leave rest of the spectrum range as is.

I'm about to try the multiband compressor thing right now.

 

[Force666]

could u share ur pod farm preset?

 

[paladin shredder]

try using a limiter with minimal settings on the rhythm guitars. also, i wouldn't say they don't have any punch, but they don't pop out of the mix. booting around 2-3k on any instrument will bring it forward in a mix, try doing this slightly with the guitars. mix sounds great btw!

 

[AerialThesis]

the best trick is to simply duplicate the guitar tracks and put an expander on that duplicate track so you can expand the guitars in a paralel method. If you don't how to achieve it correctly, write it back so i'll take the time to write each step.

 

[G1]

Its not a bad pod sound at all dude.
Theres a lot of high end in the kick drum which is taking away some what from the attack of the guitars.
Guitars sound punchy with a tight and thick kick drum and bass supporting them.
Try bringing the 3-5khz area down on the kick (this shall help to control them from cutting in on the guitars attack) and add a massive cut in the mid freqs of the kick and then a boost between 50-100hz (each kick has its own bass sweet spot) of about 2-3db, once you've got these things working together it'll help to push the guitars and make them feel fatter.

 

[FloridaRolf]

the best trick is to simply duplicate the guitar tracks and put an expander on that duplicate track so you can expand the guitars in a paralel method. If you don't how to achieve it correctly, write it back so i'll take the time to write each step.

Could you explain that method please? Sounds interesting

 

[TheWinterSnow]

but yeah, punch has definately a few things to it... dynamics. if there is none, it will sound like shooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. If you use a compressor, that is what you get. Heavily distorted guitars themselves don't have much of dynamics, so snison playing with rest of the band help, especially the kickdrum and bass.

Not completely true. The main frequencies are generally flatlined in RMS, however from a correctly dialed in amp, you can acheieve massive amounts of transient peaks from the lowend and not have it muddy. My 5150 being dimed res and bass at 8 has a solid 6db peak at about the 100-150Hz area but is tight as hell. That is a apart of the huge low end punch. LP the extreme highs and at least bump the 10K area and perhaps the 5-8KHz depending if you need more bite. I have found that if you have that general curve and you have some intense palm mute spikes that are solid, removing some of the 250Hz are a few db will bring your guitar into killer bright but punch as fuck tone.

using a multiband compressor on the low end will only flatten the dynamic out which is the opposite of what you would want imo. Its a bout getting that low end transient spike, a fairly decent high pass, a mild scoop in the lower mids and a boost in the upper mids/highs.