Guitar mixing pointers?

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Before you venture further into the land of parallel compression (though it is an extremely powerful tool), you should keep in mind that an aggressive, good hi-gain metal guitar tone comes both from the guitar and the bass. They have to complement each other, not stepping into each other's territory but still supporting one another. It's not that easy to achieve, and IMHO a good bass tone is something often overlooked in these kind of situations.

 

[wolfhalen]

parrallel eq just means a send bus from the guitar track that has usually a radical setting on the eq. This way it can be blended with the main guitar bus as needed. The global guitar mix volume should be lowered a little to compensate.

This may not be the exact thing you need to improve your situation, however I'm sure no expert

hope that helps :Smokedev:

 

[Tommy Gun]

Before you venture further into the land of parallel compression (though it is an extremely powerful tool), you should keep in mind that an aggressive, good hi-gain metal guitar tone comes both from the guitar and the bass. They have to complement each other, not stepping into each other's territory but still supporting one another. It's not that easy to achieve, and IMHO a good bass tone is something often overlooked in these kind of situations.

+100

 

[SeVeN_corps]

Here's some advice from a true Master Of The Universe... it has helped me I don't know how many times...

"I usually find when mixing that i nearly always put a stereo Massenberg GML 8200 EQ across the rhythm guitars, if the sound has been recorded cleanly ie no strange fizz or bottom end boom, then the same type of frequencies tend to be boosted on most of my mixes. Frequency wise it's usually around ...

8-10 khz for the air
4-6 khz for the bite area
usually 1.5 khz for the in your face effect
400 hz for the note of the guitar
and around 70-100 hz to pick out the weight of the cab.

The boost amount just depends on what has been recorded, just turn it till it sounds good. This method has worked on many albums i have worked on including Heartwork Carcass, Burn my eyes Machine Head, Chimaira self titled, Bullet for my valentine, The Poison. -Colin Richardson"

hey is that from a particular interview or anything ??( if so any chance on posting a link ) or is that straight from the horses mouth ?

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

hey is that from a particular interview or anything ??( if so any chance on posting a link ) or is that straight from the horses mouth ?

Richardson posted that here himself:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy-sneap/258421-eq-rhythm-guitars-mixdown.html

 

[joeymusicguy]

i subtract lots and lots and lots of 4k

 

[MetalJonesy]

i subtract lots and lots and lots of 4k

i do too, i think that seems to be an issue with my cab more than anything, its soo piercing at those freqs!

 

[Nuno Filipe]

i subtract lots and lots and lots of 4k

The cut fizzy frequencies, right?

 

[Line Level Recordings]

Also cut instead of boosting, by boosting with eq you're making the signal louder and you automatically will think it sounds better even when it doesn't.

yea
but alot of people complain that their tracks have too low of a vol.
and if you dont like limiting your guitars like me

then do this:

when tracking guitar. make sure your at 1.0 highest ( dont worry about the headroom yet)
or adleast the highest you can go without sizzling your guitars like fried eggs or just white noise.

and cut everything down to - 4-6 and boost up to 0

hope that helps


p.s. trevoire, boosting past 0 is also also raising your noise

 

[Metaltastic]

The cut fizzy frequencies, right?

Nah, 4k is more like the bite/cut frequency, fizz is higher up (starting at around 5k, but really more at 6k IMO)

 

[ForefrontStudio]

I also struggle a lot with this. guitars are definitely the weakest point in my recordings. I dunno if I speak for anyone else here or not, but when I listen for "good guitar tone to sit in a mix" I'm never 100% sure what I'm listening for. if any of the pros around here would be willing to take the time to post an example or 2 of guitar tones before eqing ( to know the approximately what to listen for when dialing in an amp), and most importantly, (to me at least) guitar tones after eqing. it would be MUCH appreciated. I would LOVE to run some tracks through a spectrum analyzer and give them a real careful listen.

p.s. I always ran the guitar eqs through a parallel fx send. trying a bus as we speak...

 

[Harry Hughes]

I'm with you on this one ForeFront.
I know what a good guitar tone is when I hear it, but the problem is I spend all this time trying to emulate those tones somewhat, making sure it doesn't sound exactly the same and then calling it "my tone".
That's okay and all when you're starting out, but I realize this is a pretty shitty approach really. My problem is, I don't really know what I'm doing when I dial in a tone from scratch, I have no idea if it's going to sound any good or not unless I reference it to something, and I hate that I have to reference it to something, because I'd rather just use nothing but my own ears and concentrate on nothing but the project I'm doing and nothing else , but I just can't seem to do it

 

[ahjteam]

i do too, i think that seems to be an issue with my cab more than anything, its soo piercing at those freqs!

It has more to do with Fletcher–Munson curves

 

[ahjteam]

I also struggle a lot with this. guitars are definitely the weakest point in my recordings. I dunno if I speak for anyone else here or not, but when I listen for "good guitar tone to sit in a mix" I'm never 100% sure what I'm listening for. if any of the pros around here would be willing to take the time to post an example or 2 of guitar tones before eqing ( to know the approximately what to listen for when dialing in an amp), and most importantly, (to me at least) guitar tones after eqing. it would be MUCH appreciated. I would LOVE to run some tracks through a spectrum analyzer and give them a real careful listen.

The guitar tone competition 2 voting is coming up soon, wait for the results there

 

[Nuno Filipe]

Nah, 4k is more like the bite/cut frequency, fizz is higher up (starting at around 5k, but really more at 6k IMO)

I understand, usually I dont cut that frequencies but I always boost around 5/6k to add some brightness/clarity.

This is an issue always too subjective but you can read this.
http://www.digitalprosound.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/mixing_excerpt1.htm

 

[Lasse Lammert]

HP@60 and LP@13.4k

 

[nch3966]

i guy i know [Sam Pura http://thepandastudios.com ]had my bands set up like this orange ad140 head through an orange cab then mic'd it with one Beyerdynamic M201. he used the Zvex Box Of Rock as a boost he kept using "dark essance" on everything which really gave every thing a clean wide sound. i saw him use a waves c4 a few times too