Guitar tracks references

[FrankGoodheart]

Hi Guys,
I have a bit of a problem.
In many years of reading, listening, watching, etcetera, I've always found people stating that you should "record the best sound you can" to reduce editing and mixing at the minimum.
Even If I try to apply that all the time, I'm rarely satisfied by the final sound of the guitars in my mixes even If I really like them when I record.

Then somewhere else I found people saying that guitars actually DON'T have to be cool on themselves, they must work in the mix.

So my question is : is there a way to find guitar tracks excerpts from mixes,
to compare the "before" and "after" mixing with the other instruments?
I would be very curious to find out that guitars that sounded great in the mixes, may sound shit on themselves.
It would be good for me to have a reference, also.

 

[schismatic]

Massively interested in some good references of mixed guitar bus, or any other instrument bus really. I recognise that anything applied on the 2-bus would affect it afterwards, but it would be good to hear some instrument-specific references to see how the parts fit into the whole.

 

[ArthurD]

These don't sound shit IMO.

 

[FrankGoodheart]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGRaScXnl0

These don't sound shit IMO.

Well, at least from the poor speakers of this pc, I can hear a high hiss in the background ( some sort of presence or contour ) that I, for example would
have tried to remove.
That is a brilliant example.

 

[indecizo]

To me referencing stems are almost useless cus they are context dependant, but I guess it can be interesting to hear them isolated to get an idea of what the producer is aiming for his style of mix.

In regards of not being totally satisfied with the end sound, that's pretty common. Even Mr. Sneap has mentioned he is sometimes not satisfied with his mixes. It's all about experience, just when you think you are getting a better ear, listen one year later to your previous efforts and you'll notice that you could've changed things to sound better. It's a never ending path. All this said IME.

 

[bryan_kilco]

I've always wondered about this too. Guitars, especially, when tracking through a real live amp or even reamping, you dial in a tone that you think is awesome and/or suits the mix, but you really won't know how it all sounds until the full mix is playing. I guess it's really all about dialing in your badass tone then sculpting it from there to sit in the mix.

 

[ArthurD]

Well, at least from the poor speakers of this pc, I can hear a high hiss in the background ( some sort of presence or contour ) that I, for example would
have tried to remove.
That is a brilliant example.

Youtube quality. If you have the album you wouldn't notice it when the guitars are playing alone. Maybe it was a bad sample rate convertion too.

 

[Alphanumeric]

Its very popular to parrot that X guitar tone sounds great in a mix and sounds bad on its own, I find this only true if the song has a lot of other stuff too and isn't entirely rhyhm gtr driven, say there's a lot of ambient guitar, melody, or the drums are what really brings the heavy and how the kick works with the bass.

A thin guitar sounds thin, I can't understand these people that think their HP 250hz guitars with cuts in every possible frequency area work for heavy guitar driven music, maybe if its Devin T style and there is so much going on what makes the guitars heavy is how they related to everything, but lately you hear a lot of chug chug core with High passes rediculously high, mids on 10, bleugh.

 

[hardwire666]

HP @ 250 If I ever catch someone doing that with out REALLY good reason I'll shake the poop out of them.

 

[Siriun]

HP @ 250 If I ever catch someone doing that with out REALLY good reason I'll shake the poop out of them.

You don't hi pass your guitars that high? Pssh, the only way to get the best clean metal tone is high passing at 500z, and low passing at 550hz.

/SARCASM