Making my Guitar Tracks sound BIGGER

[MegaMustaine]

Hey guys. Recently, i was throwing down some tracks to a simple sort of modern rock riff I thought of. I used a splat88 patch tweaked a bit and one of my own, applying curve EQ and some traditional stuff splat does. 4 guitar tracks, two 100 and two 85 percent.

Needless to say, it does not sound big enough. In the past, I've had to do track upon track to get my guitars big enough, but I don't feel like its the best way to go. Plus, with my recent purchase of superior, my drums are really overpowering my guitars not in volume but more in sound.

Anyways, you can give a listen, and see if there's any tips you have to make the guitars be more full and big. They're tracked pretty tight, it's just weak. I don't know if I need to do something in mastering or whatnot, the guitars and kind of just CurveEQ-ed and that's all.

Anyways, thanks! Here's the track:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=373597&songID=7357374

 

[006]

They are too scooped/thin, it's the mids man. It's a cool tone, generally speaking, it's not muddy or anything, just a little scooped which the drums are not, or at least not as much.

~006

 

[tearsofthedragon]

I didn't have time to listen to your samples, but genrally when recording guitars I've found it best to record 4 tracks, 2 guitars that are top-endy and 2 thick with mids. That way you can E.Q the sound with the volume controls, which eliminates the hassel of having to use plug ins or FX to shape your guitar sound.

 

[MarkG]

I agree with the mids, try adding some. Tonewise it sounds pretty solid.

 

[Uladyne]

Wheres the bass? I've found that a lot of times the bass is what makes guitars sound really big. Usually I'll notice it on pro records that I really love where I think the guitars are huge, then theres a part where the guitars play by themselves for a bit, and I realize there a fucking massive bass down there growling around like a sea monster making everything heavy as fuck in a subconcious sort of way. I think the tone you have here would sound pretty big with a nice beefy bass tone thrown in. Maybe that, and as previously mentioned, some more mids and more volume overall.

 

[ahjteam]

The kick and toms are distorting in a bad way, do something about them first. But to get bigger sounding guitars, I suggest you bring up the bass and re-balance the whole mix. I suggest that you start remixing the whole stuff, but leave all the plugins as is, but try this:

- turn all the faders down, bring the master fader to zero and turn off all the master bus plugins, except maybe spectrum analyzer and "safe limiter" (For example the free Waves L1 clone, W1, with threshold at 0dBFS, doing nothing, just making sure that the finished mix doesn't clip. Don't worry about archieving the loudness at this part, it will be done in the mastering, not mixing).
- bring up the bass first and keep that as a benchmark. Have it fucking slammed against the compressor and put it so that the peaks hit at -18dBFS and never move it again. If the bass gets buried, don't turn it up, but turn everything else down. If the bass sounds too quiet at -18dBFS, turn your monitors louder.
- Add the vocals so that they cut thru the bass but don't overpower them. if the song is an instrumental so far, skip this phase
- The bring up the kick and listen to the low end that it isn't competing with the bass in the sub or killing eachothers out. If they are, do something about it. My suggestion is to sidechain kick to the bass (see the sticky)
- Then add the overheads so that you get nice balance with the kick and the cymbals, don't worry so much about the snare
- Then add the guitars. They have to cut thru the mix, but not overpower anything else. If they cut thru the mix only by overpowering something, do something about the guitar sound.
- Then add the snare. Make sure that it cuts thru but doesn't overpower the mix. If it doesn't cut thru the mix without hitting the limiter, do something about it. Usually the bottom mic helps alot.
- Then add everything else to taste
- After you have done this, I suggest you group everything (ie. kick, snare, drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, fx... etc.) so its easier to do small adjustments. Its not mandatory, but I highly recommend it.
- Go take a break, atleast 10 minutes. Eat something, catch some fresh industrial polluted air, have a smoke, go watch some tv, surf the net. Come back and listen again. Tweak until it sounds good. 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minute break, 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minutes break, *continue until satisfied*

and then repost

 

[MegaMustaine]

Wow, thank you for the tips guys. Really helps a lot, I'll try some stuff and repost!

 

[Let it burn...]

Pan them hard L and hard R

then EQ the R one to have less treble then the L one. Sounds crazy, works great

 

[Uladyne]

Damn ahjteam, thanks! That sounds like an excellent approach that I'm gonna have to try sometime. I saved your most excellent post to reference later.

 

[ahjteam]

Damn ahjteam, thanks! That sounds like an excellent approach that I'm gonna have to try sometime. I saved your most excellent post to reference later.

Thanks. I learned that trick when I was a trainee in a studio and doing engineering for this one poprock bands demo that had their own producer with them (whos surname was Piesnack, and I'm not shitting you!). I never though about adding bass and vocals first when mixing, but it was just like such a super mindopener. It made the mix a lot more clearer in the end and we even eventually dropped like 60% off of guitar tracks we tracked.

The thing with if you start with just bass and vocals is that they usually share the same key and you can also hear pretty clearly if the vocals don't work with the bass, and if they don't, then there is usually something wrong with the arrangements.

But I have to admit that I really hated the fact that I had to slam it against the brickwall because they wanted it to sound as loud as "name-a-random-band-that-was-popular-at-the-time", the drums and guitars sound like shit because of it But not too bad for three days of sessions if I might say (micing, tracking, mixing + mastering for 4 songs), we even had to get a Martin acoustic guitar on the second day, so it took like 3 hours from the tracking time.

Also one other thing that I learned another important thing from those sessions. How to make songs exciting for the listener and it had two main phases. Micing guitars and overpowering something. We miced the guitar cabs in the same session with 7 different mics and selected the two best ones per song or even per part to fit the mood. It also worked out pretty nicely because it gave even the parts a bit more separation from eachother. It was usually SM57 + something else, but atleast one take was like NT1A + e606. Another thing was that that even if the song is brickwalled to the hell and back, but if something actually gets even slightly buried in the mix, it gives you this real sensation of loudness. This has more to do with psychology, because its then you think "man those guitars are really loud, I can't even hear the kick when those extra guitars kicked in". But on todays music its really boring when nothing has dynamics and nothing really gets lost in the mix and you can hear every single hit from every single instrument all the time.

Thats just something to think about, not advices, just make it sound good!

edit: Here is a short sample in case you were interested. Listen to the bass. It never gets buried, but its not too loud either and you can pretty much all the time tell what he is playing.

edit: also the effect of the bass and single/double/quad tracking can be heard on this test/guide I did a while back:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/447243-guitarlayering-guide.html

 

[JonWormwood]

Thanks. I learned that trick when I was a trainee in a studio and doing engineering for this one poprock bands demo that had their own producer with them (whos surname was Piesnack, and I'm not shitting you!). I never though about adding bass and vocals first when mixing, but it was just like such a super mindopener. It made the mix a lot more clearer in the end and we even eventually dropped like 60% off of guitar tracks we tracked.

The thing with if you start with just bass and vocals is that they usually share the same key and you can also hear pretty clearly if the vocals don't work with the bass, and if they don't, then there is usually something wrong with the arrangements.

But I have to admit that I really hated the fact that I had to slam it against the brickwall because they wanted it to sound as loud as "name-a-random-band-that-was-popular-at-the-time", the drums and guitars sound like shit because of it But not too bad for three days of sessions if I might say (micing, tracking, mixing + mastering for 4 songs), we even had to get a Martin acoustic guitar on the second day, so it took like 3 hours from the tracking time.

Also one other thing that I learned another important thing from those sessions. How to make songs exciting for the listener and it had two main phases. Micing guitars and overpowering something. We miced the guitar cabs in the same session with 7 different mics and selected the two best ones per song or even per part to fit the mood. It also worked out pretty nicely because it gave even the parts a bit more separation from eachother. It was usually SM57 + something else, but atleast one take was like NT1A + e606. Another thing was that that even if the song is brickwalled to the hell and back, but if something actually gets even slightly buried in the mix, it gives you this real sensation of loudness. This has more to do with psychology, because its then you think "man those guitars are really loud, I can't even hear the kick when those extra guitars kicked in". But on todays music its really boring when nothing has dynamics and nothing really gets lost in the mix and you can hear every single hit from every single instrument all the time.

Thats just something to think about, not advices, just make it sound good!

edit: Here is a short sample in case you were interested. Listen to the bass. It never gets buried, but its not too loud either and you can pretty much all the time tell what he is playing.

edit: also the effect of the bass and single/double/quad tracking can be heard on this test/guide I did a while back:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/447243-guitarlayering-guide.html

Hey dude, I agree with all of this especially sensation of loudness.

Good post.

 

[ahjteam]

Wow, thank you for the tips guys. Really helps a lot, I'll try some stuff and repost!

done yet?

 

[MegaMustaine]

I did a little something trying some new ideas for mixing. Mixed the drums quite a bit differently this time, let me know how they sound.

Needa fix the bass though.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=373597&songID=7369051

let me know what you think!

 

[ahjteam]

definately better overall, but I think the kick (and sometimes the snare too) are a tad too clicky.

 

[006]

Yeah, it's better the 2nd time around, I agree with ahj on the clickiness as well, it's not awful, but personal preference is a little less.

 

[schust]

The kick and toms are distorting in a bad way, do something about them first. But to get bigger sounding guitars, I suggest you bring up the bass and re-balance the whole mix. I suggest that you start remixing the whole stuff, but leave all the plugins as is, but try this:

- turn all the faders down, bring the master fader to zero and turn off all the master bus plugins, except maybe spectrum analyzer and "safe limiter" (For example the free Waves L1 clone, W1, with threshold at 0dBFS, doing nothing, just making sure that the finished mix doesn't clip. Don't worry about archieving the loudness at this part, it will be done in the mastering, not mixing).
- bring up the bass first and keep that as a benchmark. Have it fucking slammed against the compressor and put it so that the peaks hit at -18dBFS and never move it again. If the bass gets buried, don't turn it up, but turn everything else down. If the bass sounds too quiet at -18dBFS, turn your monitors louder.
- Add the vocals so that they cut thru the bass but don't overpower them. if the song is an instrumental so far, skip this phase
- The bring up the kick and listen to the low end that it isn't competing with the bass in the sub or killing eachothers out. If they are, do something about it. My suggestion is to sidechain kick to the bass (see the sticky)
- Then add the overheads so that you get nice balance with the kick and the cymbals, don't worry so much about the snare
- Then add the guitars. They have to cut thru the mix, but not overpower anything else. If they cut thru the mix only by overpowering something, do something about the guitar sound.
- Then add the snare. Make sure that it cuts thru but doesn't overpower the mix. If it doesn't cut thru the mix without hitting the limiter, do something about it. Usually the bottom mic helps alot.
- Then add everything else to taste
- After you have done this, I suggest you group everything (ie. kick, snare, drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, fx... etc.) so its easier to do small adjustments. Its not mandatory, but I highly recommend it.
- Go take a break, atleast 10 minutes. Eat something, catch some fresh industrial polluted air, have a smoke, go watch some tv, surf the net. Come back and listen again. Tweak until it sounds good. 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minute break, 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minutes break, *continue until satisfied*

and then repost

nicely done sir. good stuff. thanks.

 

[jagarock]

Wheres the bass? I've found that a lot of times the bass is what makes guitars sound really big. Usually I'll notice it on pro records that I really love where I think the guitars are huge, then theres a part where the guitars play by themselves for a bit, and I realize there a fucking massive bass down there growling around like a sea monster making everything heavy as fuck in a subconcious sort of way. I think the tone you have here would sound pretty big with a nice beefy bass tone thrown in. Maybe that, and as previously mentioned, some more mids and more volume overall.

+99

adding bass will boost the sound alot

 

[Sickan]

Holy fuck.

 

[jarenare]

 

[Russtopher]

Old thread is old.

Mixing tips are still gold.

But old thread is old.