mixing and tracikng metal guitars?

[azzxaa]

Hey guys!

One thing I have thought about is that reading about tracking 4 guitars,2 lead and 2 rythms.

Do they mean that the ryhtm will play exatcly like the lead the whole song?

and just add a mono solo guitar for chorus and stuff.

The chorus get so big and powerful in todays music, do they just use automation for that to just bring the 4 guitars up?

anyone know how they do it?
like if the just use the rythm gtrs in the vers and the leads comes in the chorus and stuff?

I could use some tip how I can do "like the ordinary song would look like"
OR shall I track 2 more guitars in the chorus + 1 solo gtr?

I see many of you guys are very good at recording/mixing metal, would be great if you could share how many guitars you actually have in a metal production.
tnx for any suggestion and tips you can give me.

/J.

 

[smy1]

Hey J.,

it's often the other way around: the guitars in the chorus are very often brought down, because due to the fact that many guitars are added the volume would be far too loud if they remained at the same level.

The last project I worked on had this guitar setup:

Rhythm Git 1, L100
Rhythm Git 2, R100
Rhythm Git 3, L80
Rhythm Git 4, R80

Those were playing most of the time.

During the verse I added

Lead Guitar 5, L100 (playing high notes with lots of modulation FX)
Lead Guitar 6, R100 (playing high notes with lots of modulation FX)
Clean Guitar 7, L60 (playing percussive parts), mixed back a bit
Clean Guitar 8, R60 (playing percussive parts), mixed back a bit

Those guitars all continue playing into the chorus and in the chorus I added

Rhythm Guitar 9, L90 (playing chords an octave higher than the guitars 1-4)
Rhythm Guitar 10, R90 (playing chords an octave higher than the guitars 1-4)

In the chorus I pulled down the modulation FX (flanger etc) on the lead guitars or otherwise it would have been too muddy.

So I end up with 10 guitars on the chorus, which is not unusual at all. Since the focus of the chorus is on the vocals though, I had to pull down the volume of the guitars a bit.

Hope this helps!

 

[shreddster]

Jesus Christ... That many guitar tracks going at once?!

 

[schwinginbatman]

Jesus Christ... That many guitar tracks going at once?!

I mean, maybe? If that's what the song requires. A lot of my choruses have just the same two rhythms and nothing else because the song doesn't need any more. Don't think you have to stack the shit out of guitars, but be willing to do so if you gotta.

 

[shreddster]

I mean, maybe? If that's what the song requires. A lot of my choruses have just the same two rhythms and nothing else because the song doesn't need any more. Don't think you have to stack the shit out of guitars, but be willing to do so if you gotta.

I just can't really think of a scenario in which I would need more than 4 or 5 guitars at once max. And that would be 2 Rhythms, 2 leads and a soloist. That being said, I am very new and I have little to no experience with quad tracking or anything of the like.

 

[H-evolve]

The way I see things, the final number of tracks depends a lot on music writing. Maybe you want the song to be relatively "simple", that is just one guitar playing a rythm riff, which would require 2 tracks (L & R). But, because production also has some thing to do with it, you might Quad Track. So that simple songs with only 1 guitar playing the rythm will require 4 tracks (2 Left & 2 Right).

I guess at some point it depends on the style of music you play, and how much effort you are willing to put into "musical arrangements" (is this the right term?).

I'm in a death melodic band, and similar to what was mentioned above, in most of our songs, we have:

A rythm guitar, a lead guitar and possibly, other background subtle harmonies from a third guitar.
In number of guitar tracks, since we quad track our rythm, we end up:

4 Rythm Guitar tracks (X2 because of use 2 mics)
2 Lead Guitar tracks (X2, also because of 2 mics).
1 or 2 Background guitar track (s) (X2, because of 2 mics).

If I don't consider the 2 mic config, that would mean up to 8 tracks. If I do consider the 2 mics, that is 16 tracks in your DAW. So yes, identification of what is what is quite important.

I'm not that experienced, but I think you gotta do, what you gotta do.