My guitars always bury my snare drum.

[ffaudio]

Not just the snare actually. I can always come up with a great submix of drums and bass. Then I add in the guitar. Either it's too low and the drums still sound great, then everybody comments there needs to be more guitars, or there are face melting guitars, but the drums get completely buried and distant.

Any tips? Mixing suggestions? Anybody have this problem and eventually have a light bulb go off inside your head and figure out how to make it work?

Pretty much everything I work with is heavy guitars and heavy drums, so I really need to figure this out or else I'll just be running in circles.

 

[agentmetal]

Judging from your "I was asked to mix a metal band" thread, it looks like an EQ problem : your snare is mostly in the lows and low mids, whereas the guitars are full of aggressive upper midrange, and so either the snare is buried, or the guitars sound weak. I'd first cut the snare around 100-200 Hz and turn it up to compensate (you'll maybe need to process dynamics if it they become fucked up), then adjust the guitars by restoring the missing treble and bass, either with EQ or, if that doesn't work, with low end and high end enhancement plugins...

 

[beyond dead]

parallel compression should do the trick

 

[ffaudio]

parallel compression should do the trick

But it doesn't. It becomes a war of "Guitars too quiet, turn them up. Now drums are too quiet... turn them up." Etc, etc. It's just back and forth, them covering each other.

I'm pretty sure it's eq and fitting them together, because like I said, they sound great separate from each other, but once they're playing at the same time it's one or the other.

 

[beyond dead]

hmm maybe try replacing the snare with another sample that fits the mix properly. capturing a sound that will fit the mix without processing is obviously important. instead of drastic eq, maybe try another sample.

 

[greyskull]

i think we're all playing this game to one degree or another! its just practice and trial and error i think to be honest!! but yeah eqing a boost in a different place can help one poke over the other without necessarily being louder

 

[siegfried]

Try Sonnox Inflator...

 

[Ronixis]

Making the drum submix limiter a bit tighter will make the drums more prominent. Hopefully without burying the guitars.

 

[-Noodles-]

EQ is the only true answer here...
Maybe post up a snippet so that we can hear the problem ourselves?

 

[cobhc]

they sound great separate from each other, but once they're playing at the same time it's one or the other.

This is where you are going wrong IMO, don't mix any instrument solo'd, mix the lot at once. For example, nice slightly scooped guitars will sound great alone, but get buried in the mix. So you have to eq/mix everything at the same time, so it all fits together, and all the sounds work together. And I'd pretty much say to try what agentmetal said.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Guitars really are a bitch aren't they?

They step all over my vocals, snare, upper bass area. Sucks.

Doesn't help that we want to detune them either.

Just keep trying different eq n' shit.

 

[Seizure.]

Wrong compression doesn't help for one... maybe look at that too.

Also, my low end for snare is useally around 200/250.. simply cutting the frequency were your snare resides most in the frequency spectrum on bass and guitar with surgical cut shouldn't realy affect the overall bass/guitarsound too much and should clear up for snare.

Also start mixing stuff as a mix and solo too much a good submix is cool but is has to sound good together obviously hhe

 

[mpigott]

Try to subdue some of the prominent frequencies of the snare in the guitar track. Dont take out a ton, but this will help a little. Then create a guitar submix and put a compressor on it. If you have a multi band you can even use this to only duck those snare frequencies again. Take a send at unity gain from the snare track and side chain it to the guitar compressor. If you have to you can even create a seperate snare track and push it a few ms ahead so the comp on the guitar bus squeezes the whole snare hit. Make sure the send is set to PRE fader, and you mute the second track or youll get flam and phase issues. Then all you need to do is work the compression release and attack on the guitar bus so it pumps when the snare hits. You have to be subtle with this, so it is by no means the only answer, just a light ratio and a couple DB, but with an eq doing slight cuts where the snare is most prominent. this should help you get the cut you need but still maintain guitar level that you want.

 

[006]

This is where you are going wrong IMO, don't mix any instrument solo'd, mix the lot at once. For example, nice slightly scooped guitars will sound great alone, but get buried in the mix. So you have to eq/mix everything at the same time, so it all fits together, and all the sounds work together. And I'd pretty much say to try what agentmetal said.

+1,000,000.


That's plus one million.

~006

 

[ffaudio]

+1,000,000.


That's plus one million.

~006

I don't actually spend hours mixing in solo. I get sounds with drums, then bring in bass, then bring in guitars, etc.

 

[colonel kurtz]

EQ is the only true answer here...
Maybe post up a snippet so that we can hear the problem ourselves?

i disagree x1000. EQ, panning, compression, and reverb can all be used to make the snare present through the guitars.

first of all, how are your guitars panned? if they have the typical wide-panning with the snare down the middle, they shouldn't be fighting each other that hard...but if they do, don't cut around 200hz as someone mentioned...that's where the low-end thud from the snare comes. if anything, use andy's trick of compressing below 250hz in the guitars, which will allow the snare to cut through in the low mids.

then do some various cutting and boosting in the snare and guitars from 1-8k...where you dip one a couple db's, dip the other. it's tough to say exactly where these EQ adjustments should be, because it'll depend on the guitar tone you're looking for and how the snare was tracked.

parallel compression will also help, using a really fast attack, long-ish release, and high ratio.

also send your snare out a couple of reverbs...one short, one longer, and EQ the low end mud out of the reverb track. sometimes it helps to take out the highs also if it sounds a little sizzly.

last but not least, if the snare just will NOT come through, set up a sidechain, where the snare is the key input, and you duck the guitars a db or 2 every time the snare hits

edit: one more technique that might help is to bring the guitars into the mix after the drums, but before the bass...i used to do the deal where i'd get the rythym section sounding good then bring in the rest, but now i prefer to mix drums/guitars, then bring the bass in to fill in the low end afterwards.

 

[-Noodles-]

I see what you're saying, but considering we are dealing with audio - and all instruments need to be heard, all the aspects such as compression and reverb have an affect on how it's heard.

Therefore, the EQ of it

But - yeah, I can see your point.

Also; if you want to eat some of the initial low end out of guitars / bass, try having a really quick attack on a compressor (not sure what you have available) as within logic8, I use this to try and take a lot of the low end outta some signals without resorting to EQ.

 

[ffaudio]

Here's a clip for people interested in listening. I did this last night after posting in the mp3 area.

http://www.ffaudio.com/music/damnitahl/disastrophie-m1b.mp3

The guitars are hard panned L and R and each being sent to Waves Super Tap with the shortest delay and panned hard left and right.

I cut some highs last night and added some on the snare to get it to cut through, but I think I ended up cutting too much in the guitars and getting them a little too dark, so I'm going to look into that tonight.

Also the guitars have a C4 with the Sneap setting comping the low mids.

Drums are going to a parallel comp bus with a UAD-1 1176LN in all buttons in with a 2ish attack and 3ish release hitting pretty hard on gain reduction.

 

[el-biczel]

The thing you did is big mono. All stuff panned hard left/right and center - that's not good, it doesn't help and there is a lot of space in the mix left.
The snare is just to dark in my opinion - and why won't you cut the guitars just 1,5-2dB?? They can really be a bit quiter.

 

[crillemannen]

Sry m8, but you have to spend more time trying to achieve a better guitar sound. Not even the best producer in the world could make up something decent with those guitars.
You cant do magic in the mix, it all depends on how good the sound is from the start.