removing picking sound from guitars

[Pedro Teixeira]

I'm mixing a band right now and the tracks they gave me are full of that awful picking sound of the plectrum hitting the strings, it sounds bad. I searched and also tried everything mainly in EQ to get rid of it but I just simply cant... it seems to affect a broad frequency... Anyone has any tips in this matter? Thanks

 

[Metaltastic]

Ack, sounds rough dude, I know that feeling - my only suggestion really is multiband compression, perhaps starting with a de-ess preset to get you in the ballpark, but I'm sorry to say I think there's only so much you can do!

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

I thought of that, tried, also with a de-esser, well it works to an extent, although it sucks a bit of tone out of it, but doesn't make it go away obviously, the main problem is that it's sucking the tone... I know these kind of things should be taken care of in the recording phase... but I wasn't present in that, so I'm stuck with the remains :\ Thanks for the tip marcus

 

[kev]

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy-sneap/268321-minimising-pick-attack-during-solos-leads.html

 

[Chryst Krispies]

I personally like hearing the pick attack.

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Hearing the pick attack is nice to some extent. I had the same problem and listened to a lot of albums to find someone who had a big pick attack as well. I would say the albums who have the most pick attack in their leads is Kalmah and it sounds pretty not bad at all. But the pick attack of the guitarist I was mixing was much more present. So I opened melodyne and removed them.

 

[reg3n]

i personally like that sound a lot... but that "melodyne" word there caught my attention.... so.. how?? (i know the program)

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Well, before a pick attack there is a "too short" release usually, and you can see the pick attack. So I either removed the pick attack or made it very low in volume and brought the release of the previous note much closer or "hugging" the following note when I deleted the pick. And I should say I did that with a clean guitar recorded by DI. And you must be careful not to do a too perfect job otherwise there is no pick attack at all. But then regarding the EQ and the fx you are a free man!

In other words, a guitar solo should look more like that :
==============================
Then like that :
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

But when a guitarist makes too loud pick attacks during leads, I am not 100% why is that but I can say that this guitarist is not the Master of his/her instrument. I also think that unless you are a Master of your guitar you should record in clean in DI.

The Melodyne trick should only be used when the pick totally gets you insane. In my case it doesn't take much. And I will admit that if I have the choice between hearing gross pick attacks with an EQ and FX who are not orgasmic or a "too perfected through melodyne" lead with nifty EQ and FX, I would choose the last one.

Melodyne, with a clean DI guitar can also be used to remove those sloppy power chord changes that creates a big SQUEEEEEEE that annoys the hell out of me.

 

[ahjteam]

does it sound distracting in the mix too?

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

I think some would say it sounds more "midi". But all the lead guitars in midi I tried all had gross attacks. But you know. It sounds like a comet if you ask me. It's very very smooth. It takes a lot of harshness away, it takes it all away I would say.

But regular people who know nothing of sound engineering will never guess a thing.

 

[ahjteam]

midi?

I have to hear samples after that line

 

[chonchball]

you could also try using some kind of transient designer. Waves makes TransX Wide and TransX Multi. They are designed to effect only the transient parts of a WAV and could be used to suck a lot of the attack out of those tracks.

 

[Nectar-and-Fuel]

Use a plugin to convert the audio into MIDI data and then use it to drive DSK Electrik Guitarz

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Well I could not find the very very clear examples so here is an example of the before and after the superfied melodyne moment.

lead sucky pick and more = non-melodyned, and there are some weird alienish sounds.

lead superfied = lead after melodyne

And it's a sucky mix cuz I am lazy and I exported in mono mp3 and blabla.

The first 8 notes are more noticeable and the higher notes at the end also. And the reverb sucks.

So maybe midi is a very bad adjective.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=456089&content=music

edit : oh and in the superfied version I added some "rhythmic notes" hihi I forgot that.

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

I see what you did there, and it works great!! Gonna have to give that a go

 

[GarethSE]

I know what he means ahjteam, I think so at least.
but usually when I've heard lead guitars that sound like midi, they were just ungodly tight with exactly the same sounding attack, so it was far from pleasant.

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Actually the idea is to remove the attack or put the release very long so that it "steps on the attack". Like vsti plug-ins but manually.

I see what you did there, and it works great!! Gonna have to give that a go

Have fun.

 

[MonochromaticStains]

well have to say the superfied sounds better by itself...

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

Is there anyway to remove the picking sound without melodyne? I tried de-essing etc without much success...

Here's a rough clip of what I'm working on, it's only really noticeable in the beginning.. (btw I know it may sound like it's clipping in the beginning but it's the guitars/bass that "click" at the end of each note in the beginning, gotta edit that..)

https://files.getdropbox.com/u/617922/HB%20Vocal%20Structure.mp3

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Well Sptz that does not sound so bad at all. I don't know if you like or hate them but maybe listening to some Kalmah will make you feel better. But whatever you do will affect the sound and I really don't see why a de-esser would work. Maybe some chorus. Maybe the 1000ish frequency should go down. And what I heard was very nice! Interesting vocals.