Unable to balance tracks...>Argh..!

Hi all,
 
I am busy recording a guitar orientated piece and have laid all the tracks down. In total, there are:
 
3 drum tracks: One with reverb, one bass and one top end.
2 bass tracks: One slightly distorted and marginally bass heavy; the other is relatively clean, panned L/R.
6 Guitar rhythm tracks: Four, just (rock type) distorted, panned hard left/right and two that are lower gain, just lifting the backing slightly.
Three lead tracks: Mid, hard L/R. The mid is a standard mix (thing "Slash" Guns n Roses tone), with one of the others slightly bass heavy and the next, with more top end. Very little reverb.
 
All of it was played DI, just through a Zoom G2 FX unit and the PC's sound card.
 
I have used Voxengo's MSED a great deal to split and define the tracks, plus a stereo enhancer to widen the sound, but the full mix either ends up sounding too thin, to bass heavy or too much like "elevator music".
 
I really want a defined mix, where you can hear all the instruments, but I also need it to have a pulsing, tribal drum kind of feel, without being too heavy on bass.
 
It's difficult without hearing it, but any general ideas where I could be going amiss?

What have you tried this far? I'm not at all an expert, but your description arouses a few questions:

Are the 6 guitar rhytm tracks each separately played or are they copies? I'd say it's quite difficult to play 4-6 doubles without losing punch. That combined with stereo wideners could make the overall sound vague and undefined.

Have you cut the low end of the guitars? At least for testing purposes I recommend high pass-EQing all the guitar tracks around 150 Hz.
I'd also put a high-pass EQ in the master buss around 40 Hz.
Also I'd try panning the two bass tracks at center. If the other one has FX and the other one not it creates stereo effect which can be hard to handle with bass.

What drum software are you using? The balance of the drums could be easier to control if you had each kitpiece output to an audio track of it's own. If you've recorded live drums, I can't give advice.

I understand all the guitars are recorded wet (with the FX) ¨through external gear which leaves out the possibility to test with diffrent sounds. If the guitars were dry with an amp sim in the FX bin, a logical starting point would be mixing almost dry and then start adding FX little by little.

A total of nine guitar tracks with diffrent FX is the problem as far as I see it. I would start testing/re-mixing with centering the bass tracks and leaving half of the guitar tracks out and closing all the FX you can trying to analyse what works and when the sound starts to go wrong.

Remember: multitrack recording is 1+1=3 mathematics. Them sum of everything is more than that of the individual parts. If you try to make the individual tracks sound great, the final result is a mess.

All this humbly admitting that I'm no mixing wizard.

Tatey,

Yeah... I have to agree.... too many guitar tracks... too many things panned wide or extreme that should NOT be.

My advice..... Put the drums in the center with maybe no more that 5 to 10% pan MAX! Same thing on the bass. In all my mixes, drums and bass and lead vox are always centered... no panning at all. Straight down the center.

Guitars.... pick one really good rhythm track and stick with it. If you have to have more... record a second (don't clone) and put it slightly off center 25% or so..opposite the other this gives a nice stereo spread .
Same thing with lead.....pick a good lead and stick with it. I normally keep a solo lead centered or panned no more that 10 to 15%. The only time I like to pan hard 60% or more up to 100% extreme is if there are twin harmony leads happening.

Remember that extreme panned stuff might get totally lost (missing in action) if and when the mix is mono.  Cloned and panned tracks can interact in a bad way when summed to mono as well.

For this reason, and more.... I recommend keeping the mix clean and sparse to start with. you can attempt the Slash tricks when you get nice clean mixes...later down the road.  The more tracks you put into a project, the faster it turns into a muddy mess with no definition. Tracks are impossible to hear clearly, all the punch disappears, and adding FX to try to fix the mix NEVER works.... it tends to make it worse.

Try this: Mute everything. Bypass ALL FX.    Start with the drums and bass. center them and get them sounding good and working together. then add the rhythm guitar... audition one track at a time until you find the one that works best.  pan it right. now repeat the process and find the left rhythm..  now leave all the others muted or archived.
So far you have bass drums and 2 guitars panned at 25% or less opposite each other. You should have a tight rhythm section going on at this point. Now add the lead... down the center.  If you add the other leads,,,, keep their levels so low you can barely hear them... ONE guitar should stand out.

See if that helps any.....


my 2 centavos.

It's not at all impossible to make large amount of guitar layers work, but it requires excellent timing, propably gates to eliminate the almost inaudible noises that sabotage the mix when multiplied, and careful choice of sounds. If you use, say, a reverb,  it can "live" differently on every track depending on the reverb used, which leads to uncontrollable blend of echoes.

I'd say, for an amateur like me, the guitar sound should be relatively dry and snappy,  and then the tracks should be sent to one bus and be given a common reverb or delay or something.

In one word: It requires experience.

Cheers guys.

Just revisited it and got rid of a load of layers, did as you said GH and bypassed all the FX, muted the solo and got the rhythm working, then added the solo afterwards.

What a transformation. I think I just got carried away with the need to thicken the whole thing, which led to a loss of clarity.

Took it back to basics and that seems to have worked. We'll see when I use the MP3, burned to CD, on the old muzak player.

We'll see....Haha.........