Guitar/Bass Mixing Techniques

Alright, so post your techniques involving guitar mixing.

Mine:

Guitar:
Panning - If you have a rhythmic guitar set for a chorus, and then a lead, pan one guitar to the left, and make another recording of the same rhythm for the right, and pan it to the right -- no alternations. 90% to the L and R should do. Make sure to leave the lead centered. This should produce a BIG sound for rock.

Feedback - If you're leading into a loud chorus, that you think would scare the crap out of anyone who listens to it, I'd suggest putting a little bit of feedback slightly before it gets loud, so they can expect the loudness. It's what I did. Works great for me.

Bass:
Volume - Most of the time when I record, my bass is way to loud and starts clipping the track. My solution, bring the bass down to -2.0, maybe -3.0 if necessary, also, EQ it a bit, maybe that'll help the clipping.




Post yours.

keep bass in the center of the mix....

panning the guitars R & L is OK..... however .... 90% is a bit extreme and will be uncomfortable to most listeners... I would recommend panning about 25% to 40% for guitars. especially is it's a solo lead guitar. IF you have a twin lead thing happening...like I tend to do in alot of my songs... to go 60% is fine... just keep the levels balanced... because the further to the limit you go the more critical the balance becomes.

I like to put rhythm guitar and keys on opposite sides of the mix..... usually at 25% or so.

Whatever you do on one side of the mix.... you need to counterbalance with something on the opposite side of the mix.

However... all this is subjective and relative..... mix the way you want it to sound....

people will give you feedback on their opinion.....take it or leave it.

I agree with this. However, sometimes when you're having problems with the bass guitar and the kick drum competing with each other, a useful tip is moving the bass just like 2-4% panned one way or the other. It still sounds centered but can make a surprising difference in the separation of the two...

Good tip Dave - I'm going to try that out on my bass tracks.

For electric guitar I tend to play at least two rhythms, with one 50L and the other 70R (or sometimes 70L and 80R). For an even fuller sound, I'll add a third rhythm at 70L or 80L (maybe just bring it in for the chorus and breaks). Maybe I'll have two tracks processed and one clean, but it it all depends on the song. Lots of potential variations.

Most of the time when I record, my bass is way to loud and starts clipping the track. My solution, bring the bass down to -2.0, maybe -3.0 if necessary, also, EQ it a bit, maybe that'll help the clipping.

Doing anyhting after the fact wont help if your recoridng signal is clipping. Turn you gain stage down for the bass. Read up on complimetary EQ'ing techniques. Google has allot of info about this. Then youll see a picture of whjat is needed for the kick and bass. Aslo, do what sounds good to you and do what helps the song.

ORIGINAL: Bristol_Jonesey

I almost always add some EQ with a LPF around 34kHz or so to remove any rumble or low end noise

Dave that doesn't sound right mate.

Do you mean using a HPF @ 34Hz????

Doh! Yes you're right! Sorry bout that...

I think the technique of "ducking" works well and I've read many use it for bass drum and bass.
I've never done it but plan on learning how. Have read about it numerous times, just never tried.


I really don't have panning rules to offer...I pan to preference for my taste.

ORIGINAL: montezuma

I can never get a bass track to work in anything because I have to use synth bass and I can never get the synth to tune up perfectly to my acoustic guitar, so it always sounds weird. Plus, I find making up bass parts really hard...they always seem to intrude on the song and clutter the hell out of it.

I know what you mean. Tune your guitar to the synth.

It's painfully easy (for me) to over play the bass. It's so damn tempting! anyhooo, just lay down a bass line and then listen to it from beginning to end and you'll hear what should come out and what should stay.
Start from there and just keep it torturously simple (wish i could!)....listen, tweek, play, listen, tweek....

It's my favorite instrument because it determines the whole harmonic direction (or lack of) of the song and it's where you can really shift the listeners expectations and take them into new territory without any dramatic change in melody.

I have a question......... When setting recording levels for bass or guitar, What is the proper level I should shoot for. I have been staying in the -12db peak zone on the meter. Is that a good level to work with?

So your close to peaking?

Would that go for the final mix to or from the master bus as well? such as the level I would export to burn to a cd?

ORIGINAL: No How

ORIGINAL: montezuma

I can never get a bass track to work in anything because I have to use synth bass and I can never get the synth to tune up perfectly to my acoustic guitar, so it always sounds weird. Plus, I find making up bass parts really hard...they always seem to intrude on the song and clutter the hell out of it.

I know what you mean. Tune your guitar to the synth.

It's painfully easy (for me) to over play the bass. It's so damn tempting! anyhooo, just lay down a bass line and then listen to it from beginning to end and you'll hear what should come out and what should stay.
Start from there and just keep it torturously simple (wish i could!)....listen, tweek, play, listen, tweek....

It's my favorite instrument because it determines the whole harmonic direction (or lack of) of the song and it's where you can really shift the listeners expectations and take them into new territory without any dramatic change in melody.

Yeah, I think it's a smart thing to do to get your guitar tuned to the synth early on...even though 440hz natural e should be the same in the synth and on a properly tuned guitar independent of the synth. They just should be the same. But if you are off by a hair, it's a lost cause to start to try and adjust the sythn by a few cents or a few 'nths of a cent to try to get them spot on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But anyway, yes, trying to keep a bass line painfully simple is even a challenge. It's a tough instrument to make up for your song for me.

I know that clipping is bad, I just picked up in one of the forums a while back that when recording digitally you never want to exceed -12db

.
When reading forums, you need consider the source. Don'T believe everything you read here and do not just believe me. Use common sense and look things up on the pc so that you can get another opinion or another take on things.
For me, a peak of-12db is too low for a recorded signal. I record as hot as possible, without clipping. This ensures that i get the most out of my sound

Cj

ORIGINAL: CJaysMusic

I know that clipping is bad, I just picked up in one of the forums a while back that when recording digitally you never want to exceed -12db

.
When reading forums, you need consider the source. Don'T believe everything you read here and do not just believe me. Use common sense and look things up on the pc so that you can get another opinion or another take on things.
For me, a peak of-12db is too low for a recorded signal. I record as hot as possible, without clipping. This ensures that i get the most out of my sound

Cj

Yeah but cj, from what I know and have heard about your music, you're not exactly the mellow acoustic strumming balladeer. You have and go for a loud and big sound. Well I guess you did say 'get the most out of my sound'...so fair enough.

What level setting determines the final mix sent to a cd burn, Would it be the master bus?

ORIGINAL: Marah Mag
As I understand it, it's not that you're not supposed to not go above -12, it's that if you are recording at 24 bits, then the noise floor is so low that you can still get acceptable quality even if you're only peaking at -12.

But that doesn't mean that you should avoid using those 12 dbs.

What this means in practice is that you can be less concerned about setting a precise level and worrying that an extra hard guitar or drum hit is going to go over 0db by some small amount because you can just shift your entire recording range down and still get a good sound.

In other words, there's more margin for error in anticipating dynamic range. This makes it easier to just get on with it, and less need to play "chicken" with 0db. But there's no reason not to come as close as you can, as per CJ.

At least that's how I understand it.

That's pretty close to my view of the world... we may both be wrong<G>... but there is one little bit in there I'd like to highlight.

Just because you are recording with 24 bits of resolution does not mean you have oodles of dynamic range to play with. First, almost every vendor of low to mid-range converters uses the converter chip S/N ratio specification, not the device specification. Now to be fair, that's partly to make their product look good, partly because everyone else does it, and partly because there is no really well defined specification for S/N ratio as it crosses over from A into D (or vica-versa!)

The other thing to consider is that nothing out there has a 144 dB S/N ratio, so even if your converter were capable of perfect operation (and it isn't), your preamplifiers, monitor amplifier, etc aren't anywhere near that good.

As an experiment I built a line level buffer, no gain, really a pretty pointless device, just to see how quiet I could make it. I was pretty surprised - the test set I was using at the time, an AP Portable One Plus, was struggling to measure the noise floor with the input terminated. So I don't really know what I ended up with, but it was scary quiet. To get there I took great care with the circuit layout, I used all metal resistors (both of them??), and no capacitors. I also overbuilt the power supply such that noise and ripple were unmeasurable.

It didn't really prove anything except that it was possible to build a circuit that was really quiet. So I added 70 dB of gain, no adjustment, just enough gain to bring a ribbon microphone up to line level, and I added a passive ladder attenuator on the output. All of the sudden I had no problem measuring S/N ratio<G>!

What's all this have to do with numbers of bits? Just that you can't assume that all your bits are pristine, there is a least significant bit, and it's probably much higher than you'd like. So you do want to keep your levels reasonable.

At the same time you don't want to run too hot because there are all sorts of ways that a signal can distort, and as a rule most listeners are more aware of distortion than they are of noise, at least according to studies I've read. The really odd part is that they are less bothered by certain types of distortion than others, or noise. If the distortion product is harmonically related to the signal it often sounds pleasing. Go figure.

There is no agreement on a reference level for digital audio recording or processing. Some folks work as low as -18dBFS, others as high as -6dBFS, and some fall in the middle.

Me? I love tranisients, and I figure they are probably going to get mucked up somewhere along the way anyway, but I like to give them a fighting chance, so I use -18dBFS or maybe -16dBFS.

YMMV. and really, if you are busy counting bits you probably aren't paying enough attention to your mix<G>!