skullsession
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 09:40:06
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Seems a bit crowded in the low mids.... a little HPF on the guitars would help that.
But as far as balance, I don't personally hear anything wrong with it. I LIKE where the guitar is. I don't feel like I'm struggling to hear anything at all.
Nice piece, btw!
HOOK: Skullsessions.com / Darwins God Album "Without a doubt I would have far greater listening and aural skills than most of the forum members here. Not all but many I am sure....I have done more listening than most people." - Jeff Evans on how awesome Jeff Evans is.
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I/O
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 10:55:40
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I really do appreciate all the feedback, suggestions and compliments. I have lot's of stuff to look at now.
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feedback50
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 12:40:13
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A few last thoughts....
Distortion takes many forms. Nearly all of them involve overdriving some or all of the components in the signal chain which deliver a non-linear response from the guitar signal. The overdrive causes the limited gain of each subsequent stage to distort the tops of what was originally a somewhat sinusoidal waveform (from the guitar). This can create some wonderful harmonics that weren't necessarily in the original signal from the guitar. These harmonics can extend not just within the original range of the instrument can go all through the entire audible spectrum. The other effect of this is that because there is so much gain involved and the amplitude is being limited by the tubes running out of their linear gain range (or a simulation thereof), the signal becomes very compressed (compared to the natural guitar sound) which significantly increases the sustain of the instrument. The earliest distortion pedals I recall were known as "fuzz tones". They created a nasty sounding square wave, but delivered a cheap way for guitarists to achieve some of the sustain they were hearing from other players. Thankfully, distortion pedals and amp-sims have gotten much better, but most have a few things in common with the earliest forms of distortion. To some degree, they all obscure the actual notes played by adding large numbers of artificial harmonics that can eat up a lot of space in your mix. They also highly compress the guitar (providing sustain), but obscuring the rhythm pattern of the player somewhat (because the attacks are limited by the distortion) which eats up a lot of rhythmic space in your mix. This can present a big problem to the mix engineer. In a dense mix, the best you can hope for is for the player to carefully select distortion/tones, and find complimentary parts to play with enough space to let the song breath.
Playing live, there is a tendency for some guitarists in an instrumental cover-band trio, to over-distort his sound in an insecure attempt to sound as big as the songs he's trying to cover. The downside is that he may end up sacrificing much of the chord definition, and much of the rhythmic contribution to an already under-manned ensemble.
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batsbrew
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 13:13:04
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the secret?
there's no secret, really.
it starts with the sound source.
if you mic an amp, especially close mic, there are an infinite number of variations:
how loud your playing;
how much speaker excursion there is.....
the angle of the mic...
the distance from the speaker....
the sound of the room...
the type of mic you're using...
you start with the actual sound of your guitar thru the amp.
a lot of people drop the ball right there.
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Jeff Evans
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 14:06:29
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I have listened to it and can hear some problems with this. I am going to be critical so please take it in as all good. And not referring to the the music or playing either, just the production. The mix is basically all wrong and firstly all of the rhythm section is not mixed well. If they are not kicking and sitting right then no matter of other guitar stuff is going to sound right. Check out the mix here on Guthrie Govans's tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71izserFcek Don't you love Guthrie! Listen to the backing track mix. I hear your tune more like that. You have not recorded either the rhythm or lead guitar all that well either. Thats where batsbrew and other great guitar sounds capturing advice comes into play. But once you do get some great guitar sounds, firstly I open these tracks up in Cool Edit and check them. This is often a great time to pull that odd phrase either up or down to match the overall scheme of things. Compression on both guitar tracks can be useful and important. Here is a clip from some compressor advice I gave recently: The idea is to lower the threshold as much as you can without loosing the effects you have created with Attack and Release. The higher the ratio, the smaller the sound is, although it is more controlled. The lower the ratio as in 2:1 it feels like a larger image. The idea is to find a ratio that sounds big but is controlled. Listen to the size and firmness of the sound.
If you have done your work in the editor you dont need a limiter therefore you can use a compressor with a lower ratio to achieve a controlled and big sound. Then in the little speaker when you check your mix you can get both guitar parts to sit low and still be loud and clear. They will leap out a bit.
I realise you might want a different sound to the above Guthrie's track example there maybe more like this. This is another Guthrie track with a more crunchy lead sound. The backing track is well mixed though as well. Much more where yours should be. With your track, there are plenty of ways to separate the lead out with the use of delays and touch of reverb etc. Rhythm parts can also leap out a bit more with some stereo treatments to get them well out of the way of the central lead sound as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUZK9dasP8s
Here the electric piano is covering the rhythm guitar part but you could achieve this by maybe making the rhythm part clean, chorused slightly, rounder tone etc. The lead sound in this one is obviously crankin a bit more.
Back to your track, once you get the guitars right then you can almost turn them down to maximum illusion, minimum voltage effect as well. On the VU meters for example neither of the guitars will actually effect the ballisitics of the pointer hardly at all yet the guitars will be loud and clear and ever present.
I have not talked about mastering either. Once a well mixed track with the guitars sitting well is mastered, it is going to glue together a little more solidly and become a little louder and more punchy too. You are hearing all those things in the commercial tracks you like. Great rhythm section mixes, well recorded and well placed guitars and great mastering.
post edited by Jeff Evans - 2011/02/03 14:12:40
Specs i5-2500K 3.5 Ghz - 8 Gb RAM - Win 7 64 bit - ATI Radeon HD6900 Series - RME PCI HDSP9632 - Steinberg Midex 8 Midi interface - Faderport 8- Studio One V4 - iMac 2.5Ghz Core i5 - Sierra 10.12.6 - Focusrite Clarett thunderbolt interface Poor minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas -Eleanor Roosevelt
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AT
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 14:27:47
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Mike,
I'm not sure how much double or tripple tracking helps, either. On vocals, sure, that is how you get a chorus effect, but if your guitar is already thick it usually just muddies it up. Of course, others here seems to think it is the way, so who I am I to argue? However you get the sound you want is the way to do it.
That is part of the problem of home recording, esp. if you write/arrange/play too. There is so much to learn, and it all interacts. And if you don't have anyone to learn from, watching them, it makes it even harder. You get to make mistakes in every aspect of the process.
To the OP, recording is an art, not science (tho the more science you have the easier it is to understand the art). As such, you've just gotten about a hundred variations on one theme, how to make your guitars stand out, some of them mutually exclusive. Ain't the internet great. try some of the suggestions out, keep others in your head to try later, and come up with your own methodology. There are a million ways to do something wrong, a million ways to do it right, but only one right way for you.
@
https://soundcloud.com/a-pleasure-dome
http://www.bnoir-film.com/ there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
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mattplaysguitar
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 15:26:53
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chuckebaby
mattplaysguitar
Jumbicat
Have you tried the Boost plug in?
Are you freaking SERIOUS?!?!?! Do you have any idea what the boost plug in does? Man, I can't stand how everyone things the solution to any problem is to just put boost on it... If you don't know when to use it, you shouldn't be using it at all. Full stop.
hey did you have your coffee this morning?...lol..no need to rip anyones head off and stuff your vst's down their throat.
No... I don't think I did... Mmmm, coffeeeeeeeee
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mattplaysguitar
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 15:31:55
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Bristol_Jonesey
I've not read every post on this thread, but one thing to be extremely cautious about is how much distortion you use.
Whatver you think sounds "good", back it off a little.
Too much distortion = fizzy highs = thin sound.
Oh yes, very important one about the distortion!!! VERY important!!! I have not read all the posts so don't know if others go into details already, but this is a biggy. Live, you might crank the distortion and it sounds GREAT! In the studio, however, less is more. To get a massively huge, crunchy, distorted sound, I struggle to use little enough distortion. I turn the gain up just a smidgen from off, to get the slightest HINT of distortion, and sometimes that can be too much. Remember if you are layering guitar tracks the effects can be even worse as little bits of distortion on each guitar track and quickly add up and give you way too much, in my experience. Be very conservative.
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Jumbicat
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 15:43:57
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mattplaysguitar
Jumbicat
Have you tried the Boost plug in?
Are you freaking SERIOUS?!?!?! Do you have any idea what the boost plug in does? Man, I can't stand how everyone things the solution to any problem is to just put boost on it... If you don't know when to use it, you shouldn't be using it at all. Full stop.
Thanks for that. Good point. Way out of my league.
Win7Pro64Bit-AMD-1090t -4 GIG OC DDR3-2k-GTX-465-C300 SATA6-SSD 64G-Sonar 8.5,X2a - Pro Tools Digi-001, a few Axon controllers http://soundcloud.com/jumbicat
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Rbh
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/03 18:22:25
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I think it would come together with slight reduction in the rhythm guits distortion level and mild roll off @ about 250 hz.
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Kalle Rantaaho
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/04 12:31:36
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+1 to the ones who said the guitars are competing. They have so similar sounds that a porridge is inevitable. I'd approach the problem by starting with a clean rhytm guitar, and carefully testing
how much body in the background guitar the solo can tolerate.
Also I'd use less distortion. That grainy sound lacks definition.
SONAR PE 8.5.3, Asus P5B, 2,4 Ghz Dual Core, 4 Gb RAM, GF 7300, EMU 1820, Bluetube Pre - Kontakt4, Ozone, Addictive Drums, PSP Mixpack2, Melda Creative Pack, Melodyne Plugin etc. The benefit of being a middle aged amateur is the low number of years of frustration ahead of you.
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mattplaysguitar
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/04 15:49:30
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Jumbicat
mattplaysguitar
Jumbicat
Have you tried the Boost plug in?
Are you freaking SERIOUS?!?!?! Do you have any idea what the boost plug in does? Man, I can't stand how everyone things the solution to any problem is to just put boost on it... If you don't know when to use it, you shouldn't be using it at all. Full stop.
Thanks for that. Good point. Way out of my league.
I will apologise for my 'animation' in that original message... But please, do some research on limiters and boost 11 (should be plenty of threads out there) to get a better understanding of what it's actually used for.
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Jumbicat
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Re:What's the secret to getting guitars up front?
2011/02/04 16:10:50
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mattplaysguitar
Jumbicat
mattplaysguitar
Jumbicat
Have you tried the Boost plug in?
Are you freaking SERIOUS?!?!?! Do you have any idea what the boost plug in does? Man, I can't stand how everyone things the solution to any problem is to just put boost on it... If you don't know when to use it, you shouldn't be using it at all. Full stop.
Thanks for that. Good point. Way out of my league.
I will apologise for my 'animation' in that original message... But please, do some research on limiters and boost 11 (should be plenty of threads out there) to get a better understanding of what it's actually used for.
No need to apologize, but thanks. I did not take it as a personal attack, I'm a little too old to be rattled by words in a forum. But you are right. In this case, the OP clearly has had more time with Sonar than I. I'm sort of unconventional when it comes to mixing. I used Boost on one of my projects and it worked well for me. But I'm just an amateur who relies on what sounds good. not the science. It's an art, no doubt about it. In the future, I won't be so quick to write off the cuff.
Win7Pro64Bit-AMD-1090t -4 GIG OC DDR3-2k-GTX-465-C300 SATA6-SSD 64G-Sonar 8.5,X2a - Pro Tools Digi-001, a few Axon controllers http://soundcloud.com/jumbicat
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