Mixing Guitars: 7 Simple Tricks You MUST Try | musicianonamission.com - Mix School #13

a lot of people underestimate the importance of the electric guitars in the mix and when you mix them wrong when you don't use good balancing good EQ moves they can really fill up a lot of space and mix a lot of space that they don't need and suddenly you're making slight sound messy it can start to sound muddy and it can start to sound undefined especially if you're over dubbing and adding several guitar parts so to help you avoid all of those problems in this video I'm going to give you seven of my best tips for mixing guitars to sound separate clear aggressive and also to improve the overall mix and leave lots of room for the other stuff so tip number one and I can't stress the importance of this enough is to never solo when you're mixing electric guitars now let me expand on that day a lot of people say never solo and they kind of leave it at that and expects you to just mix without soloing which can be quite difficult if you're a beginner or even if you're an intermediate sometimes it's hard to hear the changes especially if the guitars are quite low in the mix so I'm going to give you a few more tips there so by avoiding solo what I mean is mostly avoid so during one particular channel we're going to talk more about group busing in a second but I like to mix do a lot of my guitar mixing on a group bus so sometimes it's okay if you solo that if you really want to listen in on the relationship between the guitars but still try to avoid that my best tip for not mixing a solo is to just bring up the level a bit when you're applying your EQ moot and you can do that just on the group bus bring up all the guitars so they're a bit higher in the mix so that when you start tweaking the EQ you're still doing it in the context of the mix you can still hear the vocal you can still hear the low-end you can still hear the other parts in the mix whilst you're tweaking the guitar tweaking the EQ tweaking the compression but you're still going to be able to hear those changes clearer because you bought the volume up once you've applied those changes just drop the volume down a bit so that's tip number one it's really important because we do mix in solo and you try to make your guitar sound good in solo they're never going to sound good in the mix and this used to really mess with me personally something I struggled with for a long time because I always try to make my guitar sound good in solo what I would do then is think or actually I'm doing this wrong I need to make them sound good and mix oh I'd EQ them in the mix and then after that I'd so love them they sound awful that sounds Ned sounds tinny aggressive and I think this can't be right it sounds so bad in solo but that was a massive mistake in fact I was on the right track and kind of second-guessing myself it doesn't matter if it sounds awful in solo all that matters is how it sounds in the mix so apply EQ in the mix and then if you do solo it don't but if you do and it sounds awful don't let that put you off it probably is going to sound awful in solo and you get to hear more about why that is in a second but for now just remember that number one try to avoid solo tip number two is to mute any unnecessary microphones and channels also mute any unnecessary parts so when I'm talking about unnecessary parts I mostly mean overdubbing a lot of people get really carried away with overdubbing the same chords and panning them hard left and hard right and then add in another set of chords in the middle or playing the same thing and they think this is going to make them lick some heavier but in fact it does the opposite it starts to make them mix some messy muddy it removes the aggression and it starts to become a lot a lot harder to mix because you need to get separation and if you have five guitars or playing the same thing that's never going to happen so mute unnecessary parts you never need more than two guitar parts playing the same thing if you are overdubbing and in general you want to make sure that the parts have their own space in the mix so maybe one chord or part that's lower in the open chords and then one melodic part of this higher up the guitar but also you might want to mute any unnecessary microphone so let me give me an example in this mix I didn't record this this is someone else who made this recording I just mixed it so the first thing I did when open this up is went through the pianos and the acoustic guitar in the electric guitar one by one how to listen and realize that each part has been recorded with three different microphones so to give you an example on this guitar I have got a part here let's have a listen and I'll punish the sensor now so we've got free mics this one this one and this one which is going to be on the left cuz it's automated and so what I actually decided was when I was listening back to these I didn't want all three there was no need for me to balance them it's quite a dense mix anyway I liked the tone of this mic and I actually chose a microphone on the other part because there's two guitar parts that complemented that so both of these were recorded with a c41 four which is a small diaphragm condenser and also i believe in md 41 which is a dynamic mic so for this part i chose to use the dynamic mic which would a bit warmer sounding and suited the kind of lower register and then on this part you can hear in the right ear I chose to use the c4 and for us it's a bit brighter but then I'm used at the other microphones I don't didn't feel like I needed them did feel like they were adding to it and try balancing them to create toner like spit instead I just muted them so that's tip number two Mew any unnecessary parts if there are too many overdubs for example or Mew any unnecessary microphones or channels that you're not using or the eyes or anything else number three is focused on getting the balance right before processing so before we move on to EQ and I'm going to talk about more about group processing before you even get to that you want to make sure the balance is good and this is really important here it was about right I've got some gain staging so minus 3db on the channel on the left and then the one on the right is pretty much a zero so obviously didn't take me long to get the balance in my hair but spend a few minutes balancing the guitars in the next one at a time until they're in a really good position they're not too loud that they're distracting from the vocal or any other lead guitar parts for example not too quiet that they get lost in the mix you just want them to sit nicely in the mix complementing and add in aggression filling out chords etc but not so loud that they distract from the vocal and just spend a few minutes on that but then once you've done your balance you can then go to my fourth tip which is processing on the group so you'll see here with these guitar parts I've only got a bit of gain staging on one just to bring the gain down a bit nothing on this one and then all my processing is on a group bus so here I've just got all my group buses so if we go back to those guitar parts you'll see they're being sent the output is electric guitar so they're not going straight to my sub master sub mix or master out or wherever you're using as your master fader instead they go into this channel here electric guitar and then I've got my processing on the channel so you don't need to process each part individually it's just going to save you so much more time you're going to finish your mix of less processing less plugins which is always better and it makes you think more about how the guitars in general sitting mix so if you want all the guitars to have a certain pocket in the mix where they're occupying the lower mids or the upper mids normally it would be somewhere between one in a 6000 that I want to exaggerate the electric guitars then you can do that on all of them at once you don't need to do each one individually of course if you do have individual amps or different guitars or different parts that you want to treat individually that's fine but prioritize treating big guitars on the group Channel and you can see I haven't actually got any compression on these guitars so in this video I'm not going to be talking about compression quickly I can just say that you don't want to use a too fast attack time you want to use the slower attack time so that the aggressions there unless it's really aggressive guitarist who's picking too hard then you can use a fast attack time just to catch that that pick and that tack but generally some light compression just between two and five decibels helps to make the guitar a bit more constant I didn't feel like I needed a hit so now let's move on to EQ starting with tip five which is don't be afraid to cut the highs and the lows an electric guitar is a very mid-range heavy instrument don't need the low end is pointless the bass and the kicker filling that end of the spectrum and you don't need the top-end because there isn't much top-end there's not much brightness in an electric guitar all the brightness will come from the upper mids not so much air and treble above 10 kilohertz for example that's all going to be maybe acoustic guitars vocals cymbals that kind of stuff so by actually removing the lows and removing the highs you're making room in the mixer everything else you're making room in the top ends and vocals to shine for you making room in the bottom end for the bass and kicks are showing through and you're making sure you're not clogging up the line making the mixer muddy and by actually cutting the hide you can put the guitars a bit further back in the mix which creates depth in real life if we hear something with less high-frequency content that means it's further away so by cutting the hires you're putting the guitars back in the mix which creates depth because the vocals are going to be nice and bright right at the front of the mix if everything was bright nothing would sound bright nothing would sound clear so by cutting the highs and the guitars you're making the vocals sound clearer in relationship besides but you're also adding that element of depth to your mix that you would have otherwise and this doesn't apply just to guitars this applies to everything keyboard parts that you want to push further back reverb generally you might want to push it further back so you can cut the highs on your reverb bus any kind of supportive part you can cut the highs a bit to put it further back in the mix and create some depth so I've got two cuts going here I've got a high-pass filter 87 which is actually quite low for me I'd normally go a bit higher with electric guitars but I have got a very very heavy cut at 300 to remove all the low mud so I didn't feel that that was really adding to the tone I didn't want the guitar to sound warm in the context of the mix which we haven't actually heard yet so if I unsolo these you'll hear they actually sound quite bright and tiny and solo come listen but as I said never solo I'm just doing that for demo purposes so you can hear there that they don't sound great in solo but in the mix [Music] [Music] I feel they really occupied that upper mid-range and give it some nice aggression give it some nice twang so that's exactly what I wanted to achieve and that area around 300 wasn't adding for that it was anything it was just adding melt and mix so don't be afraid to cut the lows and the low mids as well quite aggressively a 9 DB cut there and then on the top end I've got high shaft got 2 dB at 5.2 kilohertz and generally I will go that low around 5 kilohertz anything above that you don't really need to give you an example let me solo them and then apply a low-pass filter so if we solo wrong one so the guitars here and bring on just a stock logic EQ and listen to how this doesn't really make a difference especially when I bring this one in and as I get lower and lower eventually you'll hear where it starts to affect the tone but until around five or six K it's not actually doing that much [Music] so that's where it starts to dull them a bit when we get to six seven kilohertz and this is because I'm using an aggressive low-pass filter so generally you can do that I could just put a low pass at Thank You Love [Music] we're not really losing anything at all and so normally I would do that I'd use a low pass filter anywhere around 10 kilohertz but here I've just gone for a high shelf cart at 5 kilohertz which is quite low but like I said you don't need anything there so don't be afraid to cut the lows in the highs and then tip number six is don't be afraid to boost the upper mids and this is goes back for that thing of generally people will avoid boosting the upper mids because in solo it doesn't sound good it makes the guitar sound twangy or brittle or too aggressive in the context of the mix this means you can put the guitars a bit lower and boost the upper mids so that they still shine through but they're not really adding mess they're not really filling out space in the mix that they don't need and you're helping to just give them mix a bit more aggression by boosting the upper mids and it could be anywhere here I've actually gone quite low 1.15 kilohertz and to find that if i bypass this one which I'm gonna talk about in a second I would have just added a boost of a few DB and move this around until I found a sweet spot that I like [Music] so in that upper mid-range around here if you just have a listen to this if I boost it you'll sound it kind of too brittle I don't really like how it sounds on this side there's a right-hand side of the knob the tides already sound a bit tiny a bit brittle and that's just far too much but they're going to get lower to this kind of one kilohertz region [Music] that's the kind of thing that I want to do and again I'd be doing this not in solo I'm just serving it so you can hear it better so let's try again with the mix [Music] so when I'm there it just feels like a pocket of the mix of cleanliness filling up here it's just a bit too brittle where it's here it's kind of adding a nice nice sound that I like so I'm just going to go with that so then I just back this off play with the the width generally you want it to be quite wide with your boost to make it sound a bit more musical and that's how we settled on that booth [Music] hope you can hear the quality of sound outside in but then to compensate for that because I'm boosting the upper mids and sometimes if you're not careful it does get too brittle I've also got a cut here just to compensate because it was getting it a bit too messy around 4 kilohertz so normally if you do boost the upper mids you might have to add a cut a bit higher a bit lower just to compensate so let's have a listen to that again I'm going to go into solo but in the context of the mix I would be doing this not in solo [Music] you need to do [Music] new [Music] so here that just clears it up a bit remove something that britainís that that was kind of added by that one kilohertz boost so that's tip six don't be afraid to boost the alpha miss this does a few things helps with guitars to cut through gives aggression to the mix give them a space in the mix because generally there's not going to be much else that still in that area maybe the vocals just be sure you're not boosting the same frequency that your boost on vocals and this is a really good pocket in the mix for electric guitars and then last tip number seven is if you're struggling to add separation between the guitar parts so say you've got an overdub where it's just power chords slightly distorted and it's a heavy track and you're going to pan one hard left and one hard right now in stereo that might sound great because they're separated across the stereo feels they're pant hard left and hard right but then when you flip to mono they become mostly they become undefined they don't complement each other and that they don't really have separation so to compensate for that you can just boost them at different points and cut them at different points so here you can see on the entire group bus and which is where I'm doing my processing I've boosted ones weight 3 5 kilohertz and I've cut three point five six but now let's say I had two guitar parts that were very similar and I wanted them to sound different now first of all if you are doing overdubs flips obtain switch on new guitar that's the easiest way to do or change the amp settings a bit so it sounds slightly different every time you add a new guitar part make it sound a bit different otherwise they can get a bit messy and they start to climb undefined so that's a really easy way but in the mix what you can do is if on one guitar for example like here I've boosted at one point three five and cut three point five six well plan that left and then on the right hand guitar just do the opposite cut it at one point fires and boost it at three point five six so now what's happening is one is occupying that space where it's being boosted three point five six but it's not occupying that space so we're giving room to the other guitar which is the opposite I like to call this range allocation because you're allocating a specific frequency range to each guitar if you boost one guitar at two kilohertz cut the other one it to boost that one at four and cut the other one at four I've got a whole video all about range allocation which I'll link to in the description below if you want to learn more so that's it for guitar mixing hope you find that useful just to summarize those seven tips are number one never use solo or at least try to avoid it instead just bring up the volume bit if you're struggling to hear your changes and if you do solo and it sounds bad don't let that put you off because it's probably going to sound bad in solo number two mute any unnecessary parts or microphones that aren't adding to the music or the mix number three focus on getting the right balance before you even use EQ or compression anything else number four process on the group channel so apply your EQ and compression on the group channel it saves you a lot of time the only time you want to go into each individual is that they're they're different microphones they're different guitars for example or you want to add separation with that range allocation technique otherwise try sit on the group bus number five cut the lows and the highs you don't need the loans you don't need the top-end by cutting the top end you're adding depth to the mix and making room for the vocals and you don't need the low end it's muddy enough the mix so you can remove that number six don't be afraid to boost the upper mids because that's a really good frequency area for the guitars to sit in and again don't worry if they sound banjo solo because it's all about how they sound in the mix and then finally number seven was that range allocation tip where you can boost one guitar on the right hand side at a certain frequency and cut the left guitar at the same frequency and then vice versa to give each guitar its own space and mix so I hope you found that useful in this video we've mostly talked about EQ and that's because compression isn't as important on a guitar electric guitar if you want you can add two to five DB of compression just to make the guitar sit there in the mix make it a bit more manageable but generally it's more about EQ and balancing when you're mixing guitars so thanks for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: Mastering․com

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Keywords: home studio center, home studio corner, pro audio files, rob williams, recordingrevolution, mixnotes, music tech help guy, modern mixing, david glenn, mixing music, music mixing, mixing guitars, warren huart, produce like a pro, mixing guitar, mixing electric guitar, guitar, guitars, recording guitar, recording guitars

Id: F3QuvtD3kd0

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2017