My Approach to Guitar Layers

hey guys joey here and in today's video i'm gonna walk you through how i approach guitar layering i have a few specific approaches to writing tracking and mixing guitars that make a song sound huge but also clean and if you're struggling with guitar layers in your own productions make sure to watch this till the end now let's get into it [Music] [Applause] since a great sound starts at the source i'm going to start with how i track the guitars i like to record adi and use amp sims to create the tone this gives me way more options for variation which i'll cover in a second and to minimize noise i'll use tape and foam to cover the strings behind the bridge and nut this is going to make sure that i'm only capturing what the guitarist is actually playing and not a bunch of noisy harmonics check out this before and after [Music] i usually record the song in small chunks to make sure that i'm getting the best possible performance for each part this can mean building chords up one note at a time which is referred to as the mutlang method after tracking i'll use a combination of copy paste time alignment and clip stretching to make sure that all of the takes line up having complete control over a production has always been my philosophy the next step is where i do my gating i don't really like to rely on a noise gate to make those decisions for me so i always cut my guitar tracks manually by hand during the editing stage i do a lot of double tracking and my approach depends on the part now let's open some [Music] examples in rocker metal i always double track rhythm guitars it's pretty much the only way to get a modern sounding guitar recording i'll hard pan these guitars left and [Music] right i like doing this because there's an automatic variation between performances that add depth to any song once i've got a good pair of takes that have already been properly edited i take it to the next level with tone using a slightly different eq scheme on the amp is a great first step for making two guitars stand out just make sure that the difference is subtle enough so that the two tracks still mix well together toneforge makes it really easy to do this with the built-in parametric eq with this i can use the exact same tone and emphasize different aspects of it which creates variation while still maintaining a tight doubled sound [Music] different amps cabs pickups and mics can also create unique tones from track to track i like to switch out one of these elements if i'm layering two of them on top of each other like when i quad track guitars this is something that i'm gonna do when i want a part to really feel huge a great opportunity for this technique is in a song's chorus which is where i like a song to feel the largest i almost always introduce some tonal diversity when quad tracking for two reasons number one the frequency spectrum will be more fleshed out by the difference in the two guitar layers which makes the whole thing feel bigger and number two different guitar tones will have less build up in the same frequency this makes sure that the guitar tracks don't become too harsh or too muddy for more information on how i dial in a rhythm tone make sure to check out the toneforge bootcamp i left a link in the description [Music] [Music] another thing i like to use is special effect rhythm tracks this could be anything from octaves glitches filters or modulation i can pretty much get these down to two applications features and texture when a part is featured i'll usually cut the regular rhythm guitars out completely or reduce their volume the goal is to give a special effect the spotlight to make the transition or idea hit harder this is especially effective when i use choppy glitches like this the second way i use these effects guitars is to add texture to the existing rhythm track i'll show you a few examples [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is a great way to flesh out a rhythm track and really makes a guitar sound unique now let's get into the lead guitars [Music] just like with the rhythm guitars i like to double my leads too honestly i just prefer most of my tracks to be in stereo if the lead is simple enough to be played twice accurately then i'll just record two tracks i'll usually use a different amp mic or cab combination than the rhythms to give these guitars their own space and since a lot of my sessions tend to end up with way more than two leads i'll even differentiate them from each other with different mic positions for example this track has four lead guitars going on all at once so i'll use a different mic on each pair [Music] when the song has a really shreddy solo it's tough to get a tight enough double track performance and i'm still going to want that solo to have stereo depth and i have a few ways to get this effect first i can use a stereo cab with different mics tone forge makes this super easy to do this [Music] if i don't have this option because i'm just mixing an already printed amtrak then there's still a few ways to get around it you can duplicate an amp track and offset the takes by a few milliseconds i find that like 10 to 30 works pretty well this gives the mono some stereo depth but won't always work because of the phase when turned into mono that's why i like using mono compatible wideners this spreads the frequency spectrum between left and right channels to get one take to sound more full but doesn't cause any phase issues when collapsed to mono [Music] my approach to cleans is similar to the effects rhythms if they're not the featured rhythm of the section i'm using them as a texture blend or a transition effect the cleans are you guessed it doubled and panned in a metal track i try to keep the focus on the treble of the clean guitars there's already enough body in the track like this between drums bass and rhythm guitars that there really isn't any need to flesh out the mids a sparkly clean guitar can sit closer in frequency to the vocals and symbols to add a unique texture i'll usually have a lot of compression delay and reverb on my cleans [Music] [Applause] when i'm using a clean guitar as a transition i'll bring my high pass down to let more of the body through this puts it more towards the front of the mix so that the listener pays more attention to it and you know it's going to help break up the song so that the listener doesn't get fatigued by the constant noise of a distorted rhythm tone and it's going to make the next part feel fresh [Music] [Applause] this is really just an overall view of how i layer my guitar tracks the one thing i haven't covered is how many layers that i'll use in a track and this is because it really depends on the goal and vibe of a song if a song is supposed to have a raw live mood then you know adding tons of layers in post-production is just going to disrupt that on the flip side a song that calls for an epic wall of sound will suffer from just having two rhythm tracks in a lead knowing how many layers a song needs and what they should be is something that you'll really learn just with experience try fleshing out your own songs and then muting the extra layers to see what approach you or the artist prefers and that's it how many different guitar layers have you made work in your production what tricks do you use to glue it all together let me know in the comments below thanks for watching and if you liked this video hit that subscribe button don't forget to check the links in the description below and tap that bell to get notified whenever we upload new videos until next time happy mixing you

Channel: Joey Sturgis Tones

Views: 141,234

Keywords: home recording, audio production, mixing tutorials, guitar layering, Joey Sturgis, Joey Sturgis Tones, how to layer guitar tracks, clean guitars, lead guitars, rhythm guitars, Toneforge, online course for audio engineers, writing and tracking guitars, tips and tricks for recording guitars, double tracking guitars, quad tracking guitars, Toneforge Menace plugin

Id: 2Gv2ykCz7-U

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021