Mixing guitar sound

Re: Mixing guitar sound

Waves has some great videos on a Youtube -- other channels to check out include:

- Recording Revolution
-PureMix

Fab DuPont did a great seminar ar Sweetater on mixing and recording a live ensemble that gas tons of great tips.

Finally, the Grandaddy of Youtube channels is Pensado's Place. Amazing show and his Into The Lair tutorials are awesome!
 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

This is a quite good video for beginner mixers :)

 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

Icarusfire said:
These are the words I was looking for "blending" "touching eachother" yet I don't know how practically to apply this, for example what is the meaning of "limiting on the individual tracks"
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Your effects should reside in a "library". You should be able to simply drag and drop those effects onto the track you would like to apply them on.

Each track should have a small effects rack where you can apply several effects in a chain... in this instance, you'd want some type of parametric or shelving EQ followed by a limiter to prevent the track from clipping in the master bus.

You can still distort the track with too much additive EQ, so be careful of the amounts of a shelving EQ that you add and watch the width (Q) of your filter boost with a parametric EQ.

A parametric EQ allows you to control the width of the boost or cut in a frequency band (and likewise across it's neighboring frequency bands with larger Q widths), the amount of boosting or cutting and to be able to select the more or less exact frequency you are looking to cut or boost.

A shelving EQ is simply labeled BASS. MID or TREBLE and is quite powerful with drastic boosting or cutting being possible with very little effort because the slope, cut off frequency and Q are all fixed.
 
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Re: Mixing guitar sound

Speaking of Dave Pensado and mixing guitars, here is today's Into The Lair:

 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

Ok, this will make me mad..When I'm "mastering" the final mix, I add EQ, comperssor etc..and keep an eye on the "meter" so it does not go up to red zone. So I leave it at the highest level I can hear without it starts to get distorted and clipped..(around 0 decibel)

But when I bounce it and put it on soundcloud and compare with some other songs, it sounds as if it is half volume of them! This is not perceived loudness or anything..its just no way as loud as them..how is this possible? How can I increase loudness in mastering without hitting reds in the meter?

thanks
 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

You need to use a brickwall limiter. But, in reality, who cares? That's what the volume knob is for! :)
 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

Icarusfire said:
Ok, this will make me mad..When I'm "mastering" the final mix, I add EQ, comperssor etc..and keep an eye on the "meter" so it does not go up to red zone. So I leave it at the highest level I can hear without it starts to get distorted and clipped..(around 0 decibel)

But when I bounce it and put it on soundcloud and compare with some other songs, it sounds as if it is half volume of them! This is not perceived loudness or anything..its just no way as loud as them..how is this possible? How can I increase loudness in mastering without hitting reds in the meter?

thanks
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Really? I am subscribed to your Soundcloud channel and your stuff sounds great! Mastering and getting things to sound as loud as possible is a separate but related discipline to tracking and mixing... more esoteric though.

A plug-in like Steven Slate's FG-X Virtual Mastering plug-in can give you some powerful tools that aren't at all difficult to use and can be the only plug-in you'll need at the master bus as far as something keeping everything in check like a brickwall limiter but can also enhance and embolden the sound quite easily and with a few mouse clicks. His stuff is real intuitive and has a no nonsense GUI.

Again, love your work and think you are absolutely on the right track (already producing monster sounding stuff).

I'm sure all of the excellent mixers on this forum (TwilightOdyssey & P.A.Folic are GREAT engineers BTW) will all agree that getting things to sound as loud as possible (playing the volume war) is extremely difficult and something we are all continuing to improve. Personally, it's a constant battle and the part of engineering that I hate with a passion.
 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

zenmindbeginner said:
I'm sure all of the excellent mixers on this forum (TwilightOdyssey & P.A.Folic are GREAT engineers BTW) will all agree that getting things to sound as loud as possible (playing the volume war) is extremely difficult and something we are all continuing to improve. Personally, it's a constant battle and the part of engineering that I hate with a passion.
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Thanks for the compliment! It's important that the mix is loud but it can't be loud at the cost of the good sound. That's important to remember. Your mixes still have to breathe a bit ;)

Here's my last song now with bass and master



It sounds pretty alright but the drums aren't on the level I'd want them to be. Back to the knobs --->

:D
 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

zenmindbeginner said:
Really? I am subscribed to your Soundcloud channel and your stuff sounds great! Mastering and getting things to sound as loud as possible is a separate but related discipline to tracking and mixing... more esoteric though.

Again, love your work and think you are absolutely on the right track (already producing monster sounding stuff).
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Hey man..thanks for your compliments..really appreciate it. Maybe you remember last year I was using Boss micro br 80 for recording and mastering. No computer, no amp..whatsoever..My life was simple back then and the 2 records in soundcloud from last year are the loudest and best sounding mixes I ever did(to my ears).

This year I went "pro" and started using a computer, plugins, cab IR's, a tube amp etc..While it offers much more..it is of course really much more difficult to get a good sounding mix..When I compare my recordings from last year and this year I feel like I am going "backwards" and not any better on my sound..

So it is kinda frustrating to invest on equipment just to sound worse than a small Boss micro Br 80 : )

P.S I have no regrets on getting tube amp tho, I really love its sound(marshall dsl5c) and quite satisfied what I hear through its line out alone..creating a good mix out of it is problem
 
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Re: Mixing guitar sound

This is a really good vid rom Misha of Periphery

There are really valid points in this vid for every recording musician!

 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

zenmindbeginner said:
I'm sure all of the excellent mixers on this forum (TwilightOdyssey & P.A.Folic are GREAT engineers BTW) will all agree that getting things to sound as loud as possible (playing the volume war) is extremely difficult and something we are all continuing to improve. Personally, it's a constant battle and the part of engineering that I hate with a passion.
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Thanks for the kudos, sir! :)

The 'secret' to mixing is two-fold:
FIRST, how to get everything to 'seat' in next to each other so that it sounds like a sonic jigsaw puzzle wherein all the pieces fit in with such precision that it's hard to imagine it fitting any other way

SECOND, how to maximize each instrument's space within that puzzle, either by pure level or psychoacoustic trickery

I find it very amusing that myself and PAFaholic are mentioned at the same time, as our mixing styles could not be more different; his mixes are, to my ears, more modern and polished than my old-skool approach.

However, I think this hits on a central theme and one that we both utilize in our mixes whether consciously or not: your mix has to have a PURPOSE.

The three Mixing Tenets I live by are:

I. Only one element of the mix can be the loudest at any given time. If you have different elements competing to be the loudest, the only solution is through aggressive compression and that actually makes the mix sound smaller.

II. There has to be a climactic point someplace in the mix that is THE LOUDEST. The rest of the mix works around that point and by definition, should be at least a couple of dB lower so that when it hits the climax, it is both very obvious and has someplace to go; otherwise, we are back to having it get smaller again through brick wall'ing.

III. Learn when to break these Tenets musically.
 
Re: Mixing guitar sound

Oh, as an added note:

For my demos or roughs, I usually strap a brick wall limiter to the output buss just so I can hear it during my LOUD daily commutes (NYC subways and buses).

When I am doing a final mix, I try to have the average level at about -12dBFS and peaking no higher than -3dBFS. That leaves plenty of headroom for the mastering engineer to do his job. No compressors across the output.
 
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