How to fit heavy guitars into mix

[pekadan]

crusces, ok then: T h e b a s s g u i t a r Seriously, I get your point. I guess I should be thinking psychoacoustics already when I'm recording bass and guitars. If I make them work better together rhythmically, as jens pointed out, it should make mixing them a lot easier. I could cut the low end of the guitars more or less completely and yet have that fullness, seemingly, in combination with the bass.

dreibel, thanks for the compliment! A very interesting note there on not overdoing the distorsion when layering. I'm definitely gonna take that into consideration and experiment with it! You wouldn't happen to have more good tips and tricks for layering rhythm guitars btw?

Red_Force, I guess what you're saying about a "constant audio ref" is what it very much comes down to. If I were to listen more to the combination bass/guitars/drums during all stages of my music making, I'd get much better results in the end.

[IIRs]

The basic rule is: if you want your guitars to have loads of energy at 100Hz, you need to make room for them in the mix.. this means cutting the same region out of those elements that will compete, usually bass guitar & kick drum.

Listen to Korn, or something similar, and pay attention to the bass guitar. When its played together with the guitars it just adds an extra low fundamental and some finger clack around 2KHz.. on its own it will sound quite unnaturally "hollow".. likewise the kick drum will have some low bottom end, loads of high mids & tops ( > 1.5KHz ish to make it slam) and very little in between.

If you like a more natural sound for the rhythm section however, you will need to re-think your guitar sound. Listen to something like AC/DC for a rhythm sound that is very strong in the mid-range, yet doesn't sound thin..

Listening to your track (good stuff btw ) I would suggest the second approach would suit the style better..

The tip about less distortion is a good one; save the heavy saturation for the lead parts where you need the sustain.. rhythm parts usually need some dynamics to sound exciting.

[pekadan]

panjapol, DAMN that's a good song!!! Don't speak german, so I have no idea what the lyrics are about. I'll just assume it's about love and joyfullness. (That's what I assume when I listen to Rammstein anyway).

I think the sound is really good too actually. For my personal taste, the drums sound too comressed and distorted, but the guitars I really like.

You've succeeded a lot better than me in keeping the guitars clean and not messing too much with the bass and drums. I guess you too need to look for freqency conflicts in your mix if you want the guitar to sound louder without actually raising its gain. To me, the guitars seem to be panned nicely. But are there perhaps other instruments fighting for space over there on the right during the chorus?

[milchstrasse]

wow, thanks pekadan!!
erwachsen -> "to be grown-up"
this song is about growing up and the problems with parents or other people in this time.

well...maybe the drums are too heavy compressed, yes. i will work on it but the guitars sound not so well as i would like to.

@rammstein: be happy that you don't speak german. they're lyrics are completely nonsense

[Lunch Money]

I wouldn't scoop the mids too much. Then you end up with a lousy late-80's metal sound that doesn't sit in a mix. Why take out the fundamental frequencies of the guitar? That's just my personal opinion, mind. Also, try mixing about 10% of the dry signal back into it.

Much of the advice in this thread is good, though. Another thing to try out if you're sick of tweaking and tweaking and getting no results is "Space Boy" (see the "effects" drop down list). Also, if you're happy with the 100Hz sound, why not put a high-pass filter cutting everything off at 80Hz? That gives you plenty of room to breath, but eliminates a whole mess of mud, too, assuming that the distortion, reverb, etc are contributing to low-frequency smear.

Greg

[pekadan]

platinumears, that was very informative! Great! The first approach you mention actually sounds a lot like what I'm trying and hoping to achieve, even though I agree the second approach would possibly suit my music style better. (Yeah I know what you're thinking: )

Greg, actually I already do cut out all guitars below 80Hz completely. As far as the 100Hz mess is concerned, it seems I should cut out the bass guitar at 100Hz (or at least lower it) if I insist on keeping the bottom guitar frequencies. I wonder if the bass will sound ok if it lives below 90Hz only (and in the mid and treble range of course). Have to experiment with that. Space Boy looks cool. Will definitely look more into that!

Thanks guys!

[drez]

Wow, Pekadan. I really like this. You have definitely done a good job working with the guitar loops. I most of the guitars I use are just distorted synth patches running out of reason into various distortion effects into Live4 and through VST distortion effects as well.

What amp sims are you using?

Your stuff is definitely "clear" in the mix to me. I am in the same boat that I am trying to make my stuff sound better and learn as I go, but I end up with muddy mixes. One of the problems is that all I have are headphones (Sony MDR-V900) so its difficult to keep the mud out.

Here's a tune I'm working on:

Please_Recover

There is only one sample loop of a guitar and you'll hear it come in at :30 but its running through a few different distortions and filters. The rest are synth sounds that are distorted. Everytime I listen to this on regular monitors, it sounds completely weird, so any comments/suggestions from you guys that can listen to this on monitors I would really appreciate it!

Pek, I'd like to hear some of the changes you make to this song after you apply some of the ideas from this thread. It would be a great A/B comparison.

[pekadan]

Hey drez, how the hell do you get such a good sound only using headphone monitoring!? I bought my Tannoy monitors a few years ago. Before that, mixing was simply impossible.

I really like your tune! I think we're very much in the same boat, yes. Isn't the main reason your mix sounds muddy (thought it actually doesn't sound bad at all to me - I've only listened in headphones though), because you use too many competing instruments, frequency wise? It makes mixing practically impossible. I always have the same problem. I often get the comment "well you should start by removing half of the instruments" (identify the key instruments and kill the rest). When I recorded "Wait for Me" I tried to keep the number of instruments down and give the rhythm guitars room. Still lots of mud in the lower frequencies and still one or two (or five) too many instruments in the chorus.

The amp sims I use are MDA Combo and Guitar Suite PCM900. Other effects I use are e.g. SuperCamelPhat (very cool for guitar sounds!) and various Kjaerhus and PSP stuff.

When I've practised the things I've learned from this thread, I'll post a link to the new mix of the song. Cool that you're interested! This might take me a little while though.

[Sascha Franck]

pekadan, your mp3 link doesn't seem to work for me...

[pekadan]

Hey Sascha, damn that's weird. Works fine for me when I connect from work. But my webserver computer can be a bit unreliable. You might just want to try again. What kind of error do you get? Can you connect to www.forpetessake.info at all?
(Here's an alternative link, btw: http://peppsi.net/music/wait_for_me.mp3)

[Sascha Franck]

Hey Sascha, damn that's weird. Works fine for me when I connect from work. But my webserver computer can be a bit unreliable. You might just want to try again. What kind of error do you get? Can you connect to www.forpetessake.info at all?

Can connect to the site just fine, getting no error either on the MP3 when loading it through IE, but a 1KB file instead. GetRight however is telling me something's wrong with the adress.
Weird!

(Here's an alternative link, btw: http://peppsi.net/music/wait_for_me.mp3)

That one's working fine (after removing the bracket after .mp3).

Will listen soon.

[drez]

Hey drez, how the hell do you get such a good sound only using headphone monitoring!? I bought my Tannoy monitors a few years ago. Before that, mixing was simply impossible.

Well, I do alot of A/B comparison to other music that I listen to and try to emulate it. I listen to a Crystal Method song, then start working on my mix and keep A/B'ing as I go. The problem is that almost anything can sound decent through headphones.

I really like your tune! I think we're very much in the same boat, yes. Isn't the main reason your mix sounds muddy (thought it actually doesn't sound bad at all to me - I've only listened in headphones though), because you use too many competing instruments, frequency wise? It makes mixing practically impossible. I always have the same problem. I often get the comment "well you should start by removing half of the instruments" (identify the key instruments and kill the rest). When I recorded "Wait for Me" I tried to keep the number of instruments down and give the rhythm guitars room. Still lots of mud in the lower frequencies and still one or two (or five) too many instruments in the chorus.

I think you are exactly right with competeing frequencies. BUT I LOVE DISORTION! The problem is that I need to, as many have suggested in this thread, cut more mid frequencies out from the guitar sounds and use more Bass to fill out the low end. I tend to write "busy" music, so if I don't start cutting frequencies I will have a big square block of sound with no dynamics.

Listen to my tune again with your Tannoy's and you'll hear how bad my mix is

The amp sims I use are MDA Combo and Guitar Suite PCM900. Other effects I use are e.g. SuperCamelPhat (very cool for guitar sounds!) and various Kjaerhus and PSP stuff.

I will have to try these out. What I do in Live is duplicate a channels output (like my guitar sample track) and then route it to 3 or 4 other individual channels. Then I apply different effects/panning/eq/etc on each one of those and then run those through a master channel for grouping. Works pretty well, but I've got to really thin out each sound more to make room for all of the other crap I throw in there

When I've practised the things I've learned from this thread, I'll post a link to the new mix of the song. Cool that you're interested! This might take me a little while though.

Me too. I'm testing Reason 3 and its pretty limited so I can load up my tunes in Live4 and Reason yet. Can't wait to apply some of these ideas in the thread.

Thanks everybody!

[pekadan]

Hey, I think I'm getting there now (slowly)!

Here's what I did last night: I notched the bass guitar at 85-120Hz (and increased gain at around 700Hz and 3.5-4kHz). I placed the kick in the hole at 85-110Hz (and increased treble on the kick as well). I ran the rhythm guitars through a 48dB slope HPF with cutoff around 120Hz. This did wonders to clear up the low freq mud!

I need to do some more tweaking though. I do feel I've lost some of that heaviness in the rhythm guitars. But not as much as I'd thought actually. (I guess the guitars don't mix well enough, rhythm wise, with the bass guitar). I also feel the kick is a bit weak now. I'm thinking maybe if I slide the holes I've created down about 10 Hz, i.e. have the bass from 40-75Hz, the kick at 75-100 and the guitar filter cutoff at 110Hz. Gonna experiment with it during the weekend.

Anyway, for anyone who's interested, the link from before http://www.forpetessake.info/wait_for_me.mp3 points to the latest version. (I've saved the old version in http://www.forpetessake.info/wait_for_me-mixA.mp3 ).

Again, thanks a million for helping guys! This is great and fun and I'm just !

[IIRs]

Yeah, getting there..

I find these frequencies useful as starting points:

Kick drum lo thud ~ 50Hz

Bass guitar weight ~ 80Hz

Chuggy guitar region ~ 100 - 120Hz

It's important not to filter / eq out more than is absolutely needed; with an arrangement like yours you may also want to consider using different eq settings for the sections where there is no distorted guitar..

[jens]

now that you got rid of the low end mud you can enhance the heavyness a bit by slightly increasing the higher mids of the guitars...