Mixing with busy guitar (low-mids)

[irpacynot]

This is kind of an ongoing thing for me. See, I play fingerstyle in low open tunings, so I'm kind of doing a bass line as I run through the rest of the progression, at least the frequencies seem to be down in that area.

A typical song for me includes a center guitar, and then a left and right guitar doing complimentary progressions. I've been trying everything over the past year to get a good separation of instruments (I also do vocals and instrument clips -- drums, synths, etc.). Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I just can't figure out a way forward.

It seems the mid is bleeding too much low/low-mids to the sides, or vice versa. But basically things are bleeding into each other with less distinction than I'd sometimes I prefer to hear.

SPAN is great, and it's often helpful, but I still often feel like a chemist in a lab just poking around blindly in the dark. I even just tried using Ozone Imager 2 to try and narrow the signals, but I suppose I'm not familiar enough with the plugin to use it effectively for that, as the guitar panned to the right side was showing in Ozone as in the mid area slightly off to the left.

Too much tweaking with EQs just chips away at the compositions, so it'd be great if I could simply find a way to more effectively separate those signals without going overboard on EQing. Though the genre of music I play is quite different than old-school jazz, it came to mind when I was considering the busy nature of the lower frequencies. There was separation there, but I don't know how.

Advice?

[imrae]

Stereo low-end is generally discouraged. There are of course valid places to do it but it tends to feel unstable, is lost on 2.1 systems, and makes it hard to maximise loudness (for those who care about that...)

I'd stick the guitar that is providing a bassline in the centre and cut the lows on the panned guitars.

Another tool to consider is that you can send the low-end of the panned guitars back to the centre. If they are taking turns to play bassline this will keep the lows centred. However, if they play low at the same time it will pile up again so consider that at arrangement stage too.

[lfm]

I assume 3 mono recordings of guitar then.
- hp filter on panned guitars on the sides not to overlap frequencies with center
- or play in another octave on sides so not too much doubling same frequencies

I am really fond of doing stereo recording of acoustic guitar
- built in mic of some sort, Taylor ES2, kksound pure mini
- then a dpa dvote 4099g clamped on guitar as well
And pan those more or less hard left and right, or 1100 and 1400 or similar.
- or left side 0800 1300 and right side 1100 1600
- numbers are o'clock as 24 hour clock

You always get a little phase difference between channels and really nice depth to the sound.

Just a bunch of ideas...

[Agg]

Not enough information. If I understood correctly, you record 3 guitar takes, pan 1 left, 1 right, and 1 stays in the center? You said guitar panned to the right looks wrong, so I assume the recordings are stereo, because a panned mono sound can't look wrong. Or did you mean it looks wrong when you play all 3 sounds together? Too many blank spaces.

[irpacynot]

Stereo low-end is generally discouraged. There are of course valid places to do it but it tends to feel unstable, is lost on 2.1 systems, and makes it hard to maximise loudness (for those who care about that...)

I'd stick the guitar that is providing a bassline in the centre and cut the lows on the panned guitars.

Another tool to consider is that you can send the low-end of the panned guitars back to the centre. If they are taking turns to play bassline this will keep the lows centred. However, if they play low at the same time it will pile up again so consider that at arrangement stage too.

I meant I was using Ozone to narrow the signal, not spread it out more.

Not enough information. If I understood correctly, you record 3 guitar takes, pan 1 left, 1 right, and 1 stays in the center? You said guitar panned to the right looks wrong, so I assume the recordings are stereo, because a panned mono sound can't look wrong. Or did you mean it looks wrong when you play all 3 sounds together? Too many blank spaces.

It's showing the signal in the middle of the Ozone display, even though the track itself is panned to the side.

[Agg]

It's showing the signal in the middle of the Ozone display, even though the track itself is panned to the side.

Would be essential to know if it's in the "middle" like a vertical line, or if it's in the middle like a circle. You either didn't pan the sound before it goes into Ozone, or the track was so wide it doesn't have an orientation, so panning it is same as drawing a circle on a piece of A4, and then rotating the paper (= the circle still looks like a circle).

Either way, the safest bet is to just make each recording mono. Don't take the mid-channel cuz it probably sounds weak (in other words, don't press a simple "mono" button in the DAW). Instead, use L or R of each recording, since those are the real physical signals from a stereo-mic. Now you have 3 mono recordings, which you can then pan left/right/center.

[irpacynot]

It's showing the signal in the middle of the Ozone display, even though the track itself is panned to the side.

Would be essential to know if it's in the "middle" like a vertical line, or if it's in the middle like a circle. You either didn't pan the sound before it goes into Ozone, or the track was so wide it doesn't have an orientation, so panning it is same as drawing a circle on a piece of A4, and then rotating the paper (= the circle still looks like a circle).

Either way, the safest bet is to just make each recording mono. Don't take the mid-channel cuz it probably sounds weak (in other words, don't press a simple "mono" button in the DAW). Instead, use L or R of each recording, since those are the real physical signals from a stereo-mic. Now you have 3 mono recordings, which you can then pan left/right/center.

I have the plugin set to plot rays, and it's inserted on the channel. Considering what you wrote, I wonder if it needs to be inserted in the chain after the volume/pan plugin...?

As for recording in mono, yeah, I'm importing all tracks (recorded in mono) from an old Roland VS hardware DAW. I then take that VS data, convert the tracks to mono WAV files on my PC, and import them into Tracktion Waveform for editing.

[Agg]

It's showing the signal in the middle of the Ozone display, even though the track itself is panned to the side.

Would be essential to know if it's in the "middle" like a vertical line, or if it's in the middle like a circle. You either didn't pan the sound before it goes into Ozone, or the track was so wide it doesn't have an orientation, so panning it is same as drawing a circle on a piece of A4, and then rotating the paper (= the circle still looks like a circle).

Either way, the safest bet is to just make each recording mono. Don't take the mid-channel cuz it probably sounds weak (in other words, don't press a simple "mono" button in the DAW). Instead, use L or R of each recording, since those are the real physical signals from a stereo-mic. Now you have 3 mono recordings, which you can then pan left/right/center.

I have the plugin set to plot rays, and it's inserted on the channel. Considering what you wrote, I wonder if it needs to be inserted in the chain after the volume/pan plugin...?

As for recording in mono, yeah, I'm importing all tracks (recorded in mono) from an old Roland VS hardware DAW. I then take that VS data, convert the tracks to mono WAV files on my PC, and import them into Tracktion Waveform for editing.

Stereo-analysis-plugins should be later in the chain, otherwise you don't see the effect of track pan. If you have 3 different recordings, all mono, and panned left/center/right, then the stereo image of each track will look like in the picture below. As you can see, making them less wide individually is pointless. They are already 0% wide, just panned. You need to bus them together, then work off the stereo image of the whole thing (maybe apply methods others suggested like hi-pass the panned guitars etc.).