Lead Guitar Up and Front?

[ksky]

Hi, usually with vocals in a mix is up front and center, but how about lead guitar especially if it is an instrumental?

[bduffy]

Well, much like a vocal, I roll off any unessecary low-end (usually around 100k, but higher in a crowded mix) and use a compressor on it.

Also: helps to use a different guitar, pickup setting or amp[sim] to help it stand out from the others.

[Jafo]

Your question is a touch ambiguous, so I hope I'm answering what you're asking!

Anyway, you have several resources with simultaneous leads: melodic, spatial, and tonal, to begin with. You want to balance similarity with difference -- similar enough to work together, but different enough to be independent. Here's a few ideas:

1. Go to great pains to compose melodies that work together. This is always a Good Idea (tm)! Study the techniques of counterpoint and orchestration and you'll find dozens of ways to do things.

2. Get a second lead instrument -- a keyboard, perhaps -- and pan vocals center, and each lead instrument to one side. Hey, if it's good enough for the Doors...

3. Very carefully adjust tones, possibly by use of EQ, compression, and perhaps even harmonic exciters, and place both the lead vocal and lead instrument center. This doesn't work as well as the above two ideas.

4. Use some sort of round panning on the guitar. This is a rather gimmicky solution, but it can be very, err, effective.

5. If you have two leads throughout, try panning each slightly to one side.

[Vervil]

Hi, usually with vocals in a mix is up front and center, but how about lead guitar especially if it is an instrumental?

As with the vocal, you have to make room in the mix for lead guitar to stand out, by panning other things aside, and boosting some frequencies on lead track (I can't say where exactly, because it all changes with the style of music, but in a heavier music, i usually boost in mids where rhythm guitars have their usual "hole".
It can also depend on tone that gets recorded, tone with more presence, harmonically richer will be defined even in a crowded mix. In 80's it was often practice to double every lead in a song, exactly the same, like doubling the vocal parts. Try to not use too much reverb, instead go for the delay (try mono instead of stereo, and eq the delay a bit) if you need sense of space, and if you really need to use reverb, play with the delay time of reverb.

[fragileutopia]

If your lead guitar is a solo without any vocals during the solo I'd say put it front and center where the lead vocals were and make sure it stands out. It should seem like the vocals are "handing off" to the solo.

Otherwise, just mess around with the volumes of each until you get one that sits just right.

[hippyheaven1]

theres no absolute answer.... some songs have a dry guitar upfront and centre, others might have the guitar turned down, panned with lots of reverb and delay - it depends entirely on what effect you want to have. Another way of doing it is to double track the part (so they are IDENTICAL)and pan one full left and one full right - you get a nice stereo image but the guitar is still upfront.

The bottom line is, there is no set way to do it - experiment and most of all, think about what the track NEEDS... not what wonderful technique you can show off

Gray