Any of my fellow rock or metal producers/ mixers think they can give me some advice on mixing my guitars? No matter what I do, how good I get my mix to sound, I can never hear my rhythm guitars very well through the mix. This is a mix I'm working on, it's half rap half rock/metal, but I'm really just curious about the chorus which starts at 57 seconds and I guess the end there's a breakdown too.. I appreciate any advice.

 

Crank 2k until anyone who hears your song runs from the room with blood coming out their ears. Also, turn down all instruments that aren't guitar until they can't be heard.

 

Sorry, I'm drunk

 

Sounds to me like the first thing you need to do is retrack the guitars.

Maybe taper off the lows a bit, wide Q and subtle boost on the mids.

Then to sound heavier compared to everything else going on, quad track. Record 4 instances of guitars. I personally pan 100% left and right.

NO REVERB ON THE GUITAR TRACKS.

Do that on the guitar bus.

The next thing you can try and it's really a preference thing, is to add different effects to each guitar track to make very very subtle changes to make everything wider and bigger. Remember, at 4 guitars you've already enforced the notes being played pretty well, making each guitar track a bit different will help them stand out in stereo width.

As far as the guitar tone, I'm not sure what gear you're using or how you're recording but a good rule of thumb is not to go passed noon on the gain and if you're stacking guitars you may even pull back a tad on the gain.

You can do low cuts on each individual track or like me on the bus (I'm lazy and I dial my tone to keep from needing drastic cuts)

But if your tone needs big low cuts, it's better to cut individually so you don't have a frequency buildup that you can't tame later.

The guitars live in the mid range, so watch your EQ and see where most of the power in the mids is.

You can do a lowcut and then do little surgical cuts elsewhere.

Take an EQ band, turn the Q all the way down (make it skinny) then turn the band gain all the way up and then drag it around and listen out for nasty frequencies that you don't like, then drop the gain all the way or as much as you need.

Do that a few times until you're happy. Don't over do it or you'll have really lifeless guitars.

Remember, add reverb at the bus. For heavy, punchy, definition you want the original sound pretty dry.

Newish strings help. Pull back a little on your bass and treble.

Use a metronome or click track, get those tracks tight.

That low end heavy sag some of us thrash heads love comes from the bass guitar and a tiny low end bump we leave in the guitar EQ for palm muted stuff.

I'm not a know it all but I had these same struggles and I'm 100% completely in love with my guitar tones and my mixes.

Just sweep around with your EQ.

It sounded like 1 stereo track or maybe 2 guitars.

Just separate them and you'll be on your way to that wall of guitars sound.

I hope that helped.

Listen to Glitch Riff by XENITH on #SoundCloud
https://on.soundcloud.com/LRMna

 

Your subs sound good (in ear buds ATM)

That bass guitar in the other part? Lowcut that, possibly up to 80-100hz with a gradual curve.

The bass or lows sound very woofy but the sub sounds nice.

No reverb on the bass or the kick unless you're going for some kind of movie score thing and it's supposed to stand out and breathe.

Keep your low end dry and tight as a Karen.

 

Guitar 1 left. Guitar 2 right
Guitar 3 left. Guitar 4 right
Snare

Bass

Kick

Make sure everything has room. You can tweak the guitars for weeks but if everything else is out of control you'll just keep fighting yourself.

 

Obligatory link to Slipperman's Recording Distorted Guitars From Hell

 

Gullfoss on the guitar buss would probably do the trick already. Try 30% recover, 30% tame and 15% brighten. If the sound gets too bitingly bright, you can add a stereo reverb on the guitar bus which will then reduce the "biting" and make the sound appear bigger.

 

It seems your Guitars lack some low/mids (making them sound thin). Maybe crank the mids on your Amp if you can. If it is already recorded try Izotope Neutron's Saturator to add some saturation and mids.

You can also try this (probably with a multi-band compressor after it)

P.S: The SoundCloud quality is very low. I cannot tell if your Cymbals are this bad or if it is SoundCloud.

 

Last edited: Jun 7, 2023

Easy. First you need to lower the bass guitar by ~5-8+db.

 

No matter what.. your pure sound should cut it.. almost naked ..right through the amp or whatever source..
its never a good idea to re eq it in your DAW session with plugins..you can't add whats missing.. only could cut some unwanted
lo_end maybe.. listen to your amp and record it as close as possible..

Also never forget the holy triangle.. Drums / Bass / Gtrz... they should sound great together.. never soundcheck ur gtr sound
without them.. sometimes when you are listening only your gtr sound , it sounds it sounds fat and punchy alone..however
with drmz and bass its a different situation..freqs shouldnt invade eachother ..should sound great all together..

PS: Fix your HiHat channel man..it dominates the whole track very badly imho

 

@Kingvrage

Thanks for the detailed response man, I would say I already do 99% of what you said. I quad track and hard pan left and right my guitars, do all of the EQ moves you propose, the timing is tighter than a nun on sunday, I pull back the gain and adjust the presence accordingly, I don't use reverb on my rhythm tracks, I also use a bus to do a lot of my heavier handed EQ dynamic compression moves on the low end of the guitar and so forth... all you have mentioned is great advice, but it's things I already do and I still am not satisfied with how my tone sits in the mix. It's a conundrum for sure.

 

@Gnosisrausch I'll look into that, tho the brighter I make the tone the worse it seems to make the mix as a whole.

 

@metaller Ha I love Spectre sound, he's crazy, I've seen quite a few of his vids regarding this topic, not sure if I've seen this one, I'll check it out tho, thanks.

 

@Lieglein Haha, I'll give it a shot, thanks.

 

one can only sit when there's a space to sit, those crashes man, soothe that shit out first, it doesn't have to be in-you-face. Reverb or anything to pull it back so can create some air space for the guitar. The guitar sounds like a single track recorded on a 5watts practice amp on Hass effect, if you said you Quad-layered those guitar, something is very very wrong with the their phase relationship. Also I don't personally like the distortion tone, it reminds me of that Fear Factory Dino Cazares 2000s nu-metal tone, love Fear Factory though. Problem is dominant area of your guitar frequencies is around that nasal tone area which is a big NO for a guitar to not sound cheap, if you know what I mean. While it's personal choice and I totally understand that, it has few obvious screaming resonance points in few places if listened in properly treated room. Fixing that will make it a little bearable I guess. I think they are caused by the guitar cab sound.

 

Last edited: Jun 7, 2023

@Xcarnation Oh yeah, I've learned to never judge tone in solo the hard way, I rarely ever solo tracks when I'm mixing. But the hi hat/cymbal problem could be an issue, thanks.

 

@Stevie Dude I'll throw some soothe on the cymbals and see if that helps. But yeah I have no idea, there shouldn't be any phase issues, all the tracks are different takes on an orange super crush. I'm stumped.

 

that's a proper amp. If you are convinced the recorded guitar tone was good when you recorded them, here's some suggestions :

1. remove all processing on the guitar, and start flipping the phases of them randomly (it should take a while) until you get the most PHAT, FAT, BIG sound combination of 4 of them.
2. if it doesn't make any difference, try by using only two L + R hard panned and see if it sounds PHAT, FAT, BIG. also flip the phase and try different combination among those 4 until you get the best combination.
3. if that doesn't work too, start with 2 tracks L + R hard panned, and do micro nudging of the timing, while you fully zoomed, keep it below 20ms while making sure the waveform stacked properly and make sure no phase cancellation happening until you get PHAT, FAT, BIG sound. Then proceed to add the layers but play with the nudging until they give better results.

the goal is getting the combination with the most low end possible on the not-palm-mute section.

4. if all fails, it means you probably scooped too much midrange on the amp during recording, a lot of guitar players do that, it will make the palm muting better, I know. If re-amp is not an option, all left is add back those low midrange you removed until the guitar sound proper with EQ, do this while listening/referencing to properly recorded guitar track so you'll get baseline/idea how much low midrange you need to add back. Don't do this on group, do it on single track and vary the frequency and gain (on the EQ) a bit, you'll want a happy accident to happen.

 

Last edited: Jun 7, 2023

@Stevie Dude Thanks man, I'm gonna try these tactics.