Favorite Recordings to Test Guitar Tone in the Mix

Matt007

Inspired
As very few of us are playing live these days, do you have any favorite recorded songs you play over to test how your guitar tone will sound in a live band mix?

If a guitar tone sounds good on top of a studio recorded track does that mean it should be a decent starting point for live use, or is it better to use a live recording as a reference?

Side note — I’ve been using Steve Stevens’ Playboys preset lately and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a better tone for sitting in the mix. Hoping this will work for live use too.

I’ve also noticed that tones that sound pleasing to me when playing alone are rarely good in a full mix. Trying to wrap my head around this and learn to train my ears to prefer and build tones that sit in a mix better.
 
I find that generally, people tend to dial in too dark tones for them to work in a busy mix. The guitar isn't a full range instrument, so it needs to be smaller and more cutting. Less low end, less gain (particularly for rhythm), and more highs/upper mids.

As for recordings I try to fit into, I tend to use some decent backing tracks for that. I have 2 I often go back to: Journey - Faithfully, and Gary Moore - The Loner. Can't remember where I got them from.
 
I wouldn’t use a song or recording to come up with live tones. Albums are mixed and mastered so all the instruments sound their best within the context of the other instruments being played. Even if you nail the tone on a recording, when you to use that tone within a band, it’s not going to come across the same way at all.
 
In a perfect world, you'd have a recording of your band without your guitar...I've been thinking about doing this for the past 10 years and sadly haven't gotten around to it yet.
 
I once was at a concert and the band Within Temptation was linechecking. I heard the guitars by themselves and thought damn this sounds horrible. Really really horrible. But in the mix with the full band they actually sounded quite decent. That taught me a great lesson how important it was to dial in your guitars to sound good in a mix, not on how pleasing you find them at home. That's a lesson many, if not most guitarists seem to foolhardy to learn. Causing them to forever turn up their guitars instead, creating volume wars and bitter arguments in the band. It's all about the EQ and if there is one major pitfall to the Axe FX its that it allows us way too much focus on what sounds great by ourselves and a lot harder to dial it in properly with a full bandmix. With an amp its fairly easy to adjust your EQ knobs, hitting Axe Edit or god forbid the front panel editor in the heat of a song is a lot more difficult.
 
In a perfect world, you'd have a recording of your band without your guitar...I've been thinking about doing this for the past 10 years and sadly haven't gotten around to it yet.
If you made a multitrack recording couldn't you ask for a version without you? Or do it yourself with a DAW and the multitracks?
 
In a perfect world, you'd have a recording of your band without your guitar...I've been thinking about doing this for the past 10 years and sadly haven't gotten around to it yet.
For my small band (that relies heavily on backing tracks), I've created a version of every song minus a player/singer for each of us to use for practice, with live bits recorded off the same mixer we use live. It's a lot of work, but we have a pretty stable setlist of classics, so not a lot of churn after the first chunk of work. It's great for virtual rehearsals before gigs, as well as checking instrument blends. There's still though the challenge of playing at home through something that emulates what you hope will be close enough to the live PA sound.
 
I once was at a concert and the band Within Temptation was linechecking. I heard the guitars by themselves and thought damn this sounds horrible. Really really horrible. But in the mix with the full band they actually sounded quite decent. That taught me a great lesson how important it was to dial in your guitars to sound good in a mix, not on how pleasing you find them at home. That's a lesson many, if not most guitarists seem to foolhardy to learn. Causing them to forever turn up their guitars instead, creating volume wars and bitter arguments in the band. It's all about the EQ and if there is one major pitfall to the Axe FX its that it allows us way too much focus on what sounds great by ourselves and a lot harder to dial it in properly with a full bandmix. With an amp its fairly easy to adjust your EQ knobs, hitting Axe Edit or god forbid the front panel editor in the heat of a song is a lot more difficult.

This is 100% of the reason why I always suggest guitarists go listen to the isolated guitar tracks from Metallica’s Black album. Such a huge sounding album and the assumption is that the guitar tone is this mighty, balls out tone, when it actuality, it’s 3 very thin guitar tracks (hard left/right and one up the middle) that don’t exactly sound mighty on their own.

Most isolated tracks will be quite telling of where a guitar sits in a mix, but since everyone knows that album so well at this point, with the sound of the album being noted as a benchmark of heavy guitar production, it makes for a good example.

It’s not any different in a live situation and if anything, you might be able to get away with using a bit more distortion in the studio than you would live. If you really want to disappear in a mix, just drop your mids and crank the gain!
 
This is 100% of the reason why I always suggest guitarists go listen to the isolated guitar tracks from Metallica’s Black album. Such a huge sounding album and the assumption is that the guitar tone is this mighty, balls out tone, when it actuality, it’s 3 very thin guitar tracks (hard left/right and one up the middle) that don’t exactly sound mighty on their own.

Most isolated tracks will be quite telling of where a guitar sits in a mix, but since everyone knows that album so well at this point, with the sound of the album being noted as a benchmark of heavy guitar production, it makes for a good example.

It’s not any different in a live situation and if anything, you might be able to get away with using a bit more distortion in the studio than you would live. If you really want to disappear in a mix, just drop your mids and crank the gain!
I used to be a live soundguy and during a soundcheck I was placing mics. One of the guitarists had this big amp and his sound was all scooped. No mids just bass and treble. If you took one step out of the range of his speakers his sound was completely lost in just the stage mix. I really really don't understand the obsession so many metal guitarists have with scooping the mids. Not only is it the last thing I would want to do, it sounds actually horrible to my ears.
 
I used to be a live soundguy and during a soundcheck I was placing mics. One of the guitarists had this big amp and his sound was all scooped. No mids just bass and treble. If you took one step out of the range of his speakers his sound was completely lost in just the stage mix. I really really don't understand the obsession so many metal guitarists have with scooping the mids. Not only is it the last thing I would want to do, it sounds actually horrible to my ears.
It's like people forget that guitar as an instrument sits in the midrange, and the bass player together with the guitar is what makes that big sound.
 
I used to be a live soundguy and during a soundcheck I was placing mics. One of the guitarists had this big amp and his sound was all scooped. No mids just bass and treble. If you took one step out of the range of his speakers his sound was completely lost in just the stage mix. I really really don't understand the obsession so many metal guitarists have with scooping the mids. Not only is it the last thing I would want to do, it sounds actually horrible to my ears.

It’s really not any different in the studio with some guitarist, either. In nearly every band I was in there was at least one guitar player who would come into the studio, spend 30 minutes dialing in their amp, then come in the control room and say “It sounds like shit in here, is that the mic?”, then we’d go through the discussion I’ve had more times than I’d like to remember about how he’s hearing the room, not the amp/cab itself.

2 of these guys in particular were so damn hard headed about their tone and refused to listen to any suggestions that you’d think they would have noticed that I re-tracked their guitar parts when they weren’t in the studio. We used to call it “Secret Studio Time”. To this day they still have no clue that they aren’t on those recordings at all, except a few spots.

I can understand the confusion with younger guys who haven’t had the experience of playing live or recording in a studio, but the guys who have been at it for years....blows my mind.
 
This was a lesson I learnt pretty quickly early on.
Went through the volume wars and I was one of those guys at first wondering why my perfectly dialed up amp in the studio was sounding terrible in the monitors

I learnt that every situation and recording is different, and you should dial your tone around the other instruments - as a guitar player with an axe fx you have WAAAAAY more flexibility in dialing tone than other instruments or vocals

As soon as we started dialing in sounds for the band and each other and not just ourselves, we started getting a lot more compliments on our sound

I'd give the quick and dirty advice that you should stay out of the bass player and vocal ranges and you can tweak from there. Remember if you are fighting your vocalist your whole band sounds bad, so give a little to receive a lot when it comes to finding a right mix spot.

Guitar is a midrange instrument, keep it where it belongs and you'll have a better sounding band or mix
 
I used to be a live soundguy and during a soundcheck I was placing mics. One of the guitarists had this big amp and his sound was all scooped. No mids just bass and treble. If you took one step out of the range of his speakers his sound was completely lost in just the stage mix. I really really don't understand the obsession so many metal guitarists have with scooping the mids. Not only is it the last thing I would want to do, it sounds actually horrible to my ears.

I think at least part of the reason is it sounds good that way at lower volumes. Fletcher Munson and all that..
 
This was a lesson I learnt pretty quickly early on.
Went through the volume wars and I was one of those guys at first wondering why my perfectly dialed up amp in the studio was sounding terrible in the monitors

I learnt that every situation and recording is different, and you should dial your tone around the other instruments - as a guitar player with an axe fx you have WAAAAAY more flexibility in dialing tone than other instruments or vocals

As soon as we started dialing in sounds for the band and each other and not just ourselves, we started getting a lot more compliments on our sound

I'd give the quick and dirty advice that you should stay out of the bass player and vocal ranges and you can tweak from there. Remember if you are fighting your vocalist your whole band sounds bad, so give a little to receive a lot when it comes to finding a right mix spot.

Guitar is a midrange instrument, keep it where it belongs and you'll have a better sounding band or mix
Are you using high/low cuts or just bmt?
 
I find that generally, people tend to dial in too dark tones for them to work in a busy mix. The guitar isn't a full range instrument, so it needs to be smaller and more cutting. Less low end, less gain (particularly for rhythm), and more highs/upper mids.
This is why the SM57 is so popular. It is mildly bass-deficient on its own, but sits in the mix beautifully. If you need a little more lows, you can generally twiddle the bass knob at the console a bit and get it working....

That, and the darned things are hard to kill....
 
With an amp its fairly easy to adjust your EQ knobs, hitting Axe Edit or god forbid the front panel editor in the heat of a song is a lot more difficult.
I came up with a PEQ block that does a bang-up job of adjusting the mid vs. bass & treble balance just a little in a pinch. One knob controller. It is right after the amp/cab/gate in all my presets. Not cutting through? Roll the knob back a little and possibly up the volume a tad if needed....
 
I came up with a PEQ block that does a bang-up job of adjusting the mid vs. bass & treble balance just a little in a pinch. One knob controller. It is right after the amp/cab/gate in all my presets. Not cutting through? Roll the knob back a little and possibly up the volume a tad if needed....
I haven't actually tried this in the Axe, but tilt EQ is common for this.
 
Back
Top Bottom