Guitar Recording / Post Production Techniques

normanaj

Inspired
Warning this could easily be a few threads but I was hoping to keep all the information here in one place. Any tips are welcome.
Mono or Stereo? I feel Mono is better for placing your guitar in the stereo field but I love the sound of my Stereo recordings better. You get what you hear when you record in stereo.
Clarity? How to prevent everything sounding like mush? I tried recording Acoustic with clean electric and both on their own sound amazing but together they just sound like a wall of mush.
Stereo width. Cant seem to get my guitars wide even with 100% pan left and right. How is this achieved? How do you go wider?
What EQ range should my guitars sit in? I usually rough this and go for 200Hz to 6k. Everything else gets cut out to prevent conflicts with the bass and get rid of any high end sizzle.
What is your master plugin Chain? I think this is probably the one area that I always seem to ruin my mixes at. Mix will sound okish until I fire up the master channel then it just goes to hell from there. Boxy, Harsh, no tonal balance.
Oh and may as well just put this out there. A great guitar tone by itself may not be great in the mix. Very confusing but … ok. Do I build my mix around my guitar then?
If I do the drums sound weird lol.
What plugins do you use to edit your guitar performance to correct timing and pitch? Or is it better to keep recording until you get it perfect?
TY ;).
 
Mono or Stereo? I feel Mono is better for placing your guitar in the stereo field but I love the sound of my Stereo recordings better. You get what you hear when you record in stereo.
It depends on the scenario. A lot of times I will record the same guitar part twice and pan one take 85% left and the other 85% right. (Sidenote: it has to be separate takes, you cannot copy paste the same take or it just makes it be in the center). Sometimes I will record one guitar with stereo effects and leave it at that.

Clarity? How to prevent everything sounding like mush? I tried recording Acoustic with clean electric and both on their own sound amazing but together they just sound like a wall of mush.
You have to carve out space for each instrument in the mix. This can be done a lot of ways, but the most common are EQ and Compression. As an example, for guitars I will High Pass anything below 85 (sometimes higher) to allow more room for the kick + bass guitar to breathe. I will sidechain compress the bass guitar off the kick drum so that the bass ducks every time the kick hits. You can also carve out space by panning. Basically you need to figure out what instrument is most important throughout each part of the frequency spectrum and make adjustments accordingly.

Stereo width. Cant seem to get my guitars wide even with 100% pan left and right. How is this achieved? How do you go wider?
There are tons of ways to do this: modulation effects, double tracking (mentioned above), reverb sends, ping pong delays, etc.

What EQ range should my guitars sit in? I usually rough this and go for 200Hz to 6k. Everything else gets cut out to prevent conflicts with the bass and get rid of any high end sizzle.
It depends on the song/mix/sound you are going for. There are no "set rules". I find that setting the High and Low Pass settings too aggressively results in my guitars sounding "thin" or "blanketed". For guitars, I usually do HPF @ 85, notch around 4k, and that's it. If the guitars don't have enough "life", I'll sometimes do a bump in the high end. Again it depends on the scenario. Use your ears and don't just deafly follow "rules" you read online. Think about what you are trying to do and where you would EQ (or apply other processing) to make that happen.

What is your master plugin Chain? I think this is probably the one area that I always seem to ruin my mixes at. Mix will sound okish until I fire up the master channel then it just goes to hell from there. Boxy, Harsh, no tonal balance.
Typically my mastering chain is something like this: glue compression (that I used during the mixing stage), slight EQ adjustments, slight compression, coloration (such as tape saturation), limiter. Subtle changes can have a huge impact on your sound. If you start out with great tones during the record stage, mixing is pretty much just enhancements to each instrument, and then mastering is just enhancements to the whole mix. Remember: no amount of EQ/compression/FX will turn crap into gold.

Oh and may as well just put this out there. A great guitar tone by itself may not be great in the mix. Very confusing but … ok. Do I build my mix around my guitar then?
I hear the "may not sound good by iteself" argrument a lot and don't really agree with it at all. It's one of those things you hear repeated, but I find that good tones are good tones regardless. One of the most common examples you will hear is that "scooped" guitars sound terrible in the mix, but good by themselves. Is that actually true? Since a lot of guitar is in the midrange, you don't want to scoop ALL of that out, but scooping some of it won't necessarily ruin the sound. Sometimes it makes it better. As I've said, it depends on the mix.

As for your question about what you should build your song around, here is the mindset I use. What is most important to the foundation of your song? I would say it's the Kick and Snare. Get those established and sounding good, then bring in room/overhead mics to get your overall drum tone sounding good. Then it's pretty easy to figure out what relationship your Kick and Bass Guitar should have. And then from there guitars should be easy. And then once the whole instrumental mix is good, you bring in the vocals and make them the most important part of your mix. If anything, to me, guitars are at most third important in a good mix (after kick, snare, and vocals).

What plugins do you use to edit your guitar performance to correct timing and pitch? Or is it better to keep recording until you get it perfect?
I try to get a great guitar performance before editing since thats usually the easiest to do. If you're struggling getting perfect takes, I would opt into doing some corrections. Reaper has Stretch Markers--God Mode for timing corrections (I'm sure other DAWs have something similar). Pitch correction for vocals I use Melodyne Essential. Sometimes I use this on bass as well (I don't like when bass is even slightly out of tune). For instruments with a few notes that are "off just a little" I will just automate the correction using ReaPitch.

Some people think it is "cheating" to do the corrections, but idgaf. I'm all about whatever is the easiest way to get the song out the door sounding as rad as possible.
 
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Re: stereo, here is quite a lot of value in recording L and R onto separate tracks, and going 10-20% Left pan with one side and 60-100% Right pan on the other, or somehing similar. Stereo, but not full width, and skewed to one side or the other....
 
I like to record guitars in stereo but I always have a DI as well (for Re-amping).

I always mix in Mono to get EQ/separation & levels just right. One of the key mistakes is shifting levels too high so start low and work upward rather than other way around, while keeping a keen eye on the master level meter. Using the plugin below on the master mix bus makes it easier to transition between Stereo & Mono. Why mix in Mono?... because if it doesn't sound good in Mono it's going to sound crap in stereo. Also because unless the listener is in the sweet spot between two speakers, they're essentially listening to a mono mix anyway.

Then switch to stereo to set panning & width, keeping in mind a virtual stage setup as to where each instrument is located so they can be replicated in the stereo field.

This plugin along with a Limiter are the only plugins I'll use on the mix bus whilst mixing.
Once mixed, I create a new session for Mastering where the only plugins used are on the mix bus....compressor, final EQ'ing, Limiter etc.

 
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Clarity? How to prevent everything sounding like mush? I tried recording Acoustic with clean electric and both on their own sound amazing but together they just sound like a wall of mush.

Pick tones with complementary frequencies. For example, one tone may have a bit more bottom and less top-end than the other and vice versa; ie. complementary.

Stereo width. Cant seem to get my guitars wide even with 100% pan left and right. How is this achieved? How do you go wider?

Hard panning guitars (100%) left and right is pretty standard and has been used by a number of top engineers I'm familiar with for years. Do you have any examples of tracks with guitars that you think sound 'wide' but that you can't seem to achieve? How are you panning the other instruments? Bass, vocals and kick drum are typically straight down the middle.

What EQ range should my guitars sit in? I usually rough this and go for 200Hz to 6k. Everything else gets cut out to prevent conflicts with the bass and get rid of any high end sizzle.

Depends on the track.

What is your master plugin Chain? I think this is probably the one area that I always seem to ruin my mixes at. Mix will sound okish until I fire up the master channel then it just goes to hell from there. Boxy, Harsh, no tonal balance.

What have you got in your master bus? Personally, I tend to use some light compression and a limiter a good chunk of the time, but it depends. Additionally, I might use the CLA MixDown plugin.

Oh and may as well just put this out there. A great guitar tone by itself may not be great in the mix.

True to an extent, though if you listen to enough professionally mixed guitar tracks in isolation, you'll notice that the ones that sound great in a mix often sound quite good in isolation, too.
 
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Thank you all for your great advice. I am working on a new track now so I will upload it here once I finish for feedback. PS, I write everything from Metal, Rock , Blues to …. country. I love it all. My first record will be a mix ;). I'm definitely gonna have a little Country Metal in there.
 
When stereo sources are similar, they start to sound mono. As an experiment, we can take two mono tracks and hardpan them left and right. The resulting sound is... mono. Delay one of those hard-panned duplicates and detune it by 8 cents.. sounds less mono. The little imperfections in two bonafide takes cause double-tracked guitars to sound wide and individual. To get a great stereo sound I opt to double-track guitars using separate signal chains. I try to change at least one thing, but preferably a few things. For instance, track the left rhythm guitar with one guitar, and the right with a different guitar. Or use the same guitar but change impulses. Better yet, use a different amp, impulse, and guitar, but attempt to get a similar, but still unique sound. If the performance is tight, and the intonation is similar, you'll end up with a bigger sound for it.

You have to carve out space for each instrument in the mix. This can be done a lot of ways, but the most common are EQ and Compression.

This speaks to me. When I began focusing on the frequencies that give the most character and definition to an instrument, I learned a lot about carving out space for each individual instrument. For instance, one can search for the most defining frequency range for the bass guitar in the lows and upper mids, and the most muddying. The defining frequencies can be boosted modestly while the muddy frequencies can be reduced. These beneficial character frequencies of the bass can be taken away (modestly) from the guitars because they will conflict and muddy the clarity of the bass (There is only so much sonic real estate). This makes space and brings the essential character of an instrument into the mix. You can look at the guitars the same way by finding essential frequencies and less desirable ones, carving and boosting, and inversely adjust other instruments that may fight the most important frequencies. In fact, every instrument, from the bass drum to that weird jazz flute should have a sculpted home The mix of a song is a puzzle. And each instrument must be sculpted into the perfect piece that fits with all the others, with sonic bulges and recesses that compliment each other.
 
Gain! Too much will sound like static noise and mush, since there isn't any attack left on the notes. Try to stay as low as you can, recording at high volumes next to a real amp helps with this, since you won't lose the sustain. Split the signal into Axe and real amp: real amp provides the interaction and Axe makes the tone. That'sa bit cork sniffery way, but fun.

I like pultecs for guitars, they are so non-fiddly: twist the knobs and it gets better and the tone opens up. I have a custom stereo hardware unit with handful of tubes and it's much more fun than plugins, but plugins are great too.
 
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