# My guitars sound weak in mix...



## cazmaestro (Nov 16, 2011)

Okay, so I'm mixing a song right now... and I've read up a lot, and I've heard that reducing guitar gain actually helps it cut through the mix. That's worked. But now they just sound so weak and there's not real ooomph. Is that what compressors are for? Because people keep saying, don't over compress and stuff like that, but where specifically do you compress? On each track? On a groups? On the master? I'm confused. Sorry. Any other tips for improving guitars would be nice too.


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## xeonblade (Nov 16, 2011)

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/recording-studio/221-know-lots-about-compression.html

Compress both master and guitars.


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## Slampop (Nov 16, 2011)

cazmaestro said:


> Is that what compressors are for? Because people keep saying, don't over compress and stuff like that, but where specifically do you compress? On each track? On a groups? On the master?



dude, compression can be used for a lot of things, as a tool, sometimes overcompression could be the sound someone is going for etc...so just compress ur stuff to what "sounds good" to you. 

Anyway, yea, compressing the gits on a group would be good...then of course some mastering compression will glue everything together! for guitars, i find waves stereo comp does the trick prrrrty well.


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## cazmaestro (Nov 16, 2011)

Okay, I've done that, but it the guitars still sound sludgy and undefined. I think I'm gonna have to mess with the original signal again. Argh.


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## Slampop (Nov 16, 2011)

how's ur post eq skills? sometimes the guitars might be taking up frequencies from other instruments...or the other instruments will be taking the good frequencies from the guitar...like a bad game of tetris making things muddy, just gotta find the complimenting frequencies that richen em up!!! i've found eq can fix "almost" anything.


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## cazmaestro (Nov 16, 2011)

Ooh I've got waves, I'll try that. 

I'm just learning about compressors, and this one confuses me a lot... Argh.


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## cazmaestro (Nov 16, 2011)

Okay I've found that my bass guitar was clashing with some of the lower frequencies of my guitars, which has solved it partly, but they still feel so WEAK! I realise I'm never gonna get perfect results, but I listen to some tracks from my favourite bands and their guitars sound so FULL! I'm starting to believe it's my original guitar tone that sounds flat.


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## the unbearable (Nov 16, 2011)

it may help if you post what you've got so far...


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## cazmaestro (Nov 16, 2011)

Oh this isn't good, I need to get some sleep now. Tomorrow I shall post what I've got so far. Sorry for the trouble.


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## the unbearable (Nov 16, 2011)

not a problem, we're here to help. these guys here know where i started.....


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## cazmaestro (Nov 18, 2011)

Okay, two days later, it's 11:53 and I've finally finished the rough mix, so I can show it to you guys. (Sorry, my GCSEs don't seem to be completing themselves). 

Rain by Callum Fernando on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

Can anyone help any further?


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## Splinterhead (Nov 18, 2011)

On first listen it would be great to know how you have the guitars panned. I'm kinda thinking that a little bit more of a spread across the stereo field may help. Just be careful that if you go too wide any discrepancies in the performance between the two tracks will start to show up. What helps me is to record two different rhythm guitar sounds. One sounding like Mesa Boogie (scooped mids) and one sounding more Marshall like (focused midrange). This kind of covers a lot of sonic ground making things sound a bit bigger. 

The mix seems very quiet. Check your recording levels to see if you can bump them up a bit or use a little compression to bring out the guitars a bit more. Also when you palm mute the dirty guitars there's a distinct "woof" sound that's kinda screwing up the mix a bit. I would try to eq that out if possible. It sounds like its around 200-300hz. The clean guitars sound nice and the composition is cool!


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## cazmaestro (Nov 19, 2011)

Thanks a lot, I'll get to work now. 

Right now, I have the two dirty guitars panned hard left and hard right, they're both exactly the same tone now, so I'll try having one scooped and one more full. But how should I pan those? Are you saying have the scooped one panned left and the midranged one panned right? I'm just wondering how that would work, since would it sound a bit imbalanced? The only other thing panned is the little clean rhythm parts starting at 3:18. There's two of them, once again panned hard right and hard left. 

I've always heard that you are supposed to pan hard right and left, what other options are there?

Yeah the mix is quiet, sorry I accidentally turned the output level down a bit, but I still need to learn how to add that compression. And that woof sound is annoying isn't it... 

Again, thanks! I'll post my new version up here asap.


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## cazmaestro (Nov 19, 2011)

Rain 2 by Callum Fernando on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

There is my new version. My guitars sound more defined now but they're just not... how to put it... not MEATY enough. Maybe more distortion? I think the overheads on the drums are too quiet as well. I'm trying to compare my track to other music in my iTunes because sometimes I get carried away with only one instrument. 

I've added parallel compression to the drums and also put ducking for the kick drum, so that's more defined. But the bass guitar and rhythm guitars are doing my head in... I don't know what to do...


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## the unbearable (Nov 20, 2011)

at first listen, your bass is doing nothing to help the guitars... that's where the heaviness truly comes from. the guitars may be a bit gainy, a little too low-endy.... i'd back the volume off on the guitars, bring the bass up to fit in, and see where you're at from there....


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## Nakon14 (Nov 20, 2011)

The bass certainly needs to come up a bit. You'd be surprised how much influence the bass has on the overall guitar tone.


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## Shaman (Nov 20, 2011)

I hate to say this, but it sounds like the weakness is coming from the picking. You need to pick very hard and with attitude to get that good palm mute sound. Use downstrokes and pick very hard! You have enough gain, but the guitar sounds like it was played with a very light touch. A bit more high mids wouldn't be a bad thing either!

I am tracking a thrash band now, and their guitar player had the same problem. It's very hard to make something sound tight and chunky when the guy plays the guitar with a weak touch. 

It's not about the studio magic with compression and such, it's about playing.

And I think a lot of people have misunderstood compression these days, at least when starting out with mixing stuff. Distortion itself IS compression, so when you start to compress a distorted signal, you are actually compressing an allready compressed signal. The only compression you should (normally) use with distorted guitars is a multiband comp to deal with excessive low end in palm mutes. The guitars should soung killer straight away, it's ALL about a killer raw sound, the mixing should only be about fine tuning and making things fit.

With clean guitars it's a different thing since they are a lot more dynamic, thus they need compression to even out the volume.

(oh, and a bit of midrange girth to the bass guitar wouldn't be a bad thing either)

Constructive criticism, hope this helps!


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## JohnIce (Nov 20, 2011)

If the bass sounds good, then you can cut your guitars with a high-pass filter up to 150-200 Hz with no problem. The guitar is a midrange instrument, it has no business below that.

Your mix sounds like it only has a bunch of guitars, a hi-hat and a snare. The bass and kick are hardly audible, which means there's no wonder you're not getting any "power" from it all. The kick sounds very midrangey, meaning it'll be masked by the guitars. A kick in a metal mix can usually need a bit of a smiley-face EQ curve to make it both audible and out of the way for all the guitars.

The bass can be pretty heavily compressed. Dudes like Chris Lord Alge and Randy Staub (top dogs among rock/metal mix engineers) usually compress the bass until the meters are practically flat all the way through the song. Experiment! Also, a light distortion/overdrive on the bass can do wonders to make it gel with the rest of the mix.

Also, it sounds like you pick pretty lightly. Reducing gain means you have to pick harder to get the punch.

^Oh, and +1 to everything Shaman said


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## cazmaestro (Nov 20, 2011)

Wow, I was on this page for ages hoping for a response and I click refresh and BOOM! Thanks a lot guys. 

Okay, so I'd already mucked with it before you guys posted, so I guess there no use in me putting that up now with all this feedback. I'm gonna start experimenting right now. 

A few questions though, 

JohnIce, do I have to compress the bass if I've used VST plugin on a midi track? Would the dynamics be affected at all? 

Shaman, I think what you said about my picking style is right. I'm very much of a perfectionist, and I've gotten to the point where I pick ridiculously light just so everything is PERFECT. :/ I never knew that it was so futile. 

The bass is confusing me a little. I realise it is very low right now, but how loud should it be? Should it be noticeable as an instrument, or just make the whole mix mesh? Because when I listen to some other band mixes, their basses seem very very low in the mix, but is that because they're just playing root notes... 

I'm using impulses right now, which I'm getting used to after I found POD Farm just too horrible, but a better technique may produce wonders. 

Thanks for all the help again guys, it's all a bit overwhelming and making me feel a bit stupid, but seeing the song just get better and better is crazy fun.


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## JohnIce (Nov 20, 2011)

If you put the compressor AFTER the plugin on the channel strip, then you're fine  It will alter the dynamics, because that's what a compressor does. However we're talking about strictly volume dynamics here, not variations in picking or whatever.

How loud and clear the bass should be is up to whoever mixes the song. If you listen to Metallica's Justice album it's barely audible, if you listen to Nightwish it's very audible. So that's all up to you, trust your ears and preferences. It is however important that the bass fills up the low frequencies, because like I said, the guitars shouldn't be needed any lower than 150-200 Hz. Because the bass has power and tone in those lower registers, whereas a guitar only has mud and hum down there.


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## cazmaestro (Nov 20, 2011)

That's cleared a lot of things up JohnIce, thanks a lot. 

PS: I know what you mean about the Justice album, I could probably reproduce that entire album by banging some tin cans with spoons and it would sound better. Poor Jason.


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## cazmaestro (Nov 22, 2011)

Okay, so I've done everything again, and here's what I've come up with. I have no idea whether this is good or not, but I feel like shooting myself because I cannot get these guitars to sound right. 

I have done one with the Lepou Lecto and one with the Lepou Legion, if anyone knows how to make them sound better than they do here, then please do tell. Here is both versions:

Rain 4 (lepou legion and lecto) by Callum Fernando on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

I would really appreciate more feedback and criticism guys, thanks a lot for everything you've said already.


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## ahjteam (Nov 22, 2011)

cazmaestro said:


> The bass is confusing me a little. I realise it is very low right now, but how loud should it be? Should it be noticeable as an instrument, or just make the whole mix mesh?



When your windows are rattling, then the bass is loud enough. Barely. 

Put the bass first so loud that you can clearly hear it, then turn it down so much that you can barely hear it anymore, then put it to halfway or a bit above of that. So if the faders are at -5 and -15, put it to somewhere between -10 and -6.

One easy way to clear way for your bass is to highpass your guitars. Route the guitars to a bus, group or whatever your DAW calls them. Put a highpass filter there, first set it to 30hz, then close eyes and turn up the filter up with the whole mix playing, don't solo the guitars. Have everything in there. When it starts to thin out too much, open eyes and go back about half an octave. So if you ended up putting the highpass filter to 150, the octave below is 75 and halfway is ~112hz. Quick way to calculate that is hz*0.75, BUT don't look at the numbers, trust your ears and go with the feel. 






PS: your bass needs way better playing. 




PPS: I know you looked at the numbers. Don't do that.


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## JohnIce (Nov 22, 2011)

ahjteam said:


> When your windows are rattling, then the bass is loud enough. Barely.
> 
> Put the bass first so loud that you can clearly hear it, then turn it down so much that you can barely hear it anymore, then put it to halfway or a bit above of that. So if the faders are at -5 and -15, put it to somewhere between -10 and -6.
> 
> ...



For someone who advertises not looking at the numbers, you're posting an awful lot of numbers  I'm normally quite against reducing mixing to maths, principles and presets. I'd say high pass your guitars until they just start to lose the character you want, then immediately go back to where they sounded good. No maths after that, if it sounds good then it's good 

For building a mix from the ground up I find that leaving your kick at around -12 dBFS and building your mix around that leaves the best headroom resulting in the clearest master. Modern DAW's have such a low noise floor that you can afford to keep a decent amount of headroom while mixing, just turn up your monitoring while working. Not to mention that if you do end up getting your record professionally mastered, they'll appreciate the generous headroom. Even a top-paid pro can't do much with an already clipping or limited master. Which is to say that if you master it yourself, you won't either. It's easy to make a master commercially loud but to also make it clear and free of audible clipping, the key is often in the headroom. 

Not saying it's a better method than yours but it's what I've found to work the best.


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## ahjteam (Nov 23, 2011)

JohnIce said:


> For someone who advertises not looking at the numbers, you're posting an awful lot of numbers  I'm normally quite against reducing mixing to maths, principles and presets. I'd say high pass your guitars until they just start to lose the character you want, then immediately go back to where they sounded good. No maths after that, if it sounds good then it's good
> 
> For building a mix from the ground up I find that leaving your kick at around -12 dBFS and building your mix around that leaves the best headroom resulting in the clearest master. Modern DAW's have such a low noise floor that you can afford to keep a decent amount of headroom while mixing, just turn up your monitoring while working. Not to mention that if you do end up getting your record professionally mastered, they'll appreciate the generous headroom. Even a top-paid pro can't do much with an already clipping or limited master. Which is to say that if you master it yourself, you won't either. It's easy to make a master commercially loud but to also make it clear and free of audible clipping, the key is often in the headroom.
> 
> Not saying it's a better method than yours but it's what I've found to work the best.



Take out the example out of my message and there are no numbers at all (except 30hz)  Some people just "want" solid numbers to go with, so I used examples, but they are not meant to be taken as "set in stone" numbers. Here is the same message without the examples.



ahjteam said:


> Put the bass first so loud that you can clearly hear it, then turn it down so much that you can barely hear it anymore, then put it to halfway or a bit above of that.
> 
> One easy way to clear way for your bass is to highpass your guitars. Route the guitars to a bus, group or whatever your DAW calls them. Put a highpass filter there, first set it to 30hz, then close eyes and turn up the filter up with the whole mix playing, don't solo the guitars. Have everything in there. When it starts to thin out too much, open eyes and go back about half an octave. BUT don't look at the numbers, trust your ears and go with the feel.



And for the record: I usually start laying the mixing levels from bass guitar instead of kick and I usually hard limit it to -18dBFS, because in 90% of the cases in metal music I mix it lower than kick.


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