Please help me get a better understanding of mixing...

[Myriad_Rocker]

I'm trying to record and do mixing on my guitars and what not...but I have some issues that I'm hoping you guys could help clear up for me. I'll give some scenerios, if you will, and if you guys could help me understand what might occur during that situation, that would be VERY helpful. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

One Guitar
How is this mixed? Is it typically just doubled by the player in the opposite channel? What if the guitar part is pretty complex and can't be duplicated dead on? Is this ever an issue? How do you thicken up the sound of a band on a recording that only has one guitar?

Two Guitars
Let's say there are two different parts. One is playing chords and one is picking individual strings...how would this generally be mixed? Are parts doubled to give that thick sound? How does the method vary from clean parts and distortion parts?

Three Guitars
How are three guitars dealt with? All the same questions from the other two apply here...let's say all parts are distinct and different.

Additionally, what panning techniques should be employed? Anything I should watch out for? Any other tips and tricks?

ANY other advice on this would be AWESOME! Thanks!!!

[Blue Bear Sound]

Not specific to guitars, but this article may help.... Mixing 101

[Myriad_Rocker]

Yes, I've read that article before. It's a great article...

Even though it has and will help me, I'm still not sure about what to do with each give scenerio above...

[Marciano]

It all depends on the kind of guitars you record and it´s porpuse.Say you have recorded a live take and you only record one track. The guitarrist uses just a clean sound and a Drive sound. The soung it´s like a-CHORUS-b-Chorus. Is uses the clean sound on a and b, and uses the drive chanel on chorus to give more energy to it. If you are using a DAW, cut the 2 diferent channels and had 1 tracks more. Then using the timer, transport the drive channel to the second track and duplicate it. Now you have 3 tracks (that i thinks is the minimum to work).
Pan the 2 dr1ve channles hard left and right. Some daw invert phase when a tracks is duplicated so before panning, put both in Center and it the phase botton(or 2 mouse botton for phase option) and revers phase until the guitar sounds "stupid"! Than pan him hard left and right. Group those 2 channels and put him on the level you desire along with the clean channel that you can pan like 2, 3 o'clock to give space for vocals. Than year the difference and say something.

Marcio Silva
P.s. another day u´ll give more advices on recording and panning more guitar channels.

[Myriad_Rocker]

Thank you.

bump as well.

[Cloneboy Studio]

I don't know what will work for you, but I can tell you how *I'd* approach things:

First off, I will double almost all guitar parts except solos (my own guitar work I will usually even double those!). The amount of doubling I will do depends on how *important* the guitar line is to the SONG.

In short, let the SONG dictate how 'thick' a sound should be.

Typically I will have the crunch/distorted guitar parts quadrupled. If the rhythm is broken into two parts I will have each part doubled for a total of four tracks.

Clean electric stuff I usually will record three dupes of. One leftish, one rightish and the other down the center.

Once again, it depends how IMPORTANT the part is for how many doubles, how long I'll take to get sounds for, etc... It makes no sense to quadruple a distant background part.

[Marciano]

Excelent Cloneboy Studio.I couldn't say that in better words!

[Myriad_Rocker]

Cloneboy -

You said on clean electric stuff you would have one leftish, one rightish, and then one up the center....but wouldn't that fight for space with a lead vocal that's up the center?

[HangDawg]

Here's what I did recently and it came out cool. First track ESP guitar with sm57. Second track ESP md421 playing the octave to the first. Third track PRS guitar with md421 playing same as first. Fourth track with PRS and sm57 doing the octave.


I panned the first and fourth left and the second and third to the right.