Would you post a nice isolated guitar track and tell how you did it?

LazerBeakShiek

Find Polaris..and Return
Some of the members have posted clips that are out of this world. Would you post a nice isolated guitar track and tell how you did it? If not why? Is it secret? Am I a spy? Are you a spy?

The members that have mastered impulse responses seem to have got it down real nice. That is what I am investigating currently.

Bone transducers and surface mount microphones looks like a bust. Arcane technology now forgotten cause you can buy a plate reverb or even better load its response.
 
So this is a Stratocaster. Neck pup. Dimed controls. Straight into a 6i6 then a 1/4" reel to reel 8 track. Targeting 0 db.

No vsts or effects. Wait, there is a Reverb plug in Focus red reverb 5-10%mix on the master.

Whats the difference? Digital to analog?
 

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It almost sounds like you're either palm muting on the 6i6 track. I've got an old Saffire - not much different under the covers save the FW out - and it doesn't do that.

I'd like to see the raw track (WAV), i.e., what went in, and not the bounced out with FX. Should be in some media folder I'd guess.

I'm a little confused about the 8 track. You mean you are plugging the guitar directly into the tape deck??
 
This is from a live recording last August. 8 channels into an Zoom R24. The guitar was a mic'ed Quilter amp with an OD pedal. It was one of 3 guitar amps, bass, drums and vocals in the mix. A bit of EQ and that's it.
 

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Holy shit Rich, thats f'ing awesome!

Kieth , the 8 track goes into a mixer Mackie 16ch, the bus makes it a stereo image. No FX. no compression. Nothing from my rack. Unfortuneatley it goes into the 6i6 anyways input3/4 to become a mp3. 3/4 should bypass the preamps. Sos it wont be preamped.

The 6i6 is set direct 1/4" cable off the mixer then USB to DAW no FX. Yes, I used more palm muting . Still the difference is insane.

The master had a reverb pluggin , so there is a little reverb. Nothing that would cause that much difference.

Edit- I Did not like the palm mute. So i did it open chord. Also taken off the mixing board. This one is mono. So there still is a difference. still a big difference.

You know, i dont think either of the 2 top ones were preamped. I think the Mackie shuts off the preamp with an insert plugged. I pulled out the bypassed insert chain. Check me on that. I might have found my problem.
 

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[MENTION=202469]LazerBeakShiek[/MENTION], I'm going to just add that, based on the reading of your posts, your approach is too chaotic. You have a lot of vocabulary of the practice, but the implementation is unparseable, and it seems you discover what you've done after it's done and you go back. This is not a productive way to get to a process that you can refine and improve.

Get a notebook and draw a picture if necessary, but really get clear about how you are connecting things, and WHY you are doing it, i.e., what the expected result is going to be. Keep it as simple as possible and don't add anything, I mean anything, until you can get good tracks recorded at good levels with proper gain staging simply going to a mix with no FX/plugins/channel-strips, whatever. Keep your faders on zero until you have exhausted the capability of gain staging.
 
The mixer needed to be reconfigured for the 8 track. It was chaos, its been a while.

I have no idea what a baseline guitar is supposed to sound like in a DAW. I figured that those that had a severe low cut was the normal 6i6 sound. Is it an ASIO problem? A driver problem.

All I could claim is that the live sound out the speakers was much different.
 
These are L/R separated guitars in a tune I recently tracked where I played all the instruments. They're a Telecaster into a Pro Jr amp but I unplugged the cabinet and am running a 12" Eminence (that is in an old Line 6 AxSys 212, ha!) with a slight bit of Boss RV-5 reverb. I don't think the amp is past 3, it's running pretty clean:View attachment Telecasters.mp3

And this is a Jazzmaster through the same Pro Jr in another tune I did myself. I turned the amp up to probably 4-5 (out of 12) and with the Tumnus pushing it a little extra, and this time through a 10" Celestion from a busted 1984 Marshall practice amp that I now use as a cabinet. It fits in the mix! View attachment Jazzmaster.mp3

They're recorded with a MD 421 and a SM57 on the cabinet and a Michael Joly-modified MXL2003 a few feet away in my MiniTrap-laden walk-in closet, and preamps are a UA Solo 110 (the 421) and a RNP (57 and LDC)

Edited to add: I just normalized the tracks in Logic to make them a little louder. I try to keep it so I have the very few harshest peaks around I don't know, usually -6 to -9 db.
 
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I'm not sure I understand the idea behind this, but isolated guitar tracks aren't necessarily supposed to sound "good". Not sure if that's what you're expecting to hear... but it's all about the mix. Does the guitar work with the drums and the bass and the vocals? It doesn't matter what it sounds like solo'd and you shouldn't "edit" or "mix" it solo'd. Each guitar track will take a different approach depending on the song and what's around it and how you want it to come across in a full mix.
 
If you are looking for a starting point it helps. If it is isolated you can pick out gate compressor filter and eq basic settings. Heck I even put the isolated track under an O scope and check the range and movement.

Goodtimes, that jazzmaster track sounds sweet very beatlesque, no clatter. You nailed the Pro JR.
 
If you are looking for a starting point it helps. If it is isolated you can pick out gate compressor filter and eq basic settings. Heck I even put the isolated track under an O scope and check the range and movement.

I guess my point is that it really shouldn't "help" even as a starting point... unless you're using the same exact drum/bass tracks from the song that the isolated guitar came from? Because otherwise those gate/compressor/filter/eq basic settings shouldn't be made, because the only reason they should have been made in the first place was to work with and around the other tracks.

If you're looking for some "good practice" tips when dealing with guitar tracks, like High Pass the lower end so your Guitar stays away from the areas where your Bass tracks are supposed to be doing all the work. Then that's more constructive for you, but listening to a random isolated guitar won't help at all because you won't understand the reasoning behind why those moves were made to the track in the first place. In other words you shouldn't be making any EQ moves on a guitar in isolation at all... it serves no purpose unless your track is a single guitar throughout.
 
Let people explore their process.


To each his own on how they home record. But for me, I think I'm with LazerBeakShiek on this.

I used to subscribe to the idea of never listening to tracks in isolation. Until I found a site with isolated tracks of popular songs throughout the past 40 years or so. I've learned A LOT through listening, studying, and analyzing those tracks in isolation. Particularly guitar tracks.

I've come to the conclusion that those guitar tracks 99 percent of the time sound great isolated, just as they do in the final mixed song. They may sound "different", but still good. You can hear everything from the compression amounts, to eq, to amount of reverb used, to stereo spread, and on and on. My tracks have improved from studying these isolated tracks.

Once I am happy with the isolation, I then move it to the mix for tweaking. But to each his own. This falls under the category of "there are no rules" for me.
 
I used to subscribe to the idea of never listening to tracks in isolation
Even though that has long been advice given by people that know what they're talking about, I've honestly never found it to make sense. For me, it's like a number of things ~ approach with caution but also sensibly. Sometimes, isolating a track has been what I've needed to do to get it sounding good or find out what a particular problem may be. Other times, working on it in isolation has just contributed to a definition~less mess. "Never" and "always" are two poles that I rarely visit in my world of nuance and paradox. I'm the denizen of "sometimes."
Until I found a site with isolated tracks of popular songs throughout the past 40 years or so
Recently, I've been coming across these deconstruction videos that break down songs. They're interesting for a listen. It's there that one can really see how little some people do in some songs, yet, take their contribution away and.....
Equally, some over the years just overplayed {in my opinion}.
I've learned A LOT through listening, studying, and analyzing those tracks in isolation. Particularly guitar tracks
I must admit, I haven't, probably because I don't study and analyse. I tend to listen out of interest and just pick things up in an offhand sort of way. It's funny because for years, whenever I've heard acoustic guitars, whether in isolation or not, they always just sound like acoustic guitars to me. I never get this sense of some kind of wonderful way they are recorded that gives them this world beating professional sound. Equally, I'm often intrigued with how thin I find electric guitars when isolated. I suppose it gives me some hope that my sounds aren't actually that bad !
I've come to the conclusion that those guitar tracks 99 percent of the time sound great isolated, just as they do in the final mixed song.
I guess it depends on what one counts as 'great.' But I do find it illogical to posit as a rule that something almost has to sound lame in isolation in order to sound great in a mix. I know no one actually says that but it's almost like a conclusion that gets reached without being said. The reality for me is that it's a sometime thing.

To each his own on how they home record. This falls under the category of "there are no rules" for me.
I've never subscribed to the idea that there are no rules in making music, just that the rule book is like Tolstoy's "War & Peace," it has so many pages and what is written on each page has its place although some will have more of a lasting and general place than others.
 
This is an isolated and full band version of a snippet of a new song. 3 guitars, I recorded them as guide tracks so I could put the drums down so they will be re-recorded, but they'll sound similar (just with better playing!)

Focusrite 18i20, Gibson SG standard.

L guitar - Bogner XTC amp, no pedals, teeny bit of tape delay and reverb
R guitar - AC 30, DoD 250 overdrive pedal (drive set at 6), same tape delay and reverb
lead guitar - Marshall JCM900, DoD 250 overdrive pedal (CRANKED), same delay/verb

All are EQ'd and compressed with Slate VMR (FG-S, FG-401)

2 rythm tracks output to a stereo bus with VMR console and another London virtual tube compressor, buss virtual console, Monster compressor and FG-N.

View attachment Snap-full.mp3
View attachment Snap-guitars.mp3
 
That sounds awesome. That is the Bogner or the 900 in Snap-guitars? Its fun like Skynyrd.

At any time are you drawing goofy scoops in the EQ window?

Annotation 2020-01-10 135015.jpg
 
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The panned left guitar is the Bogner, the solo part is the 900. I go all by ear, I am generally a fan of scoopy and bright guitars for our music style. Our bass player uses a tree-trunk sized 5 string that completely fills the low and low-mids so I default to scooping out the mids and then season in the final mix depending on the song.

Realized that I didn't mention I was using Overloud THU. Obviously I don't have $8,000 worth of heads lying around!
 
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