ecktronic
Mixing and Mastering.
I had a listen.
The guitars sound pretty grizzly.
Better than any guitars Ive recorded though!
What was your set up?
Eck
I had a listen.
The guitars sound pretty grizzly.
Better than any guitars Ive recorded though!
What was your set up?
Eck
J
jndietz
The Way It Moves
Well, I was recording an Epiphone Dot through a Crate Vintage Club 30 (single 12" speaker). The combo was dialed in at 1, 3, and 12 o'clock positions for treble, mid, and bass respectively. I then mic'd it with a Shure SM57 and an MXL 991 and blended them to mix. I also layered the tracks (recorded them more than once with different settings on the combo and panned them hard left and right to get a different sound and thus a wider stereo image).
Sloan
New member
Two mics on a speaker per take. One "take" will be two tracks of the same performance. If you position the mics right, you will get some good phase cancellation of some nasty high frequencies that are common with higher gain/distorted signals. Phase flip one of the tracks to see what I mean.
2-4 tight takes, each with slightly different settings, or different guitar, or a different amp. Those will be your rhythm tracks. If you use the same exact settings, your gonna get more of a BIG MONO sound rather than a wide and interesting stereo sound.
You can pan two takes hard L & R and have the other two takes a little more towards the center. If you want, you can even record another track for the center. This is best used when there aren't vocals or some type of lead present. You can sidechain it to get it out of the way if you must.
If you can setup some room mics, that can help with a "bigger" sound.
Since I usually don't have extra channels for room mics, I use some reverb impulses and kinda make my own virtual room mics with one track that recieves various levels of selected instruments. It really helps fill the sound out, but if your not careful, it can muddy things up. That's why it's good to run a highpass around 2-300hz.
Highpass your guitars at 80-100hz. Lowpass maybe around 8-10000khz depending on the rest of the mix. Fool around with the mids and stuff.
Lately I've been compressing even my high gain guitar signals 2-3db. It can help smooth things out a little.
2-4 tight takes, each with slightly different settings, or different guitar, or a different amp. Those will be your rhythm tracks. If you use the same exact settings, your gonna get more of a BIG MONO sound rather than a wide and interesting stereo sound.
You can pan two takes hard L & R and have the other two takes a little more towards the center. If you want, you can even record another track for the center. This is best used when there aren't vocals or some type of lead present. You can sidechain it to get it out of the way if you must.
If you can setup some room mics, that can help with a "bigger" sound.
Since I usually don't have extra channels for room mics, I use some reverb impulses and kinda make my own virtual room mics with one track that recieves various levels of selected instruments. It really helps fill the sound out, but if your not careful, it can muddy things up. That's why it's good to run a highpass around 2-300hz.
Highpass your guitars at 80-100hz. Lowpass maybe around 8-10000khz depending on the rest of the mix. Fool around with the mids and stuff.
Lately I've been compressing even my high gain guitar signals 2-3db. It can help smooth things out a little.
X
xstatic
New member
Adding a DI copy of a mic'ed track and running ti through even a hlafway decent modeler can really add a lot of girth. Not only do you get a slight phasing, but you can take the track on the modeler and dial up a pointy clean sound that you can then blend behind the mic'ed take which for the purpose of this specific example I will assume was a thick hi gain track. Adding the digital pointy clean to it that will definately have less sustain (as a result of the lack of extra saturation) can really increase the dynamic impression of that overall guitar track. A few tracks done like this can really make a much larger thicker sound, and is often not thought of by many people. Most people would not understand why a thin clean digital track would want to get layered with something like a thick high gain track layed through a big Mesa or something.
In the end, I feel like Daisy actually offered the best advice. Instead of asking people online how an engineer may have done something, drill that engineer and pick his brain and shadow his moves to figure out what he did. If we all did that with 10 different good engineers we would learn tons of tricks and tips. When you start compiling the knowledge you have learned from various other engineers, you end up developing your own cool style. Before long you may just one of someone elses 10 engineers
In the end, I feel like Daisy actually offered the best advice. Instead of asking people online how an engineer may have done something, drill that engineer and pick his brain and shadow his moves to figure out what he did. If we all did that with 10 different good engineers we would learn tons of tricks and tips. When you start compiling the knowledge you have learned from various other engineers, you end up developing your own cool style. Before long you may just one of someone elses 10 engineers
zoso59brst
...and bring some scotch
big guitars
wow, the dot never saw those riffs coming!
sounds good!
Anyway, notredamer0789, I agree with Sloan.. room mics will help you... even (or especially) out of room mics.
Distance = Depth most of the time. Try close micing with a dynamic and set another mic (condenser or better yet a ribbon if you have one) way back... experiment with different distances (stairwells work great for this if you happen to have one laying around....) If you want to get real crazy and have the gear/channels/space available to do it, try three or more mics set at different distances ie:
amp/mic............mic......................mic..............................................mic
around corners sometimes does cool stuff as well. Now I'm blathering. The point is, you develop a little pre-delay with the distance between each mic as well as hearing different reflections and the character of each mic, and perhaps most important, you are hearing the whole sound. Hope it helps... I do this whenever possible and it usually gives me what I'm looking for. Some small time producer named Jimmy Page used to use it pretty effectively......
wow, the dot never saw those riffs coming!
sounds good!Anyway, notredamer0789, I agree with Sloan.. room mics will help you... even (or especially) out of room mics.
Distance = Depth most of the time. Try close micing with a dynamic and set another mic (condenser or better yet a ribbon if you have one) way back... experiment with different distances (stairwells work great for this if you happen to have one laying around....) If you want to get real crazy and have the gear/channels/space available to do it, try three or more mics set at different distances ie:
amp/mic............mic......................mic..............................................mic
around corners sometimes does cool stuff as well. Now I'm blathering. The point is, you develop a little pre-delay with the distance between each mic as well as hearing different reflections and the character of each mic, and perhaps most important, you are hearing the whole sound. Hope it helps... I do this whenever possible and it usually gives me what I'm looking for. Some small time producer named Jimmy Page used to use it pretty effectively......
zoso59brst
...and bring some scotch
....and one more thing
here's another trick that requires a little less work-
Get a decent mix on the tracks you have. Setup a mic in front of your monitors and record the playback... again distance and depth, but sometimes this lends a cool effect.
-Pete
here's another trick that requires a little less work-
Get a decent mix on the tracks you have. Setup a mic in front of your monitors and record the playback... again distance and depth, but sometimes this lends a cool effect.
-Pete
ecktronic
Mixing and Mastering.
Nice one.
I've heard that 1x12s can be great for recording big guitars as you can drive the amp and get nice saturation without having the amp stupid loud!
Eck
ecktronic
Mixing and Mastering.
Yes siree!
Might sound a bit wrong to some, but adding reverb and delay to distorted guitars can make them sound MASSIVE when double tracked and hard panned.
Remember to automate the reverb and delay tails when the guitars stop playing though so it doesnt actually sound like there is any reverb or delay on them.
Eck
J
jndietz
The Way It Moves
A lot of the time, I have found that mic'ing a 4 x 12" sounds worse than a 2 x 12" or a 1 x 12". I'm not sure why that is entirely, but I stick with using 1 x 12s only. I might have to end up doing a few takes, but I can get a thick sound without getting all of the mud a 4 x 12" gives me.
zoso59brst
...and bring some scotch
absolutely- smaller amps kick butt in the studio. I just did a session with a silverface Princeton reverb... awesome. (well if you want to get technical about it, it was a Princeton chained to a Ampeg B15 portaflex chained to a leslie 825...) but most of the tracks were either exclusively the princeton or a tweed champ... little amps make big sound. Heck, Page did Zep 1 (and others) on a Supro Thunderbolt... 1x15 ...... are there bigger guitars than that????
giraffe
i love negative rep
big (large) amps sound just fine, you just have to be able to open them up....
which can suck in a small studio.
which can suck in a small studio.