Guitar Tricks - Post Here!

ElegyOfficial

ElegyOfficial

New member
Hey!

So far all i know when it comes to guitar recording and editing guitar in a software is copying it and pasting it into another track and zoom in on it all the way and move it one step and it sounds more full.

But what i wanna know is if there are any guitar recording tricks (in software, any software) and im not talking about guitar rig stuff, im talking about like... idk

PRETTY MUCH TO SUM EVERYTHING UP - After recording your guitar, What would you do with it afterwards? What would you do to tweak it and make it sound nicer, or is that not possible? And what you record is what you get and all you get to modify is the volume? Please post all that here i wanna know :)

Im excited to read what you post!

-Elegy
 
There's a whole guitar section in this forum. but your question seems to be a newbie one, so its alright here.

Some folks like to record a bare no f/x clean track , then apply f/x after. Others prefer to get the sound just the way they want it and record it that way.

F/x done after recording a 'final' sound would include compression, limiting, delay and reverb and EQing.
A clean sound could have any/all f/x added to it.

I think you'll have to be a lot more specific on what you are looking for.
 
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mjbphotos said:
I think you'll have to be a lot more specific on what you are looking for.
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Yes sir,

Umm, Hmm

For choruses we sound a little like http://www.myspace.com/hawthorneheights
I want to learn how to sound like that, i mean you obviously wont know exactly how they record, but if you know any tweaks and tricks that would be great! (also just for more information our choruses sound like the intro to their song "This is who we are") (preferably for pro tools)

Then when it comes to breakdowns and more hardcore stuff, we really sound like www.myspace.com/tstletters They have an "In the Studio" video and they helped me know the order of recording (guitar scratch tracks, then drums, finalize guitar then bass then vocals, that thing) And if i asked them what they did to get that sound they wouldnt know because they went to a studio so, haha.

Oh! also, like for rhythm guitars and lead guitars, Wich one do i pan right and wich one do i pan left, and do i pan them ALL the way? just a curiosity
Also same for bass? how pan left or right? and how much :)
 
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there really aren't any secret's (as far as i know) but hey maybe im dumb :eek:

your best bet is to get your guitar sounding as good as you can get it before even thinking about hitting the record button, then there wont be much work (if any at all) left.

the only other thing i can mention is doing two takes of the same thing and panning each take hard left and hard right, but thats only if you think you need a thicker guitar sound.
 
record the signal dry then pan hard left and right using different complimentary softamps on each channel, then palm mute a third track towards the centre..



then tell me how that sounds lol :)
 
Kingofpain678 said:
there really aren't any secret's (as far as i know) but hey maybe im dumb :eek:

your best bet is to get your guitar sounding as good as you can get it before even thinking about hitting the record button, then there wont be much work (if any at all) left.

the only other thing i can mention is doing two takes of the same thing and panning each take hard left and hard right, but thats only if you think you need a thicker guitar sound.
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Aww, ok i was just wondering. But if its just a matter of recording and panning, all i need to get is a preamp. That makes life easier haha
 
ElegyOfficial said:
Aww, ok i was just wondering. But if its just a matter of recording and panning, all i need to get is a preamp. That makes life easier haha
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well it IS just a matter of recording and panning BUT the recording part is INCREDIBLY critical.

when recording your guitar, your amp, your amp cab, your speakers, your mic, your mic placement, the room your recording in, accurate monitors (so you know exactly whats being recorded), your preamp, your recording level, your audio interface are all critical.

moving your mic a few centimeters off axis or to the left, right, up or down will give you a different sound, different guitars and different amps give you different sounds. its all very delicate and requires alot of know how and tweaking (especially distorted guitars) to get a great tone down on tape or into your DAW.

generally your not gonna get great results with crappy gear but it IS possible.
 
oh and im not trying to scare you! you can achieve good results with somewhat low end gear if you work for it!

:D:D:D

and dont give up if you dont get the results you want on your first try.

godspeed :D
 
Kingofpain678 said:
oh and im not trying to scare you! you can achieve good results with somewhat low end gear if you work for it!

:D:D:D

and dont give up if you dont get the results you want on your first try.

godspeed :D
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I appreciate your post!
I kinda understood the whole "Mic position is critical" part beforehand, but i was just wondering if there was anything i could do to the sound in the software.

Well here's what im recording with.

I have an AT2020 Condenser mic, when i should have gotten a Shure sm57 because at the time i went to guitar center as a retard and assumed any mic would work, not knowing i should have gotten the shure sm57, So i just stood there listening to the guitar center guy saying "Yeah man, AT2020 is where its at!" then i use it and bleh, only good for vocals. And learned about the 57 as a guitar player its better, so thats why i come on here asking about stuff to get before getting it to see if its worth it haha but i gotta give him props because he told me about fast track pro, best 200$ i ever spent!. So this leads to my next question,

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-DMP3-2Channel-Mic-PreDirect-Box?sku=241101 - I'm really thinking about getting this. Is there something that i should get that is better / in the same price range?

:P
 
I will generally run an eq and a compressor on my guitars, here's where I start with these and then will tweak until I get the perfect sound, Obviously these will vary due to differences in the original sound but it's a starting point.

Compressor,

4:1 ratio, Relatively quick attack, and medium release,

Eq,

100hz, is the low end of the guitar, I will normally boost slightly here

200hz contains a lot of mud, If your looking to clear up the sound reduce here, definitely no boosting in this area

500-600hz is the main body of the guitar. boost or reduce here as necessary

3k-4k Boosting here will really help the guitar cut through the mix, but be careful not to boost too much as it can be quite unpleasant on the ears

5k-8k I normally reduce in this range on distorted guitars, and boost for clean as it gives the sound some excitement

10k I will boost for clean guitars to improve clarity, and will experiment here with distorted guitars

I'm by no means professional but that's how I do it:)
 
DuddyGuy said:
I will generally run an eq and a compressor on my guitars, here's where I start with these and then will tweak until I get the perfect sound, Obviously these will vary due to differences in the original sound but it's a starting point.

Compressor,

4:1 ratio, Relatively quick attack, and medium release,

Eq,

100hz, is the low end of the guitar, I will normally boost slightly here

200hz contains a lot of mud, If your looking to clear up the sound reduce here, definitely no boosting in this area

500-600hz is the main body of the guitar. boost or reduce here as necessary

3k-4k Boosting here will really help the guitar cut through the mix, but be careful not to boost too much as it can be quite unpleasant on the ears

5k-8k I normally reduce in this range on distorted guitars, and boost for clean as it gives the sound some excitement

10k I will boost for clean guitars to improve clarity, and will experiment here with distorted guitars

I'm by no means professional but that's how I do it:)
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I dont speak greek. :)
 
ElegyOfficial said:
I dont speak greek. :)
Click to expand...

This is not Greek... gEEk maybe, but not Greek. So EQ=equalization. You use it to sculpt your sound. Along with compression (which I'll also tell you a little bit about), it is the most important tool in the mixing process (mixing is FX and editing applied to your already recorded parts in order to get better clarity, depth and sound quality).

What he is talking about are frequency ranges. The smaller the number (i.e. 10 hz) the deeper and bassier the sound, the higher the number (i.e. 10,000 hz) the sharper and more treble-y the sound. So, for instance, if you boost at 20 hz you're going to add more bass to your sound which could actually be good for something like a kick drum, but a horrible idea for a female singer.

The idea with EQ is to cut and boost in the right areas. Distorted guitars tend sound shitty if they have too much low-end (bass frequencies), which is why cutting at 200hz might be helpful. These ugly bass and low-mid frequencies are what he refers to as "mud" because they "mud-up" the sound.

Also, when anyone says 10k, we mean 10kHz. K stands for kilo, which means "1000". So if you have 8kHz, that's just a shorter way of saying 8000 hz. Making sense? Ok, well I'm gonna break this up into 2 posts. In the 2nd one I'll tell you about compression.
 
chicopunk13 said:
This is not Greek... gEEk maybe, but not Greek. So EQ=equalization. You use it to sculpt your sound. Along with compression (which I'll also tell you a little bit about), it is the most important tool in the mixing process (mixing is FX and editing applied to your already recorded parts in order to get better clarity, depth and sound quality).

What he is talking about are frequency ranges. The smaller the number (i.e. 10 hz) the deeper and bassier the sound, the higher the number (i.e. 10,000 hz) the sharper and more treble-y the sound. So, for instance, if you boost at 20 hz you're going to add more bass to your sound which could actually be good for something like a kick drum, but a horrible idea for a female singer.

The idea with EQ is to cut and boost in the right areas. Distorted guitars tend sound shitty if they have too much low-end (bass frequencies), which is why cutting at 200hz might be helpful. These ugly bass and low-mid frequencies are what he refers to as "mud" because they "mud-up" the sound.

Also, when anyone says 10k, we mean 10kHz. K stands for kilo, which means "1000". So if you have 8kHz, that's just a shorter way of saying 8000 hz. Making sense? Ok, well I'm gonna break this up into 2 posts. In the 2nd one I'll tell you about compression.
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Ahhh!! i see, thats pretty cool!
I appreciate your help! Along with Duddy's help, im going to go mess around with this more. (If anyone else has any tip on guitar recording keep posting!)
 
Compression comes in MANY flavors from limiters to expanders to multiband compressers to de-essers to standard compression to noise gates, but you don't need to worry about all that just yet. I'm gonna give a quick run-down on regular old compression.

What it does is take the loudest parts of your audio and make them softer, while taking the softer parts and making them louder. So, for example, if you got a singer singing real softly and then he launches into a screaming part, obviously the volume difference between the loud and soft part is going to be HUGE. This is called "dynamics" and is usually measured in decibels (abbreviated as "db"). Compression, when applied skillfully, will even things out and make the vocal take sound a hell of a lot better.

Dynamics are a good thing, but on a recording you HAVE TO, HAVE TO, HAVE TO make sure there's not TOO much dynamic range, otherwise it'll sound like shit and different parts won't mesh well. Compression can be broken into 4 main parts. (1) ratio, (2) threshold, (3) attack and (4) release.

Ratio is how strong the compression is... the higher the number, the MORE powerful the compression (volume leveling) you get and the LESS dynamic range you end up with. 10:1 is a number you won't see on vocals too often, because it's very strong and will cause some unwanted effects, but you see it used on drums a lot because it's not harmful to the very dynamic drumset. Numbers you might see on vocals are 2:1 and 4:1 because those are gentler settings. A lower ratio helps even out dynamics without being too obvious.

Now, compression ONLY kicks in during the loudest parts of the audio. This is your "threshold". So, if you set your threshold at -10db, the compressor ONLY KICKS IN when the sound gets louder than -10db, anything below that loudness is unaffected. Setting your threshold is important... set it too high and you won't compress much of anything, set it too low and you'll be compressing everything (usually not a good idea!).

Attack is how fast the compression kicks in. Release is how fast it turns off. This is an advanced topic and I don't want to confuse the hell outta you with this.

Basically, think about it like this: a little bit of gentle to moderate compression will probably work wonders for your guitar sounds. Settings that I might use on a standard drop-d power chord progression with some brutal distortion are:

Ratio: 6:1
Threshold: -12db (just enough to get the very loudest parts of my audio)
Attack: 4ms
Release: 4ms

If you are micing an amp, you prob don't need much compression, if any, because amps are very compressed as it is, but if you're recording direct (plugging into the fasttrack) and using amp-sim software like guitar rig, you'll probably want the compression.
 
Great post. Really useful insight - and something I will be looking at when I'm mixing my gtrs. Of course, it might need tweaking for my system, but really useful advice as a starting point.
 
some of this will not make ANY sense to you, but if you have to... read my post 10x and every time it'll start to make a little more sense than the last.

PS google Joey Sturgis... he is the fuckin' guru of getting good direct guitar tones. he's produced and engineered for bands like the devil wears prada (who have some of the sickest guitar tones i've ever heard, all without an amp no less)
 
Uhh, if you don't understand EQ and Hz, you have a lot of reading to do. There's a reason why pros are called Recording Engineers!
 
ElegyOfficial said:
I dont speak greek. :)
Click to expand...
If you don't even understand BASIC terminology, you need to educate yourself a whole lot more before worrying about some non-existant software plug-in that will magically give you a sound you should be working on getting out of your amp in the first place.
ElegyOfficial said:
If anyone else has any tip on guitar recording keep posting
Click to expand...

Here's a tip: Don't listen to people telling you how they EQ and compress their guitars.
 
chicopunk13 said:
Compression comes in MANY flavors from limiters to expanders to multiband compressers to de-essers to standard compression to noise gates, but you don't need to worry about all that just yet. I'm gonna give a quick run-down on regular old compression.

What it does is take the loudest parts of your audio and make them softer, while taking the softer parts and making them louder. So, for example, if you got a singer singing real softly and then he launches into a screaming part, obviously the volume difference between the loud and soft part is going to be HUGE. This is called "dynamics" and is usually measured in decibels (abbreviated as "db"). Compression, when applied skillfully, will even things out and make the vocal take sound a hell of a lot better.

Dynamics are a good thing, but on a recording you HAVE TO, HAVE TO, HAVE TO make sure there's not TOO much dynamic range, otherwise it'll sound like shit and different parts won't mesh well. Compression can be broken into 4 main parts. (1) ratio, (2) threshold, (3) attack and (4) release.

Ratio is how strong the compression is... the higher the number, the MORE powerful the compression (volume leveling) you get and the LESS dynamic range you end up with. 10:1 is a number you won't see on vocals too often, because it's very strong and will cause some unwanted effects, but you see it used on drums a lot because it's not harmful to the very dynamic drumset. Numbers you might see on vocals are 2:1 and 4:1 because those are gentler settings. A lower ratio helps even out dynamics without being too obvious.

Now, compression ONLY kicks in during the loudest parts of the audio. This is your "threshold". So, if you set your threshold at -10db, the compressor ONLY KICKS IN when the sound gets louder than -10db, anything below that loudness is unaffected. Setting your threshold is important... set it too high and you won't compress much of anything, set it too low and you'll be compressing everything (usually not a good idea!).

Attack is how fast the compression kicks in. Release is how fast it turns off. This is an advanced topic and I don't want to confuse the hell outta you with this.

Basically, think about it like this: a little bit of gentle to moderate compression will probably work wonders for your guitar sounds. Settings that I might use on a standard drop-d power chord progression with some brutal distortion are:

Ratio: 6:1
Threshold: -12db (just enough to get the very loudest parts of my audio)
Attack: 4ms
Release: 4ms

If you are micing an amp, you prob don't need much compression, if any, because amps are very compressed as it is, but if you're recording direct (plugging into the fasttrack) and using amp-sim software like guitar rig, you'll probably want the compression.
Click to expand...

I really appreciate this post, this just evened out everything i needed to know and now i understand it. Kind of off topic question though, Is guitar rig (if i were just to get software version) studio quality and somewhat better than micing?

(by the way i copied and pasted your compression setting for drop D guitar :))
 
chicopunk13 said:
some of this will not make ANY sense to you, but if you have to... read my post 10x and every time it'll start to make a little more sense than the last.

PS google Joey Sturgis... he is the fuckin' guru of getting good direct guitar tones. he's produced and engineered for bands like the devil wears prada (who have some of the sickest guitar tones i've ever heard, all without an amp no less)
Click to expand...

Okay i was on my fifth time reading it then i took a break to read other posts and read this haha. And you are right its making more and more sense each time i read it.

And i will definately google him! DevilWearsPrada is pretty brutal, never knew they recorded without amp though! pretty insane!
 
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