Me Needs Advice/Help or something

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KingNothing

KingNothing

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Hey guys.
Heres the prob. Im tryin to record heavy guitar tracks and drum tracks. The tracks dont seem to stand apart from eachother very well. What do you guys do for this kinda thing? Will doing somehthing like panning 2 of the same guitar tracks hard right and hard left, and then letting the drum tracks sit dead center do anything? What else can I do?
 
If you explain your setup we might be able to help you more.

To a certain degree I think panning guitars hard left and right might help things, but I've never really had your problem.

Always, be careful not to crazy with a lot of bass frequencies in your guitar tracks. Heavy guitar does not mean lots of bass... leave the low end stuff to the bass guitar and kick drum.
 
Alright, I'm recording my amp with an sm57, running straight into an Event Gina. It goes into Cool Edit pro. I was using the EQ in Goldwave to crank up the lower frequencies a little, so that could be part of the problem. We dont have access to a bass guitar at the moment, so I was adjusting for the loss of bass by boosting the low frequencies on the guitar tracks.
 
You should be able to get a good sound from that set up so maybe it's the bass freq... I always find the guitars get too muddy with too much low end.

Are you recording drums and guitar live or multitracking?
 
Ya, we multitrack the drums and guitar.

Right now tho, the drums arent here, so we were actually just layin down some rap beats under the heavy guitar...i think its a new style that will make us millions.
 
A lot of these problems are almost inevitably cause by "crowding the mix"--usually in the mids. A solution is in the equing. If you eq everything by soloing it and going for the killer sound on every track, you will destroy your mix. This is a critical point in recording. It ends up being too much, and they all fight each other. The result is mud.

I try to decide where everything goes in the mix not just by panning, but also by eqing. If there's bass guitar and kick drum, cut a lot of the lower and lower mid frequency stuff out of the guitars. Then you can boost the cymbals/hi hat at the upper end for some sizzlie, and push the guitars maybe somewhere in the upper mids. You can work through each area of the frequency spectrum by soloing say all the low stuff, equing each so they work with each other, then soloing the mid instrucments and doing the same, etc. This gives each instrument its space in the mix.

Then pan position will only enhance the separatation of the tracks. Further separation is achieved by effecting--i.e. reverb on the snare, toms, BG' etc. moves them "back" in the mix and gives yet more dimensional space.
 
Cool. Thanks Tapehead. Thats kinda what I figured. The problem tho, is that now my guitar sounds reasonably weak without bumping up the low end. Im tryin to get a real heavy sound, and it needs a certain amount of bass. I guess just messin around with the eq until the right levels are found and the tracks stand apart is the way to go.
 
Heaviness, doesn't necessarily mean lots of bass in your guitar tone... the way you play and how much palm muting effects greatly how heavy something sounds. De-tuning can sometimes help, but usually I find that this is a poor way to try and create a heavy sound... but still, try detuning a step or two and see how that works out.

Describe you EQ setup on your amp... maybe we can fix things up there if things are astray... it's better to try and record it it the way you want it to rather than have to sit and fiddle with it afterwards.
 
Ya, i understand that heavy guitar does not necessarily mean a lot of bass, but our overall sound is pretty thin due to the lack of bass guitar, so I'm trying to compensate for its loss.

Right now my guitar is tuned down 1/2 step, and then drop D (Db,Ab,Db,Gb,Bb,Eb).

On the amp, the gain is maxed. Treble is at 8, bass is at about 4. Its a pretty heavy sound comin out of the amp, and I like the sound that gets recorded. Im not sure how to post mp3's on here, but i'll try and figure it out and post a small guitar riff so you can hear the sound.
 
Ok, I posted a small short guitar riff. If you wanna take a quick listen and see if you can tell me what i'm doing wrong, that would be cool. Its like 1.6 megs in wave form, i just left it like that cause I wanted you to hear the real deal, not after its been converted to mp3...and its not that big.

Its at www.idrive.com under the shared folder.

Username = Kingnothing01
Pass = king
 
Yeah I had a listen and to me it doesn't make much sense... I can only go on my experience but just by looking at the winamp EQ there was hardly any treble or upper mid frequencies what so ever, it is was all low end stuff... which is weird if you've only got your bass on 4 and your treble on 8.

I guess each different kind of amp has it's own sound but my settings for my main rhythm sound is gain on 10, bass on 10, treble on about 7. I have a shape control which contours the amount of mids but my guess this would be that I have about the equivalent to about a mid setting of maybe 3 or 4. This setup is basically your stock standard metal tone setup.

You're in C sharp... where as I usually record in D ie 1/2 a step difference... you might wanna take listen to a song I posted in the MP3 Mixing Clinic Forum about a week or so ago and see what you think about the guitar sound I get...

Also another question... what amp are you using and what volume are recording at... to get a nice full sound you gotta record with at least some decent volume.
 
Thanks for taking a listen. It seems weird to me, to my ears it sounds ok, and looking at the eq in winamp it doesnt have much much high end. But if i put it in Goldwave and completely cut out the low end and boost the high end like a mother, the frequencies in winamp stay about the same.

Im using a Fender Princeton 112 Plus to record with. The volumes pretty loud, but I'm in a dorm so its not as loud as Id like.

I listened to your guitar sound and it does sound nice. A little to "metallic" for my liking, but thats just a style preferance.
 
Yeah, my guitar sound isn't really that heavy... certainly I don't think as heavy as the sound you are after...

I'm not really too familiar with the Princeton amp (I am also using a 1x12 combo - a Crate), but as far as I know Fender amps aren't exactly known for the bone crunching tones... maybe that's the best you are gonna get out of it?

I would try two things. Try turning your bass and treble settings all the way up on your amp and compare the recorded sound with the one that you posted. Secondly if you have one or know a friend who has one, try hooking up an stompbox or something to your amp... if none of these improve your sound then I'd just stick with what you got... your current sound still sounds pretty good... although I do think it is a touch too muddy and lacks a little defintion which I think is probably the reason you've been having the problems.
 
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