maskedman72
Member
BBad199 said:
Micing Heavy Guitar Tone -
- Thread starter BBad199
- Start date
gumplunger
New member
Since you seem to know something about the subject, what are your general method's of panning all these layered tracks. All hard left/right or slowly panned all over the place for wideness? Some other method?Hard2Hear said:
I've just started experimenting with this method and I'd like to hear the opinions of someone who's been doing it a while.
Hard2Hear
New member
It totally depends on the song. The style of the song and other things going on in the production will determine where everything sits.
First of all, when I say "layering" I actually mean playing the part over and over and over and NOT copying the same track over and over. That is useless. And I think some people misunderstand and try that. But on top of that, a few different things to try.
I get the best sound mixing bright and dark tracks. Sometimes it works best to just split them evenly to left and right, say 2 bright and 2 dark tracks per side, with a stereo spread to compliment the rest of the mix. Sometimes I'll take the ACDC approach and put the similar guitars on the same side, like both bright guitars on the right, panned (just for example) 30% and 70%, then the dark tracks panned left, with the same balance.
One of my favorite things to do to get a really good heavy sound is to double or quad track the guitar sound I'm really going for, say a JTM45 classic rock crunch. I'll make 4 tracks of that and pan them 25-40% off center in both directions. I make sure to keep the actual amp gain low, so the tracks are pretty clean sounding. Then I'll take 4 more tracks of hi gain and pan them really hard, 85-100% each way. But I will get the first guitar sound level where I want it then barely bring up the hard panned distorted guitar tracks from zero to where I can just barely hear it. Most of the time you don't realize these tracks are even in the song. The guitars just sound alot bigger, fuller, and fatter.
All this comes from the Mutt Lange school of production. I've always loved his guitar sounds from ACDC to Def Leppard to Shania. Wall of guitars. You can hear it in all of them. The way you know you're really doing it WELL is that you can't hear 4,6,8,10 seperate guitar tracks. It should sound like 1 or 2 really awesome guitar tracks. This technique is as much about performance as it is mic choice and placement. Timing in the performance is extremely important. You should concentrate less on what the singular guitar tone sounds like and more of how it blends with all the others in the piece.
Just my way of doing it.
H2H
First of all, when I say "layering" I actually mean playing the part over and over and over and NOT copying the same track over and over. That is useless. And I think some people misunderstand and try that. But on top of that, a few different things to try.
I get the best sound mixing bright and dark tracks. Sometimes it works best to just split them evenly to left and right, say 2 bright and 2 dark tracks per side, with a stereo spread to compliment the rest of the mix. Sometimes I'll take the ACDC approach and put the similar guitars on the same side, like both bright guitars on the right, panned (just for example) 30% and 70%, then the dark tracks panned left, with the same balance.
One of my favorite things to do to get a really good heavy sound is to double or quad track the guitar sound I'm really going for, say a JTM45 classic rock crunch. I'll make 4 tracks of that and pan them 25-40% off center in both directions. I make sure to keep the actual amp gain low, so the tracks are pretty clean sounding. Then I'll take 4 more tracks of hi gain and pan them really hard, 85-100% each way. But I will get the first guitar sound level where I want it then barely bring up the hard panned distorted guitar tracks from zero to where I can just barely hear it. Most of the time you don't realize these tracks are even in the song. The guitars just sound alot bigger, fuller, and fatter.
All this comes from the Mutt Lange school of production. I've always loved his guitar sounds from ACDC to Def Leppard to Shania. Wall of guitars. You can hear it in all of them. The way you know you're really doing it WELL is that you can't hear 4,6,8,10 seperate guitar tracks. It should sound like 1 or 2 really awesome guitar tracks. This technique is as much about performance as it is mic choice and placement. Timing in the performance is extremely important. You should concentrate less on what the singular guitar tone sounds like and more of how it blends with all the others in the piece.
Just my way of doing it.
H2H