mixing a 3-piece rock group

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Timbot992

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so ive been mixing some recordings of my band. were a 3-piece group (guitar, bass, drums, no vocals just yet) pretty much straight forward driving garage rock. im wondering about panning: it seems weird to pan the guitar and bass left and right but i dont want the mix to get too cluttered by having everything occupying the same space. also is it a good idea to EQ the guitar so theres a lot of high end and really biting quality, and boost the lows on the bass, so i would basically have the opposite ends of the spectrum raised, and then just leave mids flat or even dropped?
 
Mixing a 3 piece band is tough ... if you keep it to only 3 piece.
What I would do is have the guitarist add in a second guitar track, then pan one left and the other right and leave the bass straight up the middle.

You can also do some funky stuff with reverb sends panned "opposite"

Send the Left guitar to a reverb plug-in insert, set it the way you like, and all the way "wet", lower the send's gain so that it acts as a texture rather than something driving the rhythm and pan it hard Right) -- do the same for the other guitar only pan the wet signal hard left.

You can also add other effects to it to help accentuate the "texture" aspect and give it more depth

If the guitars need it, you can/should roll off a chunk of their lowest end with a high pass filter, which will also help with their high end (slightly, anyway). I usually end up also low passing electric guitars to help warm them up a bit. It really depends on how bright they are to begin with and what they sound like naturally.


hope that helps and such
Rs
 
Mix it however you want. I personally leave the bass, vox, kickdrum, and snare centered and pan everything else. I record at least 2 guitar takes and pan one left and one right. As far as eq goes, just do what you feel is right, some times I don't eq the guitar at all, which leads me to my next point. Get close to the sound you want before you every record it, try not to have to fix everything in the mix.
 
ive done a three peice once where i miked the guitar in stereo and panned hard left right then put a sample delay on one guitar, it really widens it up but it changes the tone a lot so its a trade off for that.
 
double guitars

hey thanks. i think ill probably go with doing really tight double tracking of the my guitar parts and then do a bit of EQ roll offs and keep the bass center. I want the mix to sound fuller but dont really want a "nu-metal" kind of sound.
 
yeah, i wouldn't pan the bass. I like recording a single guitar, but i record stereo with a delay effect or something. It's tempting to use all that low end overtone on guitar, because it sounds good by itself, but not always in the mix. Just remember that either your kick or the bass has to be the brute. I normally leave the bass alone, keep it as natural as possible, and cut the kicker if things sound muddy. You should be fine - the only real trouble i had was when the guitar was up the middle and trying to get the vocals to cut thru. Everything in the middle but the guitar should be okay for the vocals to cut thru. Killer snare sound doesn't hurt either. So to sum up, if things are sounding muddy, check your low end on guitar and the kicker. Like the guy said above, a high pass filter is good.
 
In the early days, when they were only 3-piece, Grand Funk mixed the drums and bass to one side, the RHYTHM guitar to the other and the solo guitar & vocals straight up. And yes, G., they later added a keyboardist and the panning evened out quite a bit. ;)

I personally would record two rhythm guitar parts and pan them left and right, record the solo separately and pan to center along with the bass, drums and vocals. I wouldn't bump up the bottom on the bass or the highs on the guitar to separate them more. You'll end up with no real distinction in the sounds. Instead, listen to each track separately and do what it needs. THEN listen to the mix as a whole and make any minor corrections that may be needed. And I recommend that you EQ the tracks themselves and NOT across the buss. Leave that part for mastering.

Just MIHO...
 
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