Need help with recorded guitar tracks

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GothGirl

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I have some heavy metal riffs recorded into a Cubase audio track,right now I have em on mono like I recorded them,and panned to the center,should I be panning to left,right? or duplicating the tracks? to get them to sound fat and tasty?.

Thanks for any help!.
 
Yeah, go ahead and pan them. If you have multiple performances and pan them, then it will sound thicker than if you just copied one performance and panned them seperately. I would suggest panning the guitar tracks, but not too far; you still want it to sound natural. Unless you are going for a unnatural sound. There ya go.
 
You want to have each performance panned to one side or the other. And ideally at least two performances per side for a standard heavy metal sound. No copying and pasting! ;) Ah, you could get into quite a discussion on metal guitar recording around here if you wanted to!
 
metalhead28 said:
Ah, you could get into quite a discussion on metal guitar recording around here if you wanted to!
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Can we? I've been trying to record a decent metal tone for, like, 3 years now and failing miserably.
 
The quest to record that 'tone'

I've never recorded metal guitars exactly, but I would suspect the principles the same. keep in mind this is just the process I use...

First I experiment with mic placement using all the mics I can (I've used up to 8...could use more but that's all the pre's I've had). I use lots because different mics blended together have given me a much fuller sound than the standard 57 or 2 on the cab have. I'll put a 57, an MD521, and M201TG and an e609s on the grill (one per speaker on a 4/12, two per on a 2/12) then I'll put a pair of SDC's and a Pair of LDC's in distance- experimenting with distances and placement, sometimes in xy, I try until I find the sound I want. I have the guitarist play and bring differnt mics up with the fader until I find a good blend. Then I hit record

Once a take is recorded I bounce them all to one track...then i'll get record it a few more times, reseting the faders and mic placement, each set of tracks getting bounced down to a single track. once I have a few good takes of the guitar part I'll start the process all over on any other guitar parts for the song...

Once the whole song is recorded I mix it, experimenting with pan until I find how the various parts sit well in the mix. If there's only one, i'll usually leave it in the middleish...sometimes panning it slightly left or right, and the bass the same degree to the opposite sides. Two parts usually get put left and right. Three go left, right, centre (eg: two electrics left and right, acoustic in the middle)...I've panned super hard left and right and also gone just slightly off of centre.

Mixing's all about experimentation. I know there's tones of people who do it differntly than i do, and i'm sure many would laugh..but it works for me, and those I work with like the result.

Jacob

P.s...I rarely find that the amps I record are set the same as a live setting...experiment with that once you have all your mics set in relatively right placement...
 
jkokura said:
I'll put a 57, an MD521, and M201TG and an e609s on the grill (one per speaker on a 4/12, two per on a 2/12) then I'll put a pair of SDC's and a Pair of LDC's in distance- experimenting with distances and placement, sometimes in xy, I try until I find the sound I want. I have the guitarist play and bring differnt mics up with the fader until I find a good blend. Then I hit record
...
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That just sounds like a recipe for a headache......I don't think anybody would ever use all those mics for a distinctly metal guitar sound.
But hey, more power to ya' ;)
 
The best metal tracks I've gotten were when I recorded two guitars with two amps on each and two mics on each amp. Each guitar went through a 5150 and a Marshall TSL. The 5150 was set to death and the TSL was set to moderate crunch. Each amp went to its own 4 x 12 and each 4 x 12 had two mics on it - either a 57 or a Sennheiser e609 and then an LDC set to omni. All mics were recorded to separate tracks and blended at mix time.

You can hear a couple of the results here:

http://www.hxcmp3.com/bands/13261/index.php
 
I don't know...

It seems like people make a bigger deal out of it then it is.
Stick a mic up there.
Does it sound good?
No, then move it around.
Does it sound good now?
NO, move it around some more.
Does it sound good now?
No, get a new mic,
Does it sound good now?
No, move it around.
Does it soudn good now?
No, move it around more?
Does it sound good now?
No, find a new amp/guitar.

Serious, 90% of it is the equipment your using. If the amp sucks then it sucks. There is no way around it. If the amp sounds good then check you mic placment. If the mic placment sounds bad check your mics. If everything is up to par and still sounds bad check yourself.

As long as you have an idea of what a guitar really sounds like, and I don't mean in a room, then you should be fine. Listen to records and really exam the guitar alone. Try and seperate it from everything else. Better yet find a few CD's that have parts of guitar playing by themselves. Once you understand that you will understand what needs to be recorded.
 
Big guitar for me comes from multiple takes, each distinctly different sounding, be it different guitars, amps, mics, or mic placements. I even like to run a track or two (recorded from a real amp) through a amp sim just to add another flavor.
 
chadsxe said:
If the amp sucks then it sucks. There is no way around it. If the amp sounds good then check you mic placment. If the mic placment sounds bad check your mics. If everything is up to par and still sounds bad check yourself.

As long as you have an idea of what a guitar really sounds like, and I don't mean in a room, then you should be fine. Listen to records and really exam the guitar alone. Try and seperate it from everything else. Better yet find a few CD's that have parts of guitar playing by themselves. Once you understand that you will understand what needs to be recorded.
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Very very well put.
 
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