Panning acoustic with electric

[Newbie dude]

I'm doing a sort of 3ll-ish song right now and I want to add in an acoustic guitar with my electric guitars, but I'm less concerned about hearing the pitch of the acoustic guitar, because mainly I just want hear to the rhythymic "chunk" or the strumming patterns. However, I don't want to take away pitch completely because there is one part in th song where all you hear is acoustic guitar for a few measures. So, my main questions are this:

1. Where should I pan the acoustic?

2. Should I double the acoustic?

3. Do you guys have any other tips?

 

[noisewreck]

1. Where should I pan the acoustic?

That question has no answer. It's like asking "where should I put red color on the canvas?"

2. Should I double the acoustic?

"What shade of red should I use?"

3. Do you guys have any other tips?

Visualise what you want from your song. Then decide what instruments/parts/hooks whatever tie everything together, and how you want to bring these to the front (or not) (arrangment, and later on mixing). Track your song. Take a holistic approach, look at the whole thing from the above, kind of like a bird's eye view instead of tangling yourself up in the minor details.

Then, and only then, once you've got the overall picture, you can think of the details such as where you pan your acoustic, to achieve the overall picture.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but the first 2 questions are meaningless without having an idea what you want to do with the overall mix. No one can answer your questions w/o hearing at least a rough mix, and even then, you'll get 10 different people with 10 different approaches to the same issue.

 

[Ironklad Audio]

how many electric guitar tracks are there, and how are you panning them?

 

[giraffe]

try real thin picks.
i'm not saying use real thin picks, but try them. sometimes it helps when trying to keep the acu as a part of a much larger arrangement.

 

[jmorris]

try real thin picks.
i'm not saying use real thin picks, but try them. sometimes it helps when trying to keep the acu as a part of a much larger arrangement.

I absoloutly agree and was going to post this. I have found very thin picks give a nice rhythm/percussion feel without adding a lot of the specific notes.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Visualise what you want from your song. Then decide what instruments/parts/hooks whatever tie everything together, and how you want to bring these to the front (or not) (arrangment, and later on mixing). Track your song. Take a holistic approach, look at the whole thing from the above, kind of like a bird's eye view instead of tangling yourself up in the minor details.

Then, and only then, once you've got the overall picture, you can think of the details such as where you pan your acoustic, to achieve the overall picture.

I second this completly. This is what mxing is all about.

Newbie dude, it sounds like you've already got a good start in figuring out what kind of sound you're looking for and how you want to marry the acoustic and electric. Imagine it a bit further; close your eyes for a bit and imagine you're sitting in front of some fantastic monitors or wearing a good set of phones. Start thinking about your song and imagine how it sounds as you're listening to it. Imagine what the electrc(s) sound like. Then imagine what the acoustic(s) sound like. Which parts of them do you hear and which parts dont? Where are they located? How does that wind up fitting with the rest of the instruments? And so on.

Write it all down as you think of it. You never know what neat imagined detail you might forget when you're actually in front of your mix (that happens to everybody ). You'll have 80% of the mix in your head already beofre you even toudh your first knob, including the basic pan, EQ, and FX strategies.

Then when you start to mix, move from your brain to you ears for the remaining 20% of the mix. Be prepared for things to crop up that you didn't imagine or anticipate beforehand. Be flexible. Let the song and the mix take over at that point, you just make your fine-tuning adjustments based on what it's telling you.

G.
Before you know it you'll have most of it

 

[Newbie dude]

Thanks guys. I'm gonna try those mixing ideas, and the idea about using thin picks[ the real problem is gonna be trying not to break them,lol. I can go through 5 think picks in the course of one song]. Oh, and as for the question about how many guitars I have, I have one rhythymn guitar part that I've doubled and a couple of small solos in there as well, so at any given time, theres 2-3 electric guitars going at once.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

That's a pretty thick mix you have going there. That's fine, nothing wrong with that, but it does focus much of the question on the arrangement. Is the acoustic meant to be playing it's own line or are you more looking towards using the acoustic sound to augment the sound of the electrics? The answers to those questions will bear heavily on your mix and arrangement design.

 

[Myriad_Rocker]

Thanks guys. I'm gonna try those mixing ideas, and the idea about using thin picks[ the real problem is gonna be trying not to break them,lol. I can go through 5 think picks in the course of one song]. Oh, and as for the question about how many guitars I have, I have one rhythymn guitar part that I've doubled and a couple of small solos in there as well, so at any given time, theres 2-3 electric guitars going at once.

Either you're strumming too hard or you're using crappy picks. I use Dunlop Tortex reds a lot...they're the thin ones. I never have one break unless it's really old and I play fairly hard. I also use Dunlop Tortex orange. It all depends on what feel and tone I want. It's crazy how much a change in pick thickness will alter the tone.

 

[giraffe]

not holding the pick parallel to the strings is a big cause of pick breaking.

 

[littledog]

You can always double a part and then choose not to use it, so it doesn't hurt to try doubling the acoustic.

Once you start mixing, don't be afraid to use trial and error to make decisions. Try everything you can think of regarding panning, compression, eq, effects, etc. and check out what it sounds like. It's one of the best ways to learn.

 

[bigtoe]

whenever this comes up in my neck of the woods i record an electric being strummed - no amp - and mix it in with the electrics. i sometimes do that to get more attack from a mushy sound as well. i remember one track where we used an old gretsch hollow body and that worked out really well.

a cool one for the right kind of music is to have the guy or gal stum while doing the vocal.

for the part where it's just acoustic - record an acoustic if it requires...

 

[giraffe]

whenever this comes up in my neck of the woods i record an electric being strummed - no amp - and mix it in with the electrics.

an excellent trick as well.

 

[littledog]

A variation on that idea is to set up a close mic right on the instrument when recording electric guitar parts (if the guitar is in a different room than the amp). Gives you some of that high end articulation when mixed in with the mic'ed amp.

 

[Newbie dude]

Wow. Lots of posts to respond to.uhh....lets see if i can remember them.

The acoustic defintely isn't a dominate instrument throught the course of the song. There's only one part where the electric guitars and bass and drums and vocals stop and it's just the acoustic guitar playing the riff for a second. I just thought if I was gonna have the part, I'd add in an acoustic guitar in the whole song, just so the percussional qualities of it could add to the overall.....thickness, i guess, of the mix.

As for the picks, Tortex oranges are my perferred picks, and I don't really consider them thin. The thin picks I'm thinking about are these little fender pieces of shit that I have a hundred of laying around the house. When I started playing guitar three years ago, they were gine, but when I got into faster and harder strumming, they just started breaking and popping little pieces torward me like crazy.

 

[giraffe]

yea, thin like the crappy ones.