queen's guitar harmonies

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ykarkason

New member
how can I get the sound of the queen's guitar harmonies parts?
i am working on adobe audition 3.0,

i am covering now "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy"
i don't know how to get that perfect harmonies on the guitars, it always gets too muddy.

what i am doing now is just as i do the harmonies vocals,
i put all the guitars on a bus and put a hard compressor on them,
i put some dealy of about 15 ms on it and the dry output is 100 and the wet is 15, i go over this on a stereo dealy of 40 on the right and -15 on the left,
but its still muddy,
its much more full and thick then the mono version but it still muddy,
help?

soory if i had some spelling mistake,
i am isreali and my main lang is hebrew.
 
The guitar tone has a lot to do with that. There are no real lows or much high end. Crank the 1k.
 
Get rid of the mud before you even start applying all those effects.

First, adjust your recording technique if possible; mud starts at the amplifier/microphone.

Second, sweep the tracks individually with a parametric EQ to remove the ugly stuff that will be unnecessarily accentuated by the mostly unnecessary compression.

Third, if necessary, roll off the low end below ~80Hz or so on each track to avoid any mud buildup down there.


I'd also alternatively suggest that the best covers are usually not tributes/copies of the originals, but rather original interpretations of the old standards. Don't try so hard to sound like Queen, but rather put your own signature on the sound.

G.
 
first of all, thanks,
second thing, i don't try to sound like queen, i came here becuase i want to get rid of the mud and to have a nice sound hamonies guitar

shell i pan the guitars in the stereo field or to leave this to the stereo dealy?
i guss that i'll try diffrent thing and the i'll figure out,
but any way, what are you doing?
 
ykarkason said:
shell i pan the guitars in the stereo field or to leave this to the stereo dealy?
i guss that i'll try diffrent thing and the i'll figure out,
but any way, what are you doing?
Click to expand...
I can't give you one specific answer to that question; I do whatever the music and the mix move me to do.

In *general*, with exceptions, I'll keep the guitars somewhat panned when the guitars are syncopating or otherwise playing non-identical lines, and will tend to stack guitars when I want to fatten the timbre of the guitar sound playing basically the same line. I wouldn't often use a stereo delay if I already have separately panned parts because there just wouldn't be a whole lot of room left for anything else.

IMHO, YMMV, b'hatzlacha, etc. :)

G.
 
Will you be playing all the harmonies, or are you using some sort of harmony generating effect.

The guitar harmonies on a queen song are written like you would for a choir instead of the more common Beatles harmonies. So, keep that in mind.

As far as sound goes, get rid of the low end.
 
IME, For stacking harmonies it's always good to start with the tonic or root melody recorded nice and full. Make it sound good because that will dominate your sound and be in the for front of the chord your harmonizing.

With the 3rd or 5th or whatever notes you choose to harmonize it's good to back off on the low end of these parts because if not, you will get the muddy low end buildup you're talking about. Tuck these notes under the tonic to blend. This has worked for backing vocals, guitars, or many mono instruments you can stack or harmonize. Again, IME YMMV, and so on...
 
ok, thanks,
i droped this song,
i didn't liked the recording session,

i am about to start another recording session on another song of them,
"the milionaire waltz",
it's based on the same idea and i like this one more.
hope it will go fine.
thanks for you all.
 
Good Old-fashioned Lover Boy is my favorite Queen song! I wish you'd finish.

What're you using for an amp/guitar? A lot of Brian May's sound and the reason his guitar parts work so well on recordings is because of his equipment and the way they'd usually track the amp. If you get a nice single-coil guitar into a low-watt tube amp, crank it and mic it from far away in even a crappy sounding room, you'll have an easier time. You have to really let the guitar speak into the room, close micing won't give you enough depth.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Third, if necessary, roll off the low end below ~80Hz or so on each track to avoid any mud buildup down there.
Click to expand...

You'd probably want to axe even more than that, to be honest - if you're using a ton of guitar harmonies, you want a whole bunch of really tiny sounds that together become something pretty big.
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
You'd probably want to axe even more than that, to be honest - if you're using a ton of guitar harmonies, you want a whole bunch of really tiny sounds that together become something pretty big.
Click to expand...

True dat. When I do even a double lead/harmony, I find that the individual sound really thin and almost nasally by themselves. But they work together. And if I use my "normal" lead sound on a double--it gets to mushy very fast.
 
I don't know if this is true, but I've heard on more than one occasion that Brian May uses a metal coin (half-pence or some shit like that) for a pick.
 
he used(and using) 6 penny,

just for the record i learnd to use a coin as a pick, i tried a lot of coins and i find out that a 20 euro coin from italy (1920) has a very nice sound, i used it.
 
wow!!
in this session i've learned and still learning a lot(i han't done recoreding:P)
i need to record vocals and guitar harmonies, and a little bit of piano.
hope it will go stright
 
ykarkason said:
how can I get the sound of the queen's guitar harmonies parts?
i am working on adobe audition 3.0,

i am covering now "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy"
i don't know how to get that perfect harmonies on the guitars, it always gets too muddy.

what i am doing now is just as i do the harmonies vocals,
i put all the guitars on a bus and put a hard compressor on them,
i put some dealy of about 15 ms on it and the dry output is 100 and the wet is 15, i go over this on a stereo dealy of 40 on the right and -15 on the left,
but its still muddy,
its much more full and thick then the mono version but it still muddy,
help?

soory if i had some spelling mistake,
i am isreali and my main lang is hebrew.
Click to expand...

If you had a VOX amp you would be 98% of the way there. VOX amps are distinct in sound and you can't get it with any other amp.
 
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