Recording BIG Guitars with Dead Soul Revival part 3
If you’ve been following my “first single release” journey for my new band deadsoulrevival.com you know I’ve been examining how we recorded our upcoming release. Today let’s talk about BIG guitars and making all your elements play nice to together.
Yesterday I was mixing one of our new songs and wanted to tell you about a few things that came to mind. Specifically the idea of layering guitars and mixes with lots of elements. I’ve been guilty in the past of some of what is about to follow. 🙂
The part I was working on is a breakdown section where I recorded four guitars all playing the same part. Two panned hard left and two panned hard right. I was using a different tone for each stereo pair and the idea was to make a fuller sounding “big” guitar sound.
Sometimes this works. In this case under the mixing microscope it worked out much better to press the mute button on a couple of those parts.
The reason I did this was the character of the guitar was getting lost. Layering like that can smooth everything over too much. Sometimes this is fine. In this case, nope.
Some recordings I receive to mix have tracks and tracks of guitars playing the same parts. I think the thought process here is that will bring a bigger guitar sound. Often this is not the case, sometimes the exact opposite.
Sometimes recording a few different tones is cool just so that in the mixing stage you can pick one over the other. This is something I’ve gotten into more over the last few years. It has become much easier for me to mute parts and not be emotionally attached to them for whatever reason.
I’ll let you in on a secret most people don’t know or don’t want to admit. You have to be very careful when you start stacking up a million parts in a DAW. Imagine a pipe that only so much water can get through.
In order to have lots of simultaneous parts you have to make at least some elements smaller so everything fits through that “pipe.” In other words every element in your mix can’t sound HUGE in a scenario like that.
I’m talking about mixes that are layering guitars, keys, sound fx, tons of vocals, etc, etc.
So if I have a song where there are a bunch of elements you can bet I’m going to make some of them “sonic illusions.” For example, I’ll sculpt out a supporting keyboard pad so it’s just poking through in a specific frequency range. The listener’s brain will fill in the rest of the details.
When I’m in the recording stage and I’ve got a song where there will be a lot of elements I capture the full sound in a balanced way. So let’s say I have strings going during an epic chorus. I’ll record it as a full bodied string section.
But, when it comes mixing time I’m merciless in fighting for the sonic space of what I consider the core of the band’s sound. In our case that’s drums, bass, and guitars. I’m just talking instruments at this point, no vocals.
I want that bedrock to be clear and uncompromised. Anything added after that like keys, etc. will usually take a backseat in terms of audio real estate.
For example, in this mixing session I noticed a string part that was sitting right in the same octave range as the rhythm guitars. I carved that string part right up so it made way for the guitars. You can still hear it but it’s not in the way.
I always do my absolute best to have foresight when recording about any potential conflicts like this but sometimes you really do have to fix it in the mix.
I’d advise you to look for the core of what makes the song tick and build it back up from there. It’s easy as a musician to throw in the kitchen sink and think that’s the best way. Be sure your song and tones don’t get lost in a wall of sound.
Until next time…
For more about recording guitars and the rest of your band check out my course the Sound Visualization Method.
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Also, in case you didn’t know, I mix singles, EPs, and Albums for Rock and Metal bands. You can check out my work and get more info at mattclarkmixer.com/secdir/ as well as get prices, etc.
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