Guitars taking up space in mix ! HELP

CHUCKY03 · 15th December 2008

Hey there im mixing a hardcore band at the moment and i have got a decent drum sound going but when i get the guitars into the mix they end up drowning the drum kit out cause i wanna get them loud and in your face sounding but when i bring them down in the mix to make the drums clearer they sound small as... how do you bring guitars rms level up with out taking up so much of the room of the mix...

They are decent sounding recorded tracks... Guitars are Mono tracks panned hard left and hard right.. they aint super gainy or anything ...
just need general ideas or anything to help

borg64 · 15th December 2008

Have you tried creating some frequency space by EQing?

One approach to quickly find out what's going on is to send all your drum tracks to one stereo bus channel, and your guitars to another one. Now, insert EQs on both bus channels and gently start 'sculpting'. The idea is that if you boost something on one channel, you cut that same area on the other one and vice versa. I.e. if you cut the guitars 2dB at 500Hz (at a given ratio), try adding 1-2 dB in the 500Hz department of the drum bus channel.

This way, you can find out which frequencies are the 'colliding' troublemakers, which may in turn point you into addressing single channels rather than doing the stereo bus thing. A lot of stuff usually happens to a mix simply by altering the snare and kick frequencies, and sometimes things just magically come together by adding a HP filter on the guitars. And sometimes everything just needs a helluva lot more work.

Good luck!

strewnshank · 15th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHUCKY03

Hey there im mixing a hardcore band at the moment and i have got a decent drum sound going but when i get the guitars into the mix they end up drowning the drum kit out cause i wanna get them loud and in your face sounding but when i bring them down in the mix to make the drums clearer they sound small as... how do you bring guitars rms level up with out taking up so much of the room of the mix...

They are decent sounding recorded tracks... Guitars are Mono tracks panned hard left and hard right.. they aint super gainy or anything ...
just need general ideas or anything to help

Check out the tips and techniques section for a lot of great hints .... a comp on the guitar buss side-chained by the kick drum or kit can help.

allencollins · 15th December 2008

you need more ambience on the kit. Create more 'space'

rob_keitel · 16th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHUCKY03

Hey there im mixing a hardcore band at the moment and i have got a decent drum sound going but when i get the guitars into the mix they end up drowning the drum kit out cause i wanna get them loud and in your face sounding but when i bring them down in the mix to make the drums clearer they sound small as... how do you bring guitars rms level up with out taking up so much of the room of the mix...

They are decent sounding recorded tracks... Guitars are Mono tracks panned hard left and hard right.. they aint super gainy or anything ...
just need general ideas or anything to help

I think you got a little too ahead of yourself. I record and mix alot of hardcore. You jumped the gun and got the whle drums sounding awesome and thats good, but you have to fit everything in that drum sound in hardcore for it to work. I always used to do this. I figured that you have to treat hardcore like everything else. It sounds really by the book, but i always get the kick and the bass working first. Then move to the snare. From there i don't solo anything, and just get the rest of the levels. Pan the overheads and toms and then the guitars, but don't pan them to the same place. Carve out a bit of highs and lows on the guitars with eq and then do the same with the snare to the guitars. It should take too much because the guitars are out of the way of the snare pan wise. If you find you can't hear a certain drum, once again use a bit of eq to let it pop out and find its own sound in the mix.

Thats pretty 101, and if you find the drums just aren't hitting enough send the kick, a little snare, and toms to an aux and compress it hard so they pump, and then try to time the pump to the music.

Once you get everything sitting well, add a bit of reverb to the drums (it will make the snare stick out) my advice is no reverb on the guitars. Or it'll sound like an 80's descendents record.

I found this works for me, do whatever you feel though. There are no rules, but this is the best i found when people start saying "I want this to sound like a gorilla biscuits record!"
-robwhite

cavern · 16th December 2008

e.q.

Rob C · 16th December 2008

It's a scary state of affairs when someone knows about RMS level but doesn't know about EQ.

jvkeboxHERO · 17th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by rob_keitel

Once you get everything sitting well, add a bit of reverb to the drums (it will make the snare stick out) my advice is no reverb on the guitars. Or it'll sound like an 80's descendents record.

-robwhite

what would be wrong with that mr white? thats sounds glorious!

-silent-sam- · 17th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHUCKY03

Hey there im mixing a hardcore band at the moment and i have got a decent drum sound going but when i get the guitars into the mix they end up drowning the drum kit out cause i wanna get them loud and in your face sounding but when i bring them down in the mix to make the drums clearer they sound small as... how do you bring guitars rms level up with out taking up so much of the room of the mix...

They are decent sounding recorded tracks... Guitars are Mono tracks panned hard left and hard right.. they aint super gainy or anything ...
just need general ideas or anything to help

I do lots of hardcore.....

One thing I do is put lo roll offs on the guitars.... rolling off from 175 hz to even has high as 200hz and down.

One thing about hardcore music is it doesn't really have any dynamics.... so the trick is to try and crush your mix together as much as possible without your mix clipping.

go and roll off that low end .... and let the bass guitar, and kick drum, carry the low end in the mix.

rob_keitel · 17th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by jvkeboxHERO

what would be wrong with that mr white? thats sounds glorious!

ha, my descendents tattoo hurts whenever i bring that up, but god why is there so much reverb on EVERYTHING on I don't wanna grow up!

rob_keitel · 17th December 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by silent-sam

I do lots of hardcore.....

One thing I do is put lo roll offs on the guitars.... rolling off from 175 hz to even has high as 200hz and down.

One thing about hardcore music is it doesn't really have any dynamics.... so the trick is to try and crush your mix together as much as possible without your mix clipping.

go and roll off that low end .... and let the bass guitar, and kick drum, carry the low end in the mix.

I roll off almost everything that doesn't need it, same with rolling off high stuff. It really makes a difference, kinda cleans it all up.

CHUCKY03 · 17th December 2008

do you find that there are alot of confusing ƒ in the the 3-7k region on guitars that ruin a mix or make it sound cheap? I just cant get the thick sounding guitar with out it sounding like a fizz or a flat mess... that really stringy presence... I have been using good equipment and been trying interesting mic techniques but am still finding that im getting better results out of my Line6 gearbox ... even tho it lacks the bottom end it makes more sense ... I normally pan everything hard left and right... but it doesnt feel like its spread very far ay... cant get the over all Full sound of the guitar up withoout it taking up way to much room.. or making the guitars sound like they are on top of the mix... I have recently tried less gain... and doing a cross blend of on and of axis micing... not fully getting anything to write home about.. so im thinking it must be my lack of mixing knowledge.... PLUS do you find that a bass guitar takes up alot of the mix? and can some times hide or shadow things...

Johnophean · 18th December 2008

Sounds like your having the "BIG MONO" problem I always have. Where everything is panned L/C/R. Try panning the OH/Room or whatever half the guitars width, like 50% on each side and room center or room a lil narrower or wider than the other(if u have a room track or tracks) and then the guitars will pop out more at the sides and seem wider. Also OH don't need any lows or the low mids in the 300-500hz area that the guitars fundamental uses. The sides of a mix can fill up alot faster than the center if you think about it. OH, toms, rooms, panned geets, B. Vox, keys, reverbs, delays, it ends up being less stereo and more a "big mono" picture cuz it needs a balance. Things seem wider when some is more narrow things inside to balance it off. It's like relative motion. U can't tell how fast something is going unless there is something in back of it to show the sense of speed it's moving at, the same applies to panning as well. With all that said, I have that problem too, cuz I always double everything and then I'm always like "**** where is this gunna go now"? Doubling lead guitars, and backups vox, and keys or anything that can be but doesn't need to be stereo hurts what really needs and wants to be stereo. But sometimes it make that glue happen between the "one big guitar sound" and 2 separate or 3 separate parts. But panning things just cuz u have 2 of them to play with will always hurt the things that really wanna and need to be wider. It's all within my experiance's with dense mixes that these things happen. But if it's a straight easy mix it can too, but don't worry you'll get it and then it'll just pop and you'll have a finished mix in no time. Sometimes it just happens and you don't know what you did but it all just come together and sounds like the vision in your head! Hope my rambling helps a lil bit.
Good luck bro!!!!
Merry Christmas too!

15th December 2008	#1
CHUCKY03 Gear interested Joined: May 2008 Posts: 8 Thread Starter	Guitars taking up space in mix ! HELP Hey there im mixing a hardcore band at the moment and i have got a decent drum sound going but when i get the guitars into the mix they end up drowning the drum kit out cause i wanna get them loud and in your face sounding but when i bring them down in the mix to make the drums clearer they sound small as... how do you bring guitars rms level up with out taking up so much of the room of the mix... They are decent sounding recorded tracks... Guitars are Mono tracks panned hard left and hard right.. they aint super gainy or anything ... just need general ideas or anything to help

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15th December 2008	#2
borg64 Swimming with nanoprobes Joined: Apr 2008 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 869 2 Reviews written	Have you tried creating some frequency space by EQing? One approach to quickly find out what's going on is to send all your drum tracks to one stereo bus channel, and your guitars to another one. Now, insert EQs on both bus channels and gently start 'sculpting'. The idea is that if you boost something on one channel, you cut that same area on the other one and vice versa. I.e. if you cut the guitars 2dB at 500Hz (at a given ratio), try adding 1-2 dB in the 500Hz department of the drum bus channel. This way, you can find out which frequencies are the 'colliding' troublemakers, which may in turn point you into addressing single channels rather than doing the stereo bus thing. A lot of stuff usually happens to a mix simply by altering the snare and kick frequencies, and sometimes things just magically come together by adding a HP filter on the guitars. And sometimes everything just needs a helluva lot more work. Good luck!

15th December 2008	#4
allencollins 3 + infractions, forum membership suspended. Joined: Oct 2004 Location: Rosedale Cemetery Singing Beach, MA Posts: 4,873	you need more ambience on the kit. Create more 'space'

16th December 2008	#6
cavern Lives for gear Joined: Feb 2008 Location: Slightly northwest under of the big dipper in august Posts: 1,899	e.q.

16th December 2008	#7
Rob C Gear maniac Joined: Sep 2008 Location: Halifax, NS Posts: 181	It's a scary state of affairs when someone knows about RMS level but doesn't know about EQ.

17th December 2008	#12
CHUCKY03 Gear interested Joined: May 2008 Posts: 8 Thread Starter	do you find that there are alot of confusing ƒ in the the 3-7k region on guitars that ruin a mix or make it sound cheap? I just cant get the thick sounding guitar with out it sounding like a fizz or a flat mess... that really stringy presence... I have been using good equipment and been trying interesting mic techniques but am still finding that im getting better results out of my Line6 gearbox ... even tho it lacks the bottom end it makes more sense ... I normally pan everything hard left and right... but it doesnt feel like its spread very far ay... cant get the over all Full sound of the guitar up withoout it taking up way to much room.. or making the guitars sound like they are on top of the mix... I have recently tried less gain... and doing a cross blend of on and of axis micing... not fully getting anything to write home about.. so im thinking it must be my lack of mixing knowledge.... PLUS do you find that a bass guitar takes up alot of the mix? and can some times hide or shadow things...

18th December 2008	#13
Johnophean Gear Head Joined: Jun 2008 Location: Warwick, RI Posts: 30	Sounds like your having the "BIG MONO" problem I always have. Where everything is panned L/C/R. Try panning the OH/Room or whatever half the guitars width, like 50% on each side and room center or room a lil narrower or wider than the other(if u have a room track or tracks) and then the guitars will pop out more at the sides and seem wider. Also OH don't need any lows or the low mids in the 300-500hz area that the guitars fundamental uses. The sides of a mix can fill up alot faster than the center if you think about it. OH, toms, rooms, panned geets, B. Vox, keys, reverbs, delays, it ends up being less stereo and more a "big mono" picture cuz it needs a balance. Things seem wider when some is more narrow things inside to balance it off. It's like relative motion. U can't tell how fast something is going unless there is something in back of it to show the sense of speed it's moving at, the same applies to panning as well. With all that said, I have that problem too, cuz I always double everything and then I'm always like "**** where is this gunna go now"? Doubling lead guitars, and backups vox, and keys or anything that can be but doesn't need to be stereo hurts what really needs and wants to be stereo. But sometimes it make that glue happen between the "one big guitar sound" and 2 separate or 3 separate parts. But panning things just cuz u have 2 of them to play with will always hurt the things that really wanna and need to be wider. It's all within my experiance's with dense mixes that these things happen. But if it's a straight easy mix it can too, but don't worry you'll get it and then it'll just pop and you'll have a finished mix in no time. Sometimes it just happens and you don't know what you did but it all just come together and sounds like the vision in your head! Hope my rambling helps a lil bit. Good luck bro!!!! Merry Christmas too!