Hello,

This post is just a plea for advice and help on recording/mixing electric guitars.

I recently helped a friend re-arrange, edit, mix, and master a cover he was working on.
In the process of arranging, I ended up recording a couple electric guitar parts in my project studio.

Fast forward to today...it's been about a month since I finished this project and I decided that it's officially been long enough to go back and hear what we've accomplished without wanting to keep tweaking it lol. It all sounded surprisingly awesome EXCEPT for the electric guitars I recorded....to me they feel slightly lifeless, "studio", or maybe just too raw (?) ....I'm not sure.

please find attached the final of the song (guitar comes in around :40)

My signal chain (as best as I can remember)
Highway One Telecaster> Boss DS-1 distortion (barely any distortion, dark tone) > Electro Harmonix SoulFood (drive pretty high, tone pretty low) > Boss CL-50 compressor (less than 4db of reduction at max with medium attack/quick release to bring out transients) > Kustom The Defender tube amp head > marshall avt412xa ( 4x12" ) cab

recorded with SM57 on the grill off-center and a Sennheiser e609 on the grill centered but pointed out towards edge of the cone.


Since I don't record electric guitar very often, I can't help but think that it's a signal chain and/or recording issue rather than simply mixing. However, I would love to hear any mixing tips you guys have for me as well to bring those guitars out.

What would you guys have done to breath some life into this guitar?

Is there some huge gap in my rig that I am not realizing needs to be adjusted or upgraded?

My advice to you is this:

Don't worry about it. In the context of this style of pop it's JUST FINE!

Seriously, you're over thinking it. It works well in context, good job!

John is correct, IMO. It sounds just fine in the song.

First impressions on a laptop with headphones ... To be honest - I got about 1 minute into the song and I was waiting for the guitars ... then I realised the 'synths' buried in the mix were the guitars ...

That's not such a bad thing for a pop mix ... but you could actually replace those parts with synths and it could sound even more polished ... it's easier to get the timing and dynamics tigher with gridded midi notes.

If you wanted the guitars to be more obvious - all I would say is smash them more and crank them up.

I have both DS1 and Soulfood (JHS modded for more options). Some people love to hate the DS1 - I think it has uses. But probably not on a Telecaster. I would try just the Soulfood - although even the unmodded one can be a little crystaline grainy sounding. A TS808 or TS9 might warm things up more. If anything I would say your guitars are too "tentative". You say you were careful to preserve transients ... I would suggest smack them off. Crush them. I would probably try the compressor cranked more and hitting the amp harder first.

Make sure to crank the amp for good "speaker involment" - I don't like speaker distortion, but the sound of a guitar amp is proper speaker excursion pushing some air around. I'm not really feeling that energy.

Otherwise keep it up ... it can be hard getting real guitars to play nicely in a gridded synth based pop mix. Modern pop is fairly clean and ... my tastes probably err or dirty 90's stuff where the guitars are bolder and crunchier - so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm not convinced real amps are necessary for modern pop. I'm hearing a lot of DI and what I call the "Strymon sound" ... these modern pedals are cleaner and better than the old analog stuff, with a certain digital sheen that is just ... different. And different is good in pop - until everyone else is doing it, and then it's boring.

It depends on which direction you want to take it ... I won't lie to you - I don't think it's there yet. But it's a taste and style thing ... have you got any reference tracks you want to sound like?

I deleted my post last night because I felt that because I am not a guitar player that maybe I should not comment. After seeing the above posts, especially John Epsteins comments, I should have left my post. Your mix sounds great. The guitar track fits very nicely. If anything, you might increase the volume of the guitar a hair, and I mean only a hair when the vocals are not singing the main lines. But that is just a matter of opinion. You did an excellent job on this mix.

Just listened to it again in better environment..I still think it all sounds fine..i think the mix sounds great..it's got a nice smooth vibe overall and the primary guitar does just what it needs to be doing..adds a tiny bit of texture..transients are right where they need to be against a smooth mix..perfect contrast..you could bring them up a bit if you wanted but there is subtlety there that is refreshing in a guitar planet..it's sits nicely instead of jumping out at the crowd..good job.

It's very easy to obsess about stuff like this..try to step back from that and think of the greater song itself and what all the elements, together, are doing for that song. in this case..there aren't any big solos things going..it's spacial vibe with a curtain of sound..the guitar adds some pattern.

The one thing I'd say is when the guitar first enters, it competes with the vocal. You might try thinning it out, or adding a wee bit of distortion - sometimes a little distortion is a great substitute for eq

It sounds good, nice mix. It is hard to place the guitars in there and have them contextualised. I would give them a tad of low mids cause there's room for the guitar there. Depending on what you want, you might have sucked a bit too much transient with the Compressor, the ehx already takes off some amount of headroom, now they are more like a pad in the background but that is a nice approach to the guitars in this track.

If you're concerned about the guitar being a bit 2-d and up front, lots of people would stick feedbacky Edge delays on them. I wouldn't. You've got plenty of "upstage" stuff going on, some downstage stuff is good for contrast.

Fits the style to my ears, or put it this way, I didn't even notice it at first which means it's blending into the mix perfectly.

The only way that it doesn't fit in is very subtly the opposite of what you say. It's a little bit unpolished, I hear fretting and so on which for a primarily electronic 80's/90's dance inspired work like this I'd expect the guitar to be more synthetic in style if not an actual synth.

If you wanted to go with some other tone rather than get ego stroked then I'd just suggest pick a feel you're after and go all out, so if you want things to be messier you have to also adjust the rest of the track to fit, don't clean up everything else and expect the guitar to bring life back into the picture. Everything comes from the rhythm section, drums & bass, make them sound great and feel right and it really doesn't matter what you put on top.

As John and some others have said, the final mix sounds real fine including the guitar parts.
Nothing wrong with your rig/gear, but for that minor tonal difference I would have used a Strat instead of the Tele, which you may not have one handy in your project studio.

But at the end of the day it wouldn't have mattered for the audience, there's a tough crowd here

I believe in giving honest advice. it sounds like a good demo to me. If you want to compete with commercial mixes there is a way to go. With the whole mix - not just the guitars.

The things that I would change is the fundamentally static mix. Automation is your friend. This is the attention deficit post-MTV generation. Things gotta keep moving.

I agree with the "static" comment to a point. But, there's plenty of stuff out there that lives on sort of straight line instrumentation and arrangements underneath a vocal. I tend to prefer music and mixes that have strong dynamics..but the best way to do that, IMO, is with players who understand how to do this. A lot can be done with automation but it's not always about volume swells or things 'kicking in'.

Yes. You have to listen to the music and take the intent into consideration. Not everything should be mixed like Beyonce or Nirvana (in fact Nirvana style dynamics have become something of a boring cliche'.) or dance music.

I don't use automation, I use hands on the board (I use a regular full size console - which does have moving faders, but setting up the automation system is too much of a pain for me, at least now.) I find automation (of the modern DAW type) to be less intuitive and interactive than doing it manually, but that frequently takes two of us - four hands, up to 8 faders at a time.

I generally find completely static mixes to be boring, but the moves are not always obvious, they're often incremental. I also am a firm believer in using effects dynamically - and example would be using the reverb return fader (one should almost always use time based effects on a buss, not inline - you can do a lot more with them) to duck the verb during the lines of a vocal (so it doesn't muddy things up or sound tinny/fake) and then bringing it up on the tails at the ends of lines to add some depth/space/ lushness/ whatever. Also, since I'm running the FX on busses and returning through channels I can send one effect to another, for example running a vocal into a short, single repeat delay which then goes to the reverb, providing a controllable predelay for the verb. In this case the delay is not usually sent into the main mix itself - but it could be as a special effect. With the FX on busses you can also bring different sources in and out of the same effects as needed, which p5rtovides a certain auditory continuity (glue) that's lacking when running separate instances in inserts. And it saves you ITB guys a lot of resources, as time based fx tend to be cpu/dsp hungry.

The way George Martin and The Beatles did it ... agree, this is the ideal. The mixing becomes a musical performance itself.

I use DAW automation because I don't have experienced hands around me that I trust ... aiming for the same end result.

I don't like to record automation moves - that floods the DAW with too much data, I think. What I like to do is think in terms of a journey from A to B (which could be 4 bars, or 3 bars or any length at all). I find the settings I want for A, and the settings I want for B, and simply draw in nodes in the automation lane. The Daw connects these two nodes with a straight linear line. I might choose a curve, or draw in som intermediate nodes. But basically - it's very simple this way. And it keeps everything moving.

Agreed. I think I found the static reverb the main thing that sounded "demo-ish" on the OP clip.

And I agree everything that not everyoody is trying to make pop hits - if you want to make easy listening music or something then you probably don't want too much excitement.

On first listen I agree that because it isn't a "guitar song" it works just like it is assuming you wanted the instruments to provide a 'wash" with only the vocals (and a little bit the Bass line) really standing out at all.. FWIW to my ears I never heard what Sharp11 referred to as "competing with the vocals" at all. Because I favor guitar songs if I'd done it I would probably have kept the volume right where it is but enhanced "the sparkle" especially considering nothing really currently resides there and I assume a Tele was chosen for a reason and they are full of "sparkle".It seems to me experimenting with degrees of sparkle could add a nice punctuation to thr vocals, but then that's entirely subjective.

FWIW The Beatles were primarily a pop vocal band and only later did they become heavier in guitar as that became a trend. George Martin had tape smear to contend with and dealt with that by very careful track planning to minimize the need to bounce tracks and i read somewhere that he employed some sort of comb filter to put back lost sparkle (or rather to emphasize what was there but buried) and this later led to such things as the Aphex Aural Exciter and the Barcus Berry Enhancer to name just two. However it seems some engineers achieved a similar effect by routing a track through an active crossover and blending the out-of-phase high end with the original resulting in a glossier take without sounding edgy.

You don't have to contend with tape smear but as you noted, both the distortion and compression are either flavored with or naturally reduce high frequencies which of course where "the sparkle" lives. Since your ears (and the artist's) are of prime concern and you hear it as less lively than you might like, sparkle may be just what you'd like to play with since however you achieve it it is possible to do that non-destructively these days...

FWIW it might even work to reduce the guitar volume slightly but then add the sparkle which should reduce what some ears apparently hear as competing with vocals.Whatever yo do, at least you're staring with a solid mix already.

Ok so I absolutely dropped the ball on this post and I apologize! Though I didn't reply at the time, I have analyzed and practiced a lot of the awesome advice given in this forum and it has drastically improved my guitar game in my new releases.

For anyone who cares, I just want to mention the most helpful tips given in this post that have helped re-shape my thinking around electric guitars:

Sharp11:
"...sometimes a little distortion is a great substitute for EQ"

Kiwi:
"If anything I would say your guitars are too "tentative". You say you were careful to preserve transients ... I would suggest smack them off. Crush them. I would probably try the compressor cranked more and hitting the amp harder first."

"The things that I would change is the fundamentally static mix. Automation is your friend." <---- this hurt a bit, but I needed that lol.

"I found the static reverb the main thing that sounded demo-ish"

enorbet2:
"reduce the guitar volume slightly but then add the sparkle which should reduce what some ears apparently hear as competing with vocals"

Thanks again to everyone who helped out! if anyone is interested to hear my (hopefully better) newer releases, just search Micah Jude on Spotify.

I don't hear any issues with the tone you're getting on this song - the tone and mix should serve the song and this works.

I wouldn't. The guitar is so back-end to this style of music that a very general, even stereotypical, sound is all that is required. This music is about the vocal, ambiance, and the pep of the overall sound.

Hand it to a professional guitarist and let them go at it. Either you will say F**k that or you will hear what you want to hear.

My take is that you are playing very timidly and the guitar bits could use a lot more confidence. In the context of the song - can't say if i would change a thing behind maybe rolling off the high end to give a very muted track. You have plenty of sonic information running through the track - so taking the guitar into the blurry muted territory might help it stand out a bit more.

Thanks man. Yeah I agree that it's definitely supposed to be more of a background instrument...but I still feel like it could have had a little more juice to it.

In this particular song, I was aiming for a tone similar to John Mayer's "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" rhythm guitar (though I know it's a strat), "happy now" by Zedd, and similar....just a warm, yet clean, open sound with some actual character to it.

Juice it! See how it sounds. I never use clean clean because to me it's too sterile. Maybe add a little gain that gives it some presence and character but no "noticeable" distortion.

Any particular hardware or type of distortion that you have in mind? I definitely do exactly that now, but am curious about what others use for their awesome clean tones.

For me my clean channel on my amp has a gain knob so it's quite simple. You can also drive a VOX or another amp type that is "drive-able" from a clean state. Other than that, maybe a tube saturation plug or some other plug that gives you the same effect. Watch the tube ..amp plugs that might change your tone in a negative way though. You really want the gain to be transparent to the overall tone of the guitar.

Both of your examples are very different songs and arrangements, wher the guitar is playing very different role. John Mayer sounds like a strat into fender (two rock?) clean-ish amp with a tiny touch of compression. But it is the sound that is driving the song. Zedd guitar is more Americana, edge of breakup and and create a certain movement. In your sound-stage the guitar is a fill in instrument which adds no movement to the arrangement, just floats in-out as an occasional point of interest (and too much reverb). Its not the sound its how you use it.

Tube saturation plugins do not have the dynamics to emulate the way tube amps cross the breakup point. They do their own things but John Mayer sound ain't it.
Zedd sounds like a Tele, but its not an amp -probably a digital emulator or a pedal into one.
You can use some pre-amps into a suitable DI get you closer, but you need the right speaker response to make it more natural. Anything I put through my TwoNotes units does not replicate my mic'd speakers.

I didn't say it was the sure-shot solution; only a recommendation he can play with. I have a saturation plug that crosses mild tube breakup to full saturation so maybe you need to study some of these things.

Oh, and your response to him is so open ended and obfuscated that I doubt he will find it of any use.

Hey, look at the bright side, at least you got to criticize.

In the case of Zedd's sound (which is more of what I am after usually), do you have any recommendations for software, hardware, or combination of both?

You mentioned using pre-amps into a suitable DI...could you clarify this for me? I thought Pre-Amps and DI's were pretty flat/clean. When you say preamp, is that the same as a mic preamp, or is there a specific type for DI/guitar signals? I have only ever used the built in DI inputs/preamps on my interface, hence the newb questions.

Just to throw a wrench at the monkey in the machine....my current setup is WAY different from when I first made this post.

my current setup (of which I get some decent results for what I'm doing) is based around absolute EASY and QUICK recording...no mics, no live amp, no having to mute my speaker output and pop on headphones every time i want to record a simple bit...and most important of all: preset tones.

Telecaster > Electro-Harmonix Soul Food (rarely used actually) > Boss DS-1 (only kicked on for solo guitar really) > Boss CL-50 compressor > Yamaha THR10C (amp emulator) > Scarlett 18i20

I found that I am able to get way nicer drive out of the THR10C compared to the distortion pedals or plugins.

If anyone has recommendations for improving this setup, by all means jump in, as again, I am not a pro guitarist by any means.

Thank you for your advice. Just wondering, what makes you think I am not "across those things"? From free plug-ins to top of the heap sim machines? Having been in the business for longer then you have been alive, I probably picked up a couple of things? And working with really talented engineers, producers and clients I may have the opportunity to learn and experiment a bit with the latest and greatest?
Having the fortune of working on a great analogue setup and great digital toys I may be in a position to compare and make my own conclusions? I presume you are as fortunate of course.

Just answer the OP's question, Yuri. Try to be clear and to the point so he doesn't have to write a book trying to clarify it.