The search goes on...are you serious?

  • In my search for the ultimate lead tone I turned to R.U.Serious' amazing Bogner Shiva lead profile.


    However something has been bugging me in my quest. I find that the warm and juicy mid range frequencies needed for the lead tones I hear in my head, reside in the ~400-800K region. So that's where my aim is.


    Typically after a week of tone tweaking I will record the solo I had in mind. All fine up to this point.


    But THEN - when mixing.. The first thing I will realize is that the lower midrage I worked so hard for, eats up precious space in the mix. So instinctively I will cut a lot of it away from the lead guitar track :S


    But this time around - I did differently and I slapped on a multiband compressor on the backing track to tame the low midrange region. So I let the lead guitar take up a lot of space in the mix, and I think this can be well heard in the crunchy string rakes in this video. In my world guitarists should always get the last word. :thumbup:


    I would be really grateful for feedback here. And what are your tricks to preserve midrange warmth without compromising other instruments in the mix?


    edit:
    I got the request to share the rig, so here it is:https://drive.google.com/file/…Ry4ZcRG42cmN6V2xiUU0/view
    You might want to try it with a humbucker guitar, I used both bridge and neck pickups with the S-1 switch engaged.


    I hope you enjoy my improvisation:


    External Content youtu.be
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Edited once, last by KD ().

  • Just took a quick listen to the first minute or so :)


    Some feedback off the top of my head - and keep in mind that I am NOT a professional at all, but played a bit with mixing (and don't be offended if you already know these things :-)):


    - The levels seem a bit off to me :) It seems like the guitar solo is not in front when all the instruments are playing. When setting the levels, I usually do it based on the section with the most tracks playing at the same time
    - many other tracks seem to have a lot of presence compared to the guitar (i.e. hi frequency content). This contributes to the feeling that the guitar is further back in a virtual space - like the guitarist is furthest back on the stage. You could pull out some of the higher frequencies of those other instruments, or slightly boost the top end of the guitar track.
    - Midrange warmth can be preserved if you cut it out of the OTHER tracks instead of the guitar. Since the guitar is the main piece/focus of the piece, and is playing the whole way through, build the OTHER tracks around it instead of the other way around. It's the other instruments that should make room for the guitar, not the other way around (within reason). This doesn't need to be done with multiband compression, you can simply use an EQ. That's what I would do; multiband compression is a pretty specific tool, and I'd definitely use EQ instead :)


    That said, the only thing that matters is how the guitar sounds IN THE MIX. so if you feel like you've cut a lot of the nice midrange warmth from the guitar - that's fine if it still sounds good IN CONTEXT. the solo button is your enemy when mixing :)


    I think of mixing as a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces are too big for them to all fit within the frame. You gotta do the cuts somewhere :)


    For placing things in the mix (i.e. "separating" them), don't neglect the use of sutble delay and subtle reverb to place the tracks closer or farther away also.


    Other than that: nice track! :)

  • The trick is to prioritise the different ingredients. Those requiring focus at any given moment are given the most mix real estate while everything else has to be shaped around them. One of the reasons why I generally start a mix with the most important instrument or part. This of course varies from song to song and mix to mix, so there's never really a fast rule. Just my experience!


    Edit: My man MichaelDK beat me to it! I hadn't actually listened before posting, but now I have. Sounds good! Nice playing! I actually don't mind that the guitar solo sits in the mix, rather than poking out too much. Plus, it sounds like you used a finished backing track? Then you probably have limited opportunity to mix it the way I stated, anyway. Sweden and Denmark FTW!
    Cheers,
    Sam

    Edited 2 times, last by sambrox ().

  • Thanks for the awesome feedback guys! :D


    Yes the backing track is not mine so I just had a stereo file to work with. In this case I seem to get better results with multiband compressor rather than EQ.


    In spite of many years of trial and error I feel like a mixing noob so any advice is appreciated.


    Michael - you are spot on with the high frequency content of the backing, that is something I will keep in mind for the next track.


    Another reason the guitar might not feel in front is probably because I am running it through 3 delay sends and 2 reverbs (so what I'm a guitarist :D ).


    If I were mixing guitar for a solo spot I would have done things differently - but since this is a 5 minute jam thing I wanted a bigger sound.

  • Yes exactly. I do EQ them and just as with the guitar sound in general, it's very tempting to cut away too much of the reverb low end...


    I have done that many times and it just takes away the warmth of the verbs (if you overdo it).

  • Firstly, great playing,absolutely love it!


    Regarding the mix, on my monitors the guitar sits too low in the mids for my liking, of course tone is all personal taste anyway but have you tried simply cutting 3db or so in the other instruments / backing track around the hertz you like the guitar to be coming out? e.g. 500-800 or so?


    Seems the simplest way to me to make space in the mix, just a low cut;) I'm sure you've tried this, but thought I'd throw it out there as it's much simpler than getting out multi band compressors.


    Then on the guitar place a HPF around 150-200 to cut out unwanted lows.


  • Ok interesting - so you are hearing exactly what I wanted to achieve. Last time I listened to the mix on studio monitors, the guitar sounded the way I wanted (but as mentioned, I needed to do some cutting in the backing track).


    But if I were to look at it from a producers perspective, I would say I did the wrong thing (when removing midrange from all other instruments in order to make space for the guitar). But from a guitarist perspective, this seems to be the poor man's way to get that thick tone through...


    Thanks for the great comment! :D

  • I agree with pretty much everything said above. Nothing screams that theres a problem, but you can tell that with a little more tweaking it would really sound awesome. Great playing as well. Nice phrases and some interesting techniques in there.


    Thanks Bobbo, and please keep up the fantastic work with your reverb/delay presets - I use them regularly! :thumbup:

  • Cool I missed the "before" part. I have never tried that, what would be the reason to do that?

    For me, HPFing the send before it hits the reverb helps to filter out those frequencies that would muddy up the mix once processed, but doesn't thin out the sound of the reverb as much as it would if you filtered after the reverb (ie the dreaded telephone effect). EQing post reverb for me is to take out any annoying frequencies or any excessive masking.



    Cheers,
    Sam

  • ps a good tip for applying nice reverb tails for sustain without pushing the instrument back in the mix is to increase the pre-delay and (if possible) reduce the early reflections.


    Cheers,
    Sam

  • For me, HPFing the send before it hits the reverb helps to filter out those frequencies that would muddy up the mix once processed, but doesn't thin out the sound of the reverb as much as it would if you filtered after the reverb (ie the dreaded telephone effect). EQing post reverb for me is to take out any annoying frequencies or any excessive masking.



    Cheers,
    Sam


    Yeah now that I think about it - it makes much more sense to EQ before. And avoid EQ after if possible, not to mess with the reverb in vain. Thanks I will try this - feels like this will be an improvement.

    ps a good tip for applying nice reverb tails for sustain without pushing the instrument back in the mix is to increase the pre-delay and (if possible) reduce the early reflections.


    Cheers,
    Sam


    Very good point here as well. I usually apply a generic 20ms pre-delay for reverbs. But especially for the bigger ones it would make sense to experiment with longer pr-delay, to avoid muddiness.