"Don't fix it in the mix. Get the fundamentals right, to begin with." I think it was Dave Pensado, when asked about some of his best mixes, once said "I didn't really have to do much to them. They were recorded so well, they practically mixed themselves." It can't be overstated how much it matters getting everything right before even tracking.
I don't agree with that. Why would I low pass and high pass my guitar while tracking when I could do it in the mix at the cost of a few MB of RAM? I'd rather not lose anything in case I want to use it later. ESPECIALLY with the high range of the guitar. Despite what they say in this video, a lot of mixes have the high end sparkle of a guitar boosted in the mix all the way up to 20k.
@@TheManWithNoName686 You're confusing two sections of the video. This was about getting everything (down to the strings) right before tracking. They (and I) weren't (and am not) saying to cut all the low and high end in tracking. That would be insane. They DID say that you don't want too much bass at tracking, which I would agree with. The proximity effect will take care of all the low end you'll ever need in your guitars with a moderate amount of bass set in the amp's EQ. But, and this is important, good room sound != good recorded sound. Listen through your monitors and adjust your mic position and your amp's EQ before tracking. "Don't fix it in the mix" means don't purposely record a bad sound with the intention of fixing it later. It also doesn't mean to irrevocably neuter your sound in the very beginning. Record a good sound, and you'll have less to do later.
@@TheManWithNoName686 turning the bass knob down doesnt remove the note you hit on the guitar.....kinda like theres no setting on an amp that makes the note NOT be played or heard.... what goes in the computer is different than what your ear processes and sends to your brain... theyre compensating for that so what comes outta your stereo sounds how you want it too
@@TheManWithNoName686 you dont agree with getting the sound right before recording it?? Ummmm ok. Where I can agree it doesn't have to be perfect going in it does need to be close. If you have to much low end going in, cutting the bass in post will still sound muddy just with less bass. Too little low end and then boosting still wont get you the punch you need without adding unwanted resonances. Too much high end and you'll have a fizziness you can't get rid of and not enough will sound dull no matter what you boost. Theres definitely a middle ground sound you want to achieve before boosting or cutting anything. If you want to get better it might behoove you to take the advice from actual audio engineers who have been doing this for years.
Getting it right at the source is such a crucial point and makes life easier for everyone. I have been mixing some songs for some peers and I have been giving them suggestions about how they approach the recordings, particularly with gain staging and getting it right from the start. Little by little, their projects have been getting easier to mix with a lot less processing or correcting to get things to sound right. I'm a firm believer in getting it right at the source first.
I listened to a lot of isolated guitar tracks from various sources to learn songs, I quickly realized how thin or flat most leads sound without the rest of the mix. That helped me relax and stop trying to achieve the illusional guitar tone that the full mix creates. I stop screwing with the dials, play the lead part with the original backing tracks and it actually sounds fine.
Great info here! My #1 top tip would be DONT BE AFRAID TO SUCK! Especially if you're just starting out. It's going to sound bad, it's part of the journey. Just get in there and do it, and enjoy it.
Absolutely! I make electronic music. When I started about a year ago I decided to just make sounds I like. I wasn’t even worrying about making music. I just had fun and got better as I went along. I eventually got to the point where I feel justified in calling myself a musician. Yea you are going to suck. But keep at it and have fun.
more on topic: I started making aggressive cuts and have noticed improvements. hi pass at 118-120hz and low pass 7k for leads and 7k-6500 for rhythms. It's cuts out most of the fizz which forces me to be super tight and not hide a bad performance behind fizz. I will also boost between 6k-8k if the tone sounds too dark. And cut around 500 to get some boxy/honk out.
@@mrcoatsworth429 He was being polite to guitars...hehehe. Though as you say, there's nothing interesting above 8k, but leaving a downcurve from 8k until cutting freqs up to 11k-12k does leave a different sensation in the mix, like more "organic"?... absolute BS wording there, sorry, but I hope I get my point across.
The biggest difference in my mixes was hard shelving high and low end way more aggressively than I thought necessary. I was originally cutting out the frequencies I found annoying and leaving the rest, and wondering why my mix was muddy. Then I switched it around to instead find the frequency where the sound I'm digging disappears, and then shelving just above, or below that. Makes a huge difference in clearing up a mix.
@@TheEndless560 The biggest difference actually comes from cutting excess high end. Like all the way down to 8 or 6k. I usually just cut below 80hz on guitars.
Yes, Scott nailed in on the head! PLEASE bring him back on for an episode and talk about Woods 1! I also love that record and would love to hear more about how it was made
I have learned that sometimes when you find yourself cranking one instrument or a few frequencies of an instrument to make it stand out better, you may need to do the opposite: Turn down the frequency on whatever else is competing with it!
I bought Guitar Tone Mastery back when it sold on Pro Mix Academy. It's an amazing course Scott does an awesome job at explaining everything. I've went back and rewatched the whole course at least 5 times. I highly recommend this course if someone doesn't own it.
I love this channel. I am en electronic musician. But still get useful information from these videos. My songs typically have 3 parts. Drums, Bass, and lead/top line. All provided by synths and drum machines. The drums and bass are typically sequenced. So I can easily have those going while dialing in the lead. I am planning with a new song today. I use a mixing console. When I get back in the studio I am going to use the EQ on the console to dial in the lead tone while the drum and bass are going. So you have to think of this in terms of guitar tone. You can apply these ideas to whatever instrument is playing lead. Great info even for us key pushers. Keep up the good work and fuck you.
Former hardcore/metal(?) guitarist here now doing predominantly electronic music (with guitars sprinkled in here and there) and yes, these fundamentals are not limited to any genre. Too much at 300Hz is too much at 300Hz regardless of genre. It's all about making things fit into a limited amount of space.
@@tritonrecordings I record mostly folk and bluegrass with some jazz mixed in, most of this information I also find to be useful. I use a two inch so I commit early, I EQ and compress on the way in so I don’t need to wrench it around in the mix, I don’t want to boost either the hiss or the bias rocks too much on mix.
Its like Euge Valovirta said in one of his videos, if you have to make big or corrections to your frequency bands, theres something wrong. He explains this a the "some EQing part" on the video HOW TO DIAL IN A GREAT METAL TONE Equalizer is means "taajuuskorjain" here in Finland, literally a frequency fixer or frequency repair. A good way for me is to think about the sounds as words, guitar is snarly, bass is däng, drum is crash, clang, paks and thump, also to know which frequencies they live in and how.
I came across Euge Valovirta's videos one month ago for the first time ever. The guy is amazing, not only he seems to be the nicest guy overall: he's got the chops, he's got some serious knowledge and, oh my!, he's got the greatest guitar sound ever. No-nonsense explanations, all straightforward, lots of don't-do-this-because examples... I already watched quite a few videos, but he has so much material.
Pantera is the band where everyone forgot about the bass guitar under a thinner Dimebag tone !! He used some thin tones quite often!! Took until Reinventing The Steel where we got to distinctly hear the bass!! Rex was super tight with Dimebag and Vinnie creating one solid tone!!
18:50 - That would be awesome. I'd like to see that video. I watch a lot of videos about different genres as wall and this is not the first time I've heard the recommendation of not mixing in solo but with the song as a whole. Yes! Glenn! Scott Woods! This video feels incomplete. There HAS to be a part 2.
This was very cool. You both made great points about not only the sound of the mix but the sounds for the songs. I was really happy to hear things I've understood for so long come out of you two guys(minus the tech talk) and as coherent and to the point. Thank You.
I usually cut around 120 and 12khz. Most of our stuff is in drop Bb so all that low end gets very muddy if I don't cut or run a sidechain. I'm already running a sidechain to the kick so it just blends nicely. We use 13-62 cobalt strings. Makes a big difference.
I got all of Scott's courses. Seriously worth every penny. Teaches you everything from how to establish effective work flow to understanding the mindset you need when approaching a project. Really made me feel hopeful instead of hopeless. Seriously get all of his stuff if you are stuck in a rut or need a boost on ideas. His drum course changed how fast I can bust out a drum beat for a riff. Cheers!
So happy to see S.I.T. strings getting some love! I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio and have been playing those strings since the early 90’s. They’re simply fantastic!
Tone has to take into account the band, and each song. Always striving for the perfect tone individually is not only selfish, but will hold the band back.
I fully agree. Thing is though, most people know jack sh!t about mixing and frequencies and sitting right in a band mix. So they set their tone to what sounds right in the bedroom, only to discover in rehearsal they either disappear into the band mix, or worse, get told to turn it down as they try to turn themselves up to hear themselves. The volume wars that follow have destroyed many a promising band.
Obviously. Using a thick guitar tone is only useful if you're playing on a street corner alone without accompaniment. We're talking about fitting your guitars in a mix, not fitting them into the practice in your bedroom.
Great suggestion on AmpKnob, I actually use it like a reference track for my guitar tones. I throw it on the L track and whatever guitar tone I'm working on 100% R. If that works and doesn't sound weird, I probably have a pretty usable tone.
Fantastic advice and hopefully more guitarists will listen to it. I once had to deal with a guitar tone totally unsuited for a band but the player would not change their sound at all. The time I spent getting to sit well in the mix was easily 60% of the total mix time (including mastering).
GLEEEEEENNNNNNNN!!!!! Do you think you’ll be doing more bass and drum related content in the future? I know guitar is your primary instrument, but I figure every else matters just as much from a mixing engineer’s viewpoint. Also, how about a video ranking guitar amp speakers in a tier list?
Hey Glenn! Im currently working on a thrash metal track and i was ripping my hair apart to get the right tone and your IRs really saved me from giving up on the project. Thanks alot!
Glenn... I think I'm going to have to replace the tubes in my Hughes and Kettner Grandmeister soon and I learned that they have solid state replacement tubes... Wondering if that's a viable replacement so that I don't have to spend money on new tubes when they go out again...
I have an AMT-SS11 preamp pedal that came with solid state 12ax7 preamp tube replacements, which they call "WarmStone". They worked fine, but I replaced them with real tubes (with less gain, as I thought the pedal was too high-gain with regular 12ax7). Can't say how similar or different to real tubes they are overall as it takes a lot of playing with each to figure that out--"comparison" videos are often misleading and basically useless in that regard as they only let you hear a snapshot of a single setting in a single context, and rarely take into account other important factors like picking dynamics, fiddling with your guitar volume, room sound, etc. My impression is they do the job well enough...but on the other hand, if you start replacing all your real tubes with solid state "tube replacements", maybe you should just go with a solid state amp in the first place. I haven't heard of a similar replacement for power tubes, but that's where the real money savings would be, both in parts and labor. What my pedal came with: amtelectronics.com/new/amt-12ax7ws New version with same electronics but different housing: amtelectronics.com/new/amt-12ax7ws-le/
I used to make the mistake of dialing in my amp to sound good in the room before recording. Since I added a little extra mids and high's in my amp EQ, I get better mixes. Its easier to cut frequencies in the mix than it is to boost something that isn't already there.
Man, the very first point on the show just absolutely devastated everything i knew about guitar tone and it explains soooo much about what i have found myself thinking less than wonderfully about , when it comes to recording.... And once again, u peel off another scale of ignorance on my artichoke of a brain.....sorry for any comments on the frequency bandwidth of your tone, glenn!
Many people try to copy the guitar sounds from a record that has many double/quad tracked stems along with bass that may have distortion on it too. Like you say getting a full great sound on the guitar path is great for jamming but for recording once you start stacking them up along with bass it’s not going to work at all. Along with cutting the bass frequencies out carefully, always dial back the gain distortion to the point where it sounds a lot cleaner than the end result. Once you track it a few times the gain accumulates so it’s going to sound bigger and rhythm will be tighter. If you track a bunch of super high gain guitars it’s going to be white noise with no definition.
Yeah finally. What's the secret to a super heavy guitar tone? An amazing bass guitar tone with low end that you can build on. Then a tight performance between the 2. Listen to old Entombed records, the guitars bring all the knar but the bass brings all the thickness.
As guitarist, I think we are definitely guilty of obsessing about how WE sound and how OUR tone sounds without considering at all how it fits into and compliments and contrasts with the rest of the band. Yeah, your tone is important....but not THAT important. Do you have a guitar? Do you have an amp with a gain channel? If yes to both, that's all you need. You're ready to rock.
Finally!!! Someone talks about using the bass to shape your tone!!! Bass is way more important than the overall guitar mix.. it makes all the difference
String tone with use becomes dull for two reasons, grime and sweat from your hands and also to a lesser extent metallurgical changes caused by vibration which happens fairly quickly, both reduce the ability for the strings to produce the higher harmonic overtones we associate with bright and spangly. If your strings are old and you really can’t afford new, boiling them in a pan of water for 10 minutes can get them back to a reasonable clarity.
You mentioned the frequency response graphs of guitar cabs and it got me thinking: if cabs are just complex EQs, why not make customizable cab plugins where you can edit the freq spectrum of the thing as you do with an EQ? I mean, there are already ones where you can move a virtual mic, but let's face it - there are a lot of bedroom musicians who never worked with a physical cab in their lives XD
I guess you're describing raw IRs, where just the IR is taken from the speaker/cab and you need to tweak it (EQ it) to work in your mix, the same you'd do with a physical speaker/cab 😄 As opposed to the most frequent «produced» IRs, plug and play, there you go... Not so tweakable, though.
First off, I need to thank you Glenn for the free IR - it is really good. I've started using it exclusively; I use the first one for rhythm and pump it up a little brighter, and the 57 one I use for leads and it makes the leads stand out just right as opposed to rhythm for my sound. Probably didn't mean them to be used like that, but it works great for my rig, which is a Boss GX-100 actually. I have great Marshalls etc tube amps at my disposal and a huge number of modelers, plugins and hardware, AxeFX, Neural, Amplitube 5, you name it, but I find the Boss the best for sculpting my own sound anyhow, it just has so good routing, EQ etc options and IR load possible - and I've used those Bosses since GT6, only previously had to use external IR loaders or cabinet emulators for my sound. And concerning this video - great tips! For me, I've used all these for ages, but then again I've been a tone chaser for about as long as you have so I've just already learned all this the hard way. Especially for modelers understanding how to EQ your sound, and using different IRs is pivotal. To get a really great sound out of my Boss I use up to five EQs in the chain in different places, and those EQ settings can be rather contradictory between them too. My starting point is to hi/lo pass my guitar at 160 and 6500hz, and after that I'll both boost and cut more for sculpting. For instance often it's best to create a different EQ slope by having a hard cut at 6500 BUT boost hard at 12,000 regardless. And then have individual dips here and there, or boosted frequencies. But by far the most important tip, IMO, is to always adjust your sounds along with the mix, or even some similar music. I always adjust my basic sounds while playing over various RUclips tracks. That gives me a great understanding how will it work in a mix later on. With the band, I make note of what kind of EQ or other changes I make - or the soundman of a venue - makes for my guitar at the DESK - and see if I can add those changes in some extent straight to my own settings. As a result, most of the time when I give an XLR line to the soundman for putting it to PA and FOH, and in a while ask how does that work, they often say "I didn't have to do anything to it, it's great" and then I know I've succeeded. I would also add one tip of my own: stop adjusting your tone constantly, stop chasing the tone on a daily basis and for chrissake stop buying new gear to chase it. Just use or decide what to use, sculpt your tone, and then just fucking use it, and only make small changes when absolutely necessary and when you have felt for weeks that you need to change it somehow. Because guitars sound different in your ears every day. You can dial in the perfect tone and a few days later it sounds like absolute crap to you anyway. DO NOT TRUST YOUR EARS when that happens. Wait for a few days and see - it might sound great again another day without any change. Take your time and don't do changes too quickly but build your sound slowly enough that the daily changes in how your ears hear today won't throw you off the path.
I watch another home studio RUclips channel as well as Spectre sound. He always preaches GIRATS... get it right at the source. Strings, performance, etc. You can't mix out crap. The track needs to be solid. Great video today Glenn. Cool stuff to learn and build on.
I remember working with a metal band in the studio (it was a one day deal, get a single song recorded, mixed and sent off for mastering on the day) and the guitarist was ADAMANT he dialled in his tone. He'd just rolled the treble almost entirely off and boosted the mids and bass to like 9 o'clock and wouldn't listen at all when I told him we'd need to change the tone for it to sit in the mix because "I've worked forever on my tone, I want it exactly perfect on the record." So I let him have his way, recorded the guitars how he wanted them and LO AND BEHOLD the mix sounded muddy and messy until I did some SIGNIFICANT EQing on the guitars taking up a bunch of valuable studio time that could've been avoided if he'd just let me dial in the tone to suit the song. Guys, please, if the engineer tells you that you need to change your tone, just listen to them. It'll probably save you time and money in the long run.
So... If making the guitar and bass fit together and not take up the same sonic space is how you get good tones, how would you get a good bass tone? What if you wanted your metal sound to revolve a little more around bass? I don't know much about bass tone period, but if you're not cranking the gain the same way you are on the guitar, do tonewood and pickups matter? I'd love to see a series dive into that
Super new to playing threw my lap top. Reaper, bunch of ir,amp plugins and effects. Im doing 120-7k. I find the peakes. Last test (my 1st test) I did 2db cuts at 200,1k and like 3k. It's drop c active pups new strings lol .I got tdr Nova for Eq and other simple 3-7-10 bands..I wanna work on main tone right?
Geez, in your element much? You guys were in the zone. How about that! You're good. I'm really happy with this channel. I'll be as good and happy as I'll ever be watching things as intelligible as this on RUclips. BTW, no clue what you said. Just saw the universe expanding lol.
I totally agree with Scott. I'm a fuckin nerd, play dad rock and bluesy shit. But I love my (diy, not at all expensive) 'relic' guitar for exactly that reason. I feel completely free from anxiety when playing it due to the pain. On his second point about new strings getting a better performance. Consider this, why does a string get dead? Well it collects gunk, corrosion etc. But what else does that do? Adds mass, which lowers the fundamental frequency per a given unit of tension. So you will have to tune a string tighter in order to be in tune with dead strings! This means it will necessarily be harder to play.
Some of these principles are the reason why a live band's sound can be huge. They're tight AF. That would be a cool experiment, measuring tightness to the micro seconds and observing where the line is; the tipping point; the point where a lack of cohesiveness fractures the holistic integrity of the music thereby making the product a sum of its parts rather than something bigger than the sum of its parts.. Kinda nerdy, but an interesting metric off of the floor. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Primus. I heard Ler say he wasn't fond of the early mixing because they had less tools and knowledge. They have a sound all they're own...
Leaving room for the bass is great advice, not just for the studio but live, too. Especially if you have 2-3 guitars in the band. Nobody needs to be playing whole barre chords. Skynrd's guitarists would often break up one chord between 2 players while the lead did his thing. I guess it's also why I never got the point of a 7 & 8 string if you're going to get into the bass's sonic space a lot.
I figured this out ages ago after I saw someone complain that the guitar tone on Blizzard of Oz sucks. If you listen to an isolated guitar track yes it does sound pretty thin and weak. Listen to it as a whole and you see that it was done so it doesn't overlap with the bass.
It’s super awesome to see Scott on this wonderful channel! Scott is an amazing sound engineer I really love watching videos and learning from him on his Chernobyl Studios! And he has really amazing courses! Guitar Mastery is one of them! Just in 1 course Scott opened my eyes how to create good guitar tone with plugins! I’ve been looking for the info like this for so long! Thank you so much Scott for everything you do! 😀👍🔥🔥🔥
what i'm getting nowadays is that i can get away with a little bit of scoop so that lead parts and vocals can get through without frequency clashing on the midrange with the rhythm guitars.
Glenn I know this is off topic, but I'm an amateur audio engineer who dabbles in the audiophile hobby. I have recently seen alot of mixing engineers using Sennheiser headphones. I was wondering if you could ever do a video about what kind of benifits you get and how you ended up using open back headphones for your setups. It would be great to get an actual mixing engineer's take on the subject since there's not alot of feedback from actual engineers on mid-high end headphones as opposed to people who speculate on how things 'should' sound like when they purchase a new piece of gear.
Just to clarify: You can absolutely record your guitar with all the frequencies you want, suffices to cut/EQ the low-end when you're actually mixing. Found this kinda confusing with the title "dial in your tone for recording". As long as you're aware of the upcoming cut/EQ and don't only djent around on the low-end you can enjoy your full tone while recording without any issues. Guess it's a question of your workflow.
A shining example of that first point Scott made is ‘Bleed’ by Meshuggah, that bass tone is fucking massive and you don’t realize it until you hear how thin and Tinny the guitars sound on their own
I think a video on this would be cool. Like from start to finish. Cleans and heavy. Also with bass etc. Most people want to know because they use digital stuff. Most things out there base off of amps and real drums and the process for ez drummer 3 and helix for example is quite different. Iv got an alright sound going but always feel there’s something that is missing Be cool to see it done really basic
But then you have perhaps the greatest mixer of all-time Chris Lord-Alge who says it is "the biggest mistake engineers make" to slice up the EQ spectrum for the guitar and bass. He prefers to have the bass, the guitar and snare go all the way into the lows and rarely high passes them. He says there's "plenty of room for everything." He said this on a Waves mix tutorial. So there are different opinions and different approaches that work.
Like 101 for Lefty fun fun fun! My practice tone is bass at 3 o’clock mid and treble at 9 o’clock, for recording bass is 9 o’clock mid at 1-1:30 and treble just enough above noon to get the sizzle without fissile.
What i always remember what a nightmare it is sometimes, when you buy new pedals and have no clue how it Operate cause you havent the time yet to play with it. I had a ehx good vibes last christmas as a present and still fight with it cause of the immense basspulse. So know your gear 😅
It's the old adage "You can't polish a turd". I think that's the sort of principle here. That and understanding the guitar lives in the mid range. It's so tempting to just want to make it sound nice in solo but context is king with the mix.
"In the Discovery Channel series MythBusters episode "End with a Bang" (Episode 113), which first aired on November 12, 2008, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman investigated the truth behind everyday sayings. They used the dorodango technique to create dung spheres in order to bust the myth that one "can't polish a turd". Using a glossmeter, they measured gloss levels substantially higher than the value of 70 gloss units, which is considered "high gloss". Savage's 106-gloss unit dorodango used an ostrich's feces, while Hyneman's 183-gloss unit specimen used a lion's feces. They therefore deemed the myth "busted"" So apparently, you can polish a turd, but you still can't make a good mix from bad tracks.
I spent a lot of time doing the "dial in the guitar with the bass and drums playing" because of how I tend to do line and sound checks. Once I get the gear in place and I have mics on what needs mics on it, I just tell the band to "play", and I just start dialing it in. First drums, then bass, then guitar(s), then keys(if applicable) and then vocals. I really try to avoid the solo function unless I'm having problems with something or just to sanity check. I once had to deal with this one band that decided to have 4 7-string guitars, all heavily detuned and wondered why y they usually sounded like crap, and why their mix sounded good through my board. I just engaged the high pass and rolled all that sludge out, leaving room for bass. Building the guitar sound in the mix is so much easier than trying to make that solo'd signal fix in there right.
The tip about shaping your gutar tone after you've got your drums and bass tracks down also works for live tones. I mean, I've got a pedal that loads IRs and has amp simulation, Cube Baby, and I've been tweaking it for live use with some tracks loaded on Reaper and I've been getting some really nice results, especially with that free IR Glenn's released. I learned the hard way during a gig. I thought I had a massive tone but after checking the recordings of that gig turns out my guitar sounded like a toy hah
I know this isn’t metal but D Boon from the minutemen is a master of the first tip. No mids, no bass, all treble. The presence of his tone along with Mike watt on bass makes some of the loudest music I’ve ever heard even though by itself his guitar is a little thin and trebly
Off the back of the improved performance and feel of new strings I'd add to polish your frets when you change strings. Smooth frets feel way better on bends and stuff and those little things matter when you're doing the performance that's gonna be kept forever on your record.
Funnily enough, as a guitarist when I listen to music, the first thing I listen for are the drums. I'm a sucker for what I call the "gunshot" snare. Danny Carey's snare tone in Parabola, the snare in Switchfoot's Lonely Nation, some of Dave Grohl's Nirvana snare tones. I also carefully listen to the levels of the cymbals.
I worked in a couple of professional recording studios and sat in on mix sessions with some legendary engineers. Whenever they would solo the bass guitar I couldn't beleive how shitty it would sound. However when it was in the mix it sounded great. I never heard a bass track that sounded great by itself, ever.
Can we have a similar one for bass? I think most of the time it's just duplicate the DI, set one for lows, one for highs, scoop mids, HPF LPF, compress, done. But I'd bet it is not that simple.
Rabea Massad and John Petrucci had a little video where they each strummed a single power chord. The tone of Rabeas chord... Oh my. That is a glorious thing.
The V30 IR's are actually really good. I'm doing some updated demos for my next project and they work great. I wanted a kinda fat and saturated low to mid gain sound for some single coil neck position riff and chordy type rock stuff, so I pulled up the Marshall head in Ampire (comes with Studio One, not amazing), put an overdrive in front of it, loaded up both IR's and it's just what I wanted. Of course, I'll be using a real amp for the actual songs, but this made a good goal to shoot for. Haven't tried them on a high gain thing yet but I imagine they work just as well.
I have what I think is an amazing guitar amp, I don't have room for 6. It's a Fryette/VHT 100 CLX Pitbull. That said, I am going to use guitar plugins as often as possible because I can get so much more work done. I A/B the amp vs a plugin in about 2010, maybe a little before. It sounded the same. I was shocked. I was just going for a JCM800 tone at the time. The only disadvantage I see going forward, is the lack of natural harmonic feedback. I can fix that by just having a practice amp dialed in as close to the sound I'm looking for and the harmonic feedback will sound natural in the plugin, I hope, I haven't tried it yet. If I had a fully equipped studio and could afford to keep it well heated in our harsh winters, I would mostly record real guitar amps. If I could afford a fully equipped studio, having 6 or 10 amps would give the long list of amps I require that are now available in plugins. I am old school, but someday, tube will no longer be made and my amp will end up in a junk pile or in a museum. I'm here reading the comments, so I'm obviously trying to learn from the whole community. Rock On!
Mr. Glenn, everyone talks about using HPF and LPF to size the guitar sound especially to fit it in with the bass. But nobody talks about guitar "mids" and how they affect the bass when you are trying to get the "top" tone of the bass to stand out a la iron maiden, etc. Especially now that small speakers are the norm, I wonder if if you want to hear bass, you have to boost the treble.
"Don't fix it in the mix. Get the fundamentals right, to begin with." I think it was Dave Pensado, when asked about some of his best mixes, once said "I didn't really have to do much to them. They were recorded so well, they practically mixed themselves." It can't be overstated how much it matters getting everything right before even tracking.
I don't agree with that. Why would I low pass and high pass my guitar while tracking when I could do it in the mix at the cost of a few MB of RAM? I'd rather not lose anything in case I want to use it later. ESPECIALLY with the high range of the guitar. Despite what they say in this video, a lot of mixes have the high end sparkle of a guitar boosted in the mix all the way up to 20k.
@@TheManWithNoName686 You're confusing two sections of the video. This was about getting everything (down to the strings) right before tracking. They (and I) weren't (and am not) saying to cut all the low and high end in tracking. That would be insane. They DID say that you don't want too much bass at tracking, which I would agree with. The proximity effect will take care of all the low end you'll ever need in your guitars with a moderate amount of bass set in the amp's EQ. But, and this is important, good room sound != good recorded sound. Listen through your monitors and adjust your mic position and your amp's EQ before tracking. "Don't fix it in the mix" means don't purposely record a bad sound with the intention of fixing it later. It also doesn't mean to irrevocably neuter your sound in the very beginning. Record a good sound, and you'll have less to do later.
@@TheManWithNoName686 turning the bass knob down doesnt remove the note you hit on the guitar.....kinda like theres no setting on an amp that makes the note NOT be played or heard....
what goes in the computer is different than what your ear processes and sends to your brain...
theyre compensating for that so what comes outta your stereo sounds how you want it too
@@TheManWithNoName686 you dont agree with getting the sound right before recording it?? Ummmm ok. Where I can agree it doesn't have to be perfect going in it does need to be close. If you have to much low end going in, cutting the bass in post will still sound muddy just with less bass. Too little low end and then boosting still wont get you the punch you need without adding unwanted resonances. Too much high end and you'll have a fizziness you can't get rid of and not enough will sound dull no matter what you boost. Theres definitely a middle ground sound you want to achieve before boosting or cutting anything. If you want to get better it might behoove you to take the advice from actual audio engineers who have been doing this for years.
Getting it right at the source is such a crucial point and makes life easier for everyone. I have been mixing some songs for some peers and I have been giving them suggestions about how they approach the recordings, particularly with gain staging and getting it right from the start. Little by little, their projects have been getting easier to mix with a lot less processing or correcting to get things to sound right. I'm a firm believer in getting it right at the source first.
I listened to a lot of isolated guitar tracks from various sources to learn songs, I quickly realized how thin or flat most leads sound without the rest of the mix. That helped me relax and stop trying to achieve the illusional guitar tone that the full mix creates. I stop screwing with the dials, play the lead part with the original backing tracks and it actually sounds fine.
Not metal, but Led Zepplin's first album is a great example of this. Jimmy Page's telecaster tone is absolutely paper thin on that whole album.
Great info here! My #1 top tip would be DONT BE AFRAID TO SUCK! Especially if you're just starting out. It's going to sound bad, it's part of the journey. Just get in there and do it, and enjoy it.
Absolutely! I make electronic music. When I started about a year ago I decided to just make sounds I like. I wasn’t even worrying about making music. I just had fun and got better as I went along. I eventually got to the point where I feel justified in calling myself a musician.
Yea you are going to suck. But keep at it and have fun.
"fake it 'til you make it" that is my motto. (But don;t pretend you know what you are doing lol)
Even if you've played for decades there are suck moments. It happens.
more on topic: I started making aggressive cuts and have noticed improvements. hi pass at 118-120hz and low pass 7k for leads and 7k-6500 for rhythms. It's cuts out most of the fizz which forces me to be super tight and not hide a bad performance behind fizz. I will also boost between 6k-8k if the tone sounds too dark. And cut around 500 to get some boxy/honk out.
Yeah, I was a bit surprised by Glenn talking about cutting above 12k. There is nothing above 8k but unnecessary fizz.
@@mrcoatsworth429 He was being polite to guitars...hehehe. Though as you say, there's nothing interesting above 8k, but leaving a downcurve from 8k until cutting freqs up to 11k-12k does leave a different sensation in the mix, like more "organic"?... absolute BS wording there, sorry, but I hope I get my point across.
The biggest difference in my mixes was hard shelving high and low end way more aggressively than I thought necessary. I was originally cutting out the frequencies I found annoying and leaving the rest, and wondering why my mix was muddy. Then I switched it around to instead find the frequency where the sound I'm digging disappears, and then shelving just above, or below that. Makes a huge difference in clearing up a mix.
@@TheEndless560 The biggest difference actually comes from cutting excess high end. Like all the way down to 8 or 6k. I usually just cut below 80hz on guitars.
@@TheEndless560 Worth noting this isn't in the context of guitar tone. Muddy as in a cluttered mix, not low mids on guitar.
Yes talk more about the sessions and mixing of Woods with Scott, that would be fun.
Yes, Scott nailed in on the head! PLEASE bring him back on for an episode and talk about Woods 1! I also love that record and would love to hear more about how it was made
I have learned that sometimes when you find yourself cranking one instrument or a few frequencies of an instrument to make it stand out better, you may need to do the opposite: Turn down the frequency on whatever else is competing with it!
Absolutely, I've experienced this myself.
@@VivisectorBand One of the few times "Less is more" is correct!😁
I bought Guitar Tone Mastery back when it sold on Pro Mix Academy. It's an amazing course Scott does an awesome job at explaining everything. I've went back and rewatched the whole course at least 5 times. I highly recommend this course if someone doesn't own it.
I love this channel. I am en electronic musician. But still get useful information from these videos. My songs typically have 3 parts. Drums, Bass, and lead/top line. All provided by synths and drum machines. The drums and bass are typically sequenced. So I can easily have those going while dialing in the lead. I am planning with a new song today. I use a mixing console. When I get back in the studio I am going to use the EQ on the console to dial in the lead tone while the drum and bass are going.
So you have to think of this in terms of guitar tone. You can apply these ideas to whatever instrument is playing lead.
Great info even for us key pushers.
Keep up the good work and fuck you.
Former hardcore/metal(?) guitarist here now doing predominantly electronic music (with guitars sprinkled in here and there) and yes, these fundamentals are not limited to any genre. Too much at 300Hz is too much at 300Hz regardless of genre. It's all about making things fit into a limited amount of space.
@@tritonrecordings I record mostly folk and bluegrass with some jazz mixed in, most of this information I also find to be useful. I use a two inch so I commit early, I EQ and compress on the way in so I don’t need to wrench it around in the mix, I don’t want to boost either the hiss or the bias rocks too much on mix.
Its like Euge Valovirta said in one of his videos, if you have to make big or corrections to your frequency bands, theres something wrong.
He explains this a the "some EQing part" on the video HOW TO DIAL IN A GREAT METAL TONE
Equalizer is means "taajuuskorjain" here in Finland, literally a frequency fixer or frequency repair.
A good way for me is to think about the sounds as words, guitar is snarly, bass is däng, drum is crash, clang, paks and thump, also to know which frequencies they live in and how.
I came across Euge Valovirta's videos one month ago for the first time ever. The guy is amazing, not only he seems to be the nicest guy overall: he's got the chops, he's got some serious knowledge and, oh my!, he's got the greatest guitar sound ever. No-nonsense explanations, all straightforward, lots of don't-do-this-because examples... I already watched quite a few videos, but he has so much material.
Pantera is the band where everyone forgot about the bass guitar under a thinner Dimebag tone !! He used some thin tones quite often!! Took until Reinventing The Steel where we got to distinctly hear the bass!! Rex was super tight with Dimebag and Vinnie creating one solid tone!!
Rex is a boss! 💪💪
You can hear the bass without any issues even on Cowboys, just listen to The Art of Shredding.
18:50 - That would be awesome. I'd like to see that video.
I watch a lot of videos about different genres as wall and this is not the first time I've heard the recommendation of not mixing in solo but with the song as a whole.
Yes! Glenn! Scott Woods! This video feels incomplete. There HAS to be a part 2.
This was very cool. You both made great points about not only the sound of the mix but the sounds for the songs. I was really happy to hear things I've understood for so long come out of you two guys(minus the tech talk) and as coherent and to the point.
Thank You.
I usually cut around 120 and 12khz. Most of our stuff is in drop Bb so all that low end gets very muddy if I don't cut or run a sidechain. I'm already running a sidechain to the kick so it just blends nicely. We use 13-62 cobalt strings. Makes a big difference.
Scott's courses on mixing guitar and programming drums have greatly changed my worflow for the better. I can't recommend them more.
I got all of Scott's courses. Seriously worth every penny. Teaches you everything from how to establish effective work flow to understanding the mindset you need when approaching a project. Really made me feel hopeful instead of hopeless. Seriously get all of his stuff if you are stuck in a rut or need a boost on ideas. His drum course changed how fast I can bust out a drum beat for a riff. Cheers!
So happy to see S.I.T. strings getting some love! I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio and have been playing those strings since the early 90’s. They’re simply fantastic!
Tone has to take into account the band, and each song. Always striving for the perfect tone individually is not only selfish, but will hold the band back.
I fully agree. Thing is though, most people know jack sh!t about mixing and frequencies and sitting right in a band mix. So they set their tone to what sounds right in the bedroom, only to discover in rehearsal they either disappear into the band mix, or worse, get told to turn it down as they try to turn themselves up to hear themselves. The volume wars that follow have destroyed many a promising band.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623. This is why it’s good to learn about mixing.
Obviously. Using a thick guitar tone is only useful if you're playing on a street corner alone without accompaniment. We're talking about fitting your guitars in a mix, not fitting them into the practice in your bedroom.
You heard the man, Glenn. Let's have the video on the Woods of Ypres sound!
Great suggestion on AmpKnob, I actually use it like a reference track for my guitar tones. I throw it on the L track and whatever guitar tone I'm working on 100% R. If that works and doesn't sound weird, I probably have a pretty usable tone.
Fantastic advice and hopefully more guitarists will listen to it. I once had to deal with a guitar tone totally unsuited for a band but the player would not change their sound at all. The time I spent getting to sit well in the mix was easily 60% of the total mix time (including mastering).
So good to see Scott back doing what he loves after everything he's been through.
Buy his courses they're great!!!
GLEEEEEENNNNNNNN!!!!! Do you think you’ll be doing more bass and drum related content in the future? I know guitar is your primary instrument, but I figure every else matters just as much from a mixing engineer’s viewpoint.
Also, how about a video ranking guitar amp speakers in a tier list?
Hey Glenn! Im currently working on a thrash metal track and i was ripping my hair apart to get the right tone and your IRs really saved me from giving up on the project. Thanks alot!
Bring Scott back, I’d absolutely love to hear more about the Woods / Black metal production!
Glenn... I think I'm going to have to replace the tubes in my Hughes and Kettner Grandmeister soon and I learned that they have solid state replacement tubes... Wondering if that's a viable replacement so that I don't have to spend money on new tubes when they go out again...
I have an AMT-SS11 preamp pedal that came with solid state 12ax7 preamp tube replacements, which they call "WarmStone". They worked fine, but I replaced them with real tubes (with less gain, as I thought the pedal was too high-gain with regular 12ax7). Can't say how similar or different to real tubes they are overall as it takes a lot of playing with each to figure that out--"comparison" videos are often misleading and basically useless in that regard as they only let you hear a snapshot of a single setting in a single context, and rarely take into account other important factors like picking dynamics, fiddling with your guitar volume, room sound, etc. My impression is they do the job well enough...but on the other hand, if you start replacing all your real tubes with solid state "tube replacements", maybe you should just go with a solid state amp in the first place. I haven't heard of a similar replacement for power tubes, but that's where the real money savings would be, both in parts and labor.
What my pedal came with:
amtelectronics.com/new/amt-12ax7ws
New version with same electronics but different housing:
amtelectronics.com/new/amt-12ax7ws-le/
Great course for sure and so are all his other courses!! Grab em and dig in. Scott is a great teacher!
I used to make the mistake of dialing in my amp to sound good in the room before recording. Since I added a little extra mids and high's in my amp EQ, I get better mixes. Its easier to cut frequencies in the mix than it is to boost something that isn't already there.
I put the bass to a little behind 12 o’clock! The mid up and the treble at 2 o’clock!!
Meaningless without loads of other info from you.
Awesome vid dudes! Always love hearing from Scott & when you guys collab! Always dropping useful tips & knowledge. 🖤
Scotts course does truly deliver.
Thanks, man!
Man, the very first point on the show just absolutely devastated everything i knew about guitar tone and it explains soooo much about what i have found myself thinking less than wonderfully about , when it comes to recording.... And once again, u peel off another scale of ignorance on my artichoke of a brain.....sorry for any comments on the frequency bandwidth of your tone, glenn!
Many people try to copy the guitar sounds from a record that has many double/quad tracked stems along with bass that may have distortion on it too. Like you say getting a full great sound on the guitar path is great for jamming but for recording once you start stacking them up along with bass it’s not going to work at all. Along with cutting the bass frequencies out carefully, always dial back the gain distortion to the point where it sounds a lot cleaner than the end result. Once you track it a few times the gain accumulates so it’s going to sound bigger and rhythm will be tighter. If you track a bunch of super high gain guitars it’s going to be white noise with no definition.
Great and very informative video!
Also, here's another vote for more context about the stuff with Woods of Ypres 🤣
Yes. Glenn. Scott and Woods.
Yeah finally. What's the secret to a super heavy guitar tone? An amazing bass guitar tone with low end that you can build on. Then a tight performance between the 2. Listen to old Entombed records, the guitars bring all the knar but the bass brings all the thickness.
As guitarist, I think we are definitely guilty of obsessing about how WE sound and how OUR tone sounds without considering at all how it fits into and compliments and contrasts with the rest of the band. Yeah, your tone is important....but not THAT important.
Do you have a guitar? Do you have an amp with a gain channel?
If yes to both, that's all you need. You're ready to rock.
Finally!!! Someone talks about using the bass to shape your tone!!!
Bass is way more important than the overall guitar mix.. it makes all the difference
wow learned a lot and will take in consideration the tips mentioned here. i am going to buy that course about programing drums with the german guy
Can you go through how to shape bass tones for metal, using pedal boards and not amps
String tone with use becomes dull for two reasons, grime and sweat from your hands and also to a lesser extent metallurgical changes caused by vibration which happens fairly quickly, both reduce the ability for the strings to produce the higher harmonic overtones we associate with bright and spangly. If your strings are old and you really can’t afford new, boiling them in a pan of water for 10 minutes can get them back to a reasonable clarity.
You mentioned the frequency response graphs of guitar cabs and it got me thinking: if cabs are just complex EQs, why not make customizable cab plugins where you can edit the freq spectrum of the thing as you do with an EQ? I mean, there are already ones where you can move a virtual mic, but let's face it - there are a lot of bedroom musicians who never worked with a physical cab in their lives XD
I guess you're describing raw IRs, where just the IR is taken from the speaker/cab and you need to tweak it (EQ it) to work in your mix, the same you'd do with a physical speaker/cab 😄
As opposed to the most frequent «produced» IRs, plug and play, there you go... Not so tweakable, though.
First off, I need to thank you Glenn for the free IR - it is really good. I've started using it exclusively; I use the first one for rhythm and pump it up a little brighter, and the 57 one I use for leads and it makes the leads stand out just right as opposed to rhythm for my sound.
Probably didn't mean them to be used like that, but it works great for my rig, which is a Boss GX-100 actually. I have great Marshalls etc tube amps at my disposal and a huge number of modelers, plugins and hardware, AxeFX, Neural, Amplitube 5, you name it, but I find the Boss the best for sculpting my own sound anyhow, it just has so good routing, EQ etc options and IR load possible - and I've used those Bosses since GT6, only previously had to use external IR loaders or cabinet emulators for my sound.
And concerning this video - great tips! For me, I've used all these for ages, but then again I've been a tone chaser for about as long as you have so I've just already learned all this the hard way.
Especially for modelers understanding how to EQ your sound, and using different IRs is pivotal. To get a really great sound out of my Boss I use up to five EQs in the chain in different places, and those EQ settings can be rather contradictory between them too.
My starting point is to hi/lo pass my guitar at 160 and 6500hz, and after that I'll both boost and cut more for sculpting. For instance often it's best to create a different EQ slope by having a hard cut at 6500 BUT boost hard at 12,000 regardless. And then have individual dips here and there, or boosted frequencies.
But by far the most important tip, IMO, is to always adjust your sounds along with the mix, or even some similar music.
I always adjust my basic sounds while playing over various RUclips tracks. That gives me a great understanding how will it work in a mix later on.
With the band, I make note of what kind of EQ or other changes I make - or the soundman of a venue - makes for my guitar at the DESK - and see if I can add those changes in some extent straight to my own settings.
As a result, most of the time when I give an XLR line to the soundman for putting it to PA and FOH, and in a while ask how does that work, they often say "I didn't have to do anything to it, it's great" and then I know I've succeeded.
I would also add one tip of my own: stop adjusting your tone constantly, stop chasing the tone on a daily basis and for chrissake stop buying new gear to chase it. Just use or decide what to use, sculpt your tone, and then just fucking use it, and only make small changes when absolutely necessary and when you have felt for weeks that you need to change it somehow.
Because guitars sound different in your ears every day. You can dial in the perfect tone and a few days later it sounds like absolute crap to you anyway. DO NOT TRUST YOUR EARS when that happens. Wait for a few days and see - it might sound great again another day without any change. Take your time and don't do changes too quickly but build your sound slowly enough that the daily changes in how your ears hear today won't throw you off the path.
I watch another home studio RUclips channel as well as Spectre sound. He always preaches GIRATS... get it right at the source. Strings, performance, etc. You can't mix out crap. The track needs to be solid. Great video today Glenn. Cool stuff to learn and build on.
I remember working with a metal band in the studio (it was a one day deal, get a single song recorded, mixed and sent off for mastering on the day) and the guitarist was ADAMANT he dialled in his tone. He'd just rolled the treble almost entirely off and boosted the mids and bass to like 9 o'clock and wouldn't listen at all when I told him we'd need to change the tone for it to sit in the mix because "I've worked forever on my tone, I want it exactly perfect on the record." So I let him have his way, recorded the guitars how he wanted them and LO AND BEHOLD the mix sounded muddy and messy until I did some SIGNIFICANT EQing on the guitars taking up a bunch of valuable studio time that could've been avoided if he'd just let me dial in the tone to suit the song.
Guys, please, if the engineer tells you that you need to change your tone, just listen to them. It'll probably save you time and money in the long run.
So... If making the guitar and bass fit together and not take up the same sonic space is how you get good tones, how would you get a good bass tone? What if you wanted your metal sound to revolve a little more around bass? I don't know much about bass tone period, but if you're not cranking the gain the same way you are on the guitar, do tonewood and pickups matter? I'd love to see a series dive into that
High and Low Pass your instruments kids! It will rock your world!
Super new to playing threw my lap top. Reaper, bunch of ir,amp plugins and effects. Im doing 120-7k. I find the peakes. Last test (my 1st test) I did 2db cuts at 200,1k and like 3k. It's drop c active pups new strings lol .I got tdr Nova for Eq and other simple 3-7-10 bands..I wanna work on main tone right?
Yes Glenn more talk about tonewoods
Geez, in your element much? You guys were in the zone. How about that! You're good. I'm really happy with this channel. I'll be as good and happy as I'll ever be watching things as intelligible as this on RUclips. BTW, no clue what you said. Just saw the universe expanding lol.
I bet one of the first things they will say is to get the guitar out of the way of the low end
(Edit: 2:15 Damn. I am clairvoyant)
YES GLENN, BRING THE WOODS!! 😁
I totally agree with Scott. I'm a fuckin nerd, play dad rock and bluesy shit. But I love my (diy, not at all expensive) 'relic' guitar for exactly that reason. I feel completely free from anxiety when playing it due to the pain. On his second point about new strings getting a better performance. Consider this, why does a string get dead? Well it collects gunk, corrosion etc. But what else does that do? Adds mass, which lowers the fundamental frequency per a given unit of tension. So you will have to tune a string tighter in order to be in tune with dead strings! This means it will necessarily be harder to play.
Some of these principles are the reason why a live band's sound can be huge. They're tight AF. That would be a cool experiment, measuring tightness to the micro seconds and observing where the line is; the tipping point; the point where a lack of cohesiveness fractures the holistic integrity of the music thereby making the product a sum of its parts rather than something bigger than the sum of its parts.. Kinda nerdy, but an interesting metric off of the floor.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Primus. I heard Ler say he wasn't fond of the early mixing because they had less tools and knowledge. They have a sound all they're own...
Leaving room for the bass is great advice, not just for the studio but live, too. Especially if you have 2-3 guitars in the band. Nobody needs to be playing whole barre chords. Skynrd's guitarists would often break up one chord between 2 players while the lead did his thing.
I guess it's also why I never got the point of a 7 & 8 string if you're going to get into the bass's sonic space a lot.
This is super useful, even though I dont record or play metal. Seeing how these extreme cases get figured out goes a long way.
I highly anticipated this video! Thank you!
I figured this out ages ago after I saw someone complain that the guitar tone on Blizzard of Oz sucks. If you listen to an isolated guitar track yes it does sound pretty thin and weak. Listen to it as a whole and you see that it was done so it doesn't overlap with the bass.
It’s super awesome to see Scott on this wonderful channel! Scott is an amazing sound engineer I really love watching videos and learning from him on his Chernobyl Studios! And he has really amazing courses! Guitar Mastery is one of them! Just in 1 course Scott opened my eyes how to create good guitar tone with plugins! I’ve been looking for the info like this for so long! Thank you so much Scott for everything you do! 😀👍🔥🔥🔥
what i'm getting nowadays is that i can get away with a little bit of scoop so that lead parts and vocals can get through without frequency clashing on the midrange with the rhythm guitars.
Thank you guys for this video it's really helped me get more colors out of my tones but keep them from getting fizzy
Glenn I know this is off topic, but I'm an amateur audio engineer who dabbles in the audiophile hobby. I have recently seen alot of mixing engineers using Sennheiser headphones. I was wondering if you could ever do a video about what kind of benifits you get and how you ended up using open back headphones for your setups. It would be great to get an actual mixing engineer's take on the subject since there's not alot of feedback from actual engineers on mid-high end headphones as opposed to people who speculate on how things 'should' sound like when they purchase a new piece of gear.
Sup guys, I'm new to playing with my laptop. So I'm ready to learn ..
That first Woods album was really good.
Just to clarify: You can absolutely record your guitar with all the frequencies you want, suffices to cut/EQ the low-end when you're actually mixing.
Found this kinda confusing with the title "dial in your tone for recording". As long as you're aware of the upcoming cut/EQ and don't only djent around on the low-end you can enjoy your full tone while recording without any issues. Guess it's a question of your workflow.
A shining example of that first point Scott made is ‘Bleed’ by Meshuggah, that bass tone is fucking massive and you don’t realize it until you hear how thin and Tinny the guitars sound on their own
Definitely talk more about the Woods of Ypres sessions with Scott.
Yes, fucking yes, we need to hear more about Woods!
I think a video on this would be cool. Like from start to finish. Cleans and heavy. Also with bass etc.
Most people want to know because they use digital stuff. Most things out there base off of amps and real drums and the process for ez drummer 3 and helix for example is quite different.
Iv got an alright sound going but always feel there’s something that is missing
Be cool to see it done really basic
Excellent tips thanks guys
But then you have perhaps the greatest mixer of all-time Chris Lord-Alge who says it is "the biggest mistake engineers make" to slice up the EQ spectrum for the guitar and bass. He prefers to have the bass, the guitar and snare go all the way into the lows and rarely high passes them. He says there's "plenty of room for everything." He said this on a Waves mix tutorial. So there are different opinions and different approaches that work.
Great timing! I will be doing that this week!
really really learned so much from this one, thank you!
Like 101 for Lefty fun fun fun!
My practice tone is bass at 3 o’clock mid and treble at 9 o’clock, for recording bass is 9 o’clock mid at 1-1:30 and treble just enough above noon to get the sizzle without fissile.
What i always remember what a nightmare it is sometimes, when you buy new pedals and have no clue how it Operate cause you havent the time yet to play with it. I had a ehx good vibes last christmas as a present and still fight with it cause of the immense basspulse. So know your gear 😅
It's the old adage "You can't polish a turd". I think that's the sort of principle here. That and understanding the guitar lives in the mid range. It's so tempting to just want to make it sound nice in solo but context is king with the mix.
"In the Discovery Channel series MythBusters episode "End with a Bang" (Episode 113), which first aired on November 12, 2008, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman investigated the truth behind everyday sayings. They used the dorodango technique to create dung spheres in order to bust the myth that one "can't polish a turd". Using a glossmeter, they measured gloss levels substantially higher than the value of 70 gloss units, which is considered "high gloss". Savage's 106-gloss unit dorodango used an ostrich's feces, while Hyneman's 183-gloss unit specimen used a lion's feces. They therefore deemed the myth "busted""
So apparently, you can polish a turd, but you still can't make a good mix from bad tracks.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 😂
I spent a lot of time doing the "dial in the guitar with the bass and drums playing" because of how I tend to do line and sound checks. Once I get the gear in place and I have mics on what needs mics on it, I just tell the band to "play", and I just start dialing it in. First drums, then bass, then guitar(s), then keys(if applicable) and then vocals. I really try to avoid the solo function unless I'm having problems with something or just to sanity check. I once had to deal with this one band that decided to have 4 7-string guitars, all heavily detuned and wondered why y they usually sounded like crap, and why their mix sounded good through my board. I just engaged the high pass and rolled all that sludge out, leaving room for bass. Building the guitar sound in the mix is so much easier than trying to make that solo'd signal fix in there right.
The tip about shaping your gutar tone after you've got your drums and bass tracks down also works for live tones. I mean, I've got a pedal that loads IRs and has amp simulation, Cube Baby, and I've been tweaking it for live use with some tracks loaded on Reaper and I've been getting some really nice results, especially with that free IR Glenn's released. I learned the hard way during a gig. I thought I had a massive tone but after checking the recordings of that gig turns out my guitar sounded like a toy hah
I know this isn’t metal but D Boon from the minutemen is a master of the first tip. No mids, no bass, all treble. The presence of his tone along with Mike watt on bass makes some of the loudest music I’ve ever heard even though by itself his guitar is a little thin and trebly
Actual Belgian asking for more Woods of Ypres content. Thank you Scott. Feels like I had the same question 7 years ago 🤣
Off the back of the improved performance and feel of new strings I'd add to polish your frets when you change strings. Smooth frets feel way better on bends and stuff and those little things matter when you're doing the performance that's gonna be kept forever on your record.
Funnily enough, as a guitarist when I listen to music, the first thing I listen for are the drums. I'm a sucker for what I call the "gunshot" snare. Danny Carey's snare tone in Parabola, the snare in Switchfoot's Lonely Nation, some of Dave Grohl's Nirvana snare tones. I also carefully listen to the levels of the cymbals.
I worked in a couple of professional recording studios and sat in on mix sessions with some legendary engineers. Whenever they would solo the bass guitar I couldn't beleive how shitty it would sound. However when it was in the mix it sounded great. I never heard a bass track that sounded great by itself, ever.
Can we have a similar one for bass? I think most of the time it's just duplicate the DI, set one for lows, one for highs, scoop mids, HPF LPF, compress, done. But I'd bet it is not that simple.
Amazing advice at 19:00
Rabea Massad and John Petrucci had a little video where they each strummed a single power chord. The tone of Rabeas chord... Oh my. That is a glorious thing.
I only look stuff up if I can’t figure it out on my own!! Love the challenge!! That’s part of what’s fun !!
so glad that this video reinforced what i’ve taught myself
The V30 IR's are actually really good. I'm doing some updated demos for my next project and they work great. I wanted a kinda fat and saturated low to mid gain sound for some single coil neck position riff and chordy type rock stuff, so I pulled up the Marshall head in Ampire (comes with Studio One, not amazing), put an overdrive in front of it, loaded up both IR's and it's just what I wanted. Of course, I'll be using a real amp for the actual songs, but this made a good goal to shoot for. Haven't tried them on a high gain thing yet but I imagine they work just as well.
I have what I think is an amazing guitar amp, I don't have room for 6. It's a Fryette/VHT 100 CLX Pitbull. That said, I am going to use guitar plugins as often as possible because I can get so much more work done. I A/B the amp vs a plugin in about 2010, maybe a little before. It sounded the same. I was shocked. I was just going for a JCM800 tone at the time. The only disadvantage I see going forward, is the lack of natural harmonic feedback. I can fix that by just having a practice amp dialed in as close to the sound I'm looking for and the harmonic feedback will sound natural in the plugin, I hope, I haven't tried it yet. If I had a fully equipped studio and could afford to keep it well heated in our harsh winters, I would mostly record real guitar amps. If I could afford a fully equipped studio, having 6 or 10 amps would give the long list of amps I require that are now available in plugins. I am old school, but someday, tube will no longer be made and my amp will end up in a junk pile or in a museum. I'm here reading the comments, so I'm obviously trying to learn from the whole community. Rock On!
Wish i had this info 20 years ago
The new obituary album dounds great. Engineered well. Considering obituary has a mostly muddy tone, the new album has a lot more clarity.
my approach is less bass more mids but not too much, I think it's been working fine but this is so nice, thanks for doing this!
I was struggling with a muddy mix and high/lo pass filters on the guitar saved my mix!
25 minutes that can be summarized in "put low/hi cuts and buy our stuff and our useless courses"
25:35 actually. Details are important.
Mr. Glenn, everyone talks about using HPF and LPF to size the guitar sound especially to fit it in with the bass. But nobody talks about guitar "mids" and how they affect the bass when you are trying to get the "top" tone of the bass to stand out a la iron maiden, etc. Especially now that small speakers are the norm, I wonder if if you want to hear bass, you have to boost the treble.
Scott's courses are killer. I recommend them to anyone.
Awesome video and advice, much appreciated 🤙
I dont see the link for the IR in the description? Awesome video Glenn!
Great video Glenn!
Lmaooo just got a yt ad asking me if I’m a jazz expert after clicking on this vid. Can’t help myself but stir shit up for lols.