mastering guitarist question

[Mak Eightman]

This is the example of sound:

I don't understand how did they do that: LOUD, CLEAR, NOT over-compressed. You still can hear each instrument, but rhythm guitars sounds close and heave. My main question is: What did they do to rhythms guitar? Why the are so loud BUT not causing any issues? EQ'ing? WHAT?

Anyone know?

[SonicThHedgog]

This is the example of sound:

I don't understand how did they do that: LOUD, CLEAR, NOT over-compressed. You still can hear each instrument, but rhythm guitars sounds close and heave. My main question is: What did they do to rhythms guitar? Why the are so loud BUT not causing any issues? EQ'ing? WHAT?

Anyone know?

like this?

http://soundcloud.com/aires/jun-sa1-my-cover

or

http://soundcloud.com/aires/deep-mono at 2:48

easy, take the song and go like this

or dont mix hot and dubble take 3 times, either way should work. (I would do option one)

[Mak Eightman]

like this?

http://soundcloud.com/aires/jun-sa1-my-cover

Yup. Something like this. What did you used for this?

[SonicThHedgog]

Yup. Something like this. What did you used for this?

want to see my mixer? I think I posted a thread about getting his tone, all i did was make sure i did not mix hot, and limit the master track and increase the gain on the limiting compressor.

heres the thread, i even gave away the ableton file http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35166

not the best sound cause i did not use enough gain on my sound card XD

[Frederic Petitpas]

[........]

[Frederic Petitpas]

[........]

[Mak Eightman]

...???????

Forget about it..

Long time has pass since I made this thread. And now I understood how to work with loud rhythms. All you need is proper freqs cut/boost for each instrument. So EQ is your best friend. Plus "presence", should it be amp's knob or your mic position.

[Nabeel Ansari]

What is to mix hot ?

Mixing hot is basically your mid high to high frequencies are loud (sizzlin).

[Frederic Petitpas]

Thanks !

[GarretGraves]

I have a related question.

Is there any other way to make the guitar more wider other than recording two identicle rhythms on either speaker? I know it's been asked before but I cant find the thread it was on.

I listen to a lot of Dream Theater and John Petrucci played some of the craziest riffs i've ever heard him play (IE, "Lost Not Forgotten" off their A Dramatic Turn of Events CD) and the guitar sounded so solid and coming through both speakers and sounded as if one guitar was recorded only once. Is there some other trick to it or is JP just that awesome as to play the same riff in the exact same way twice?

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I have a related question.

Is there any other way to make the guitar more wider other than recording two identicle rhythms on either speaker? I know it's been asked before but I cant find the thread it was on.

I listen to a lot of Dream Theater and John Petrucci played some of the craziest riffs i've ever heard him play (IE, "Lost Not Forgotten" off their A Dramatic Turn of Events CD) and the guitar sounded so solid and coming through both speakers and sounded as if one guitar was recorded only once. Is there some other trick to it or is JP just that awesome as to play the same riff in the exact same way twice?

Many metal bands will layer guitars up to 4 times. Any more and it can get nasty.

However, differences in tone can sometimes give a bit of a wider tone I find. So perhaps try using different guitars and amps or settings if possible.

I'm usually satisfied with double tracking using the same tone though

[Frederic Petitpas]

Well you can have a third guitar somewhere near the middle. JP plays stereo live and uses a delay between the 2 sides as well as differant and some subtle modulations (chorus, additional delay, EQs..). A delay separating 2 speakers playing a mono track will make it wide, just don't abuse the lenght (keep it below 20ms).

In the studio, it's probably quad-tracked with minor changes between the takes (pick-ups, light equing).

edit: well Outlaw, you were faster than me ;P but I'd add... JP uses a MESA Mark V, it's badass.

[SnappleMan]

7-10ms is the ideal DOUBLE delay effect for guitars, I think.

[GarretGraves]

7-10ms is the ideal DOUBLE delay effect for guitars, I think.

Pro Tools 10 has a Stereo Width plug-in by AiR.

Originally, I made two stereo audio tracks. 2 mics per track. (The two I use are the SM57 and the Sennheiser 421 and seperate 12" cones angled off axis in particular spots) I recorded 2 of the same riff(s) on each track and then pan each mic SEPERATELY on each track left and right. I try (sometimes too hard) to be like John Petrucci so I try to play some of the craziest shit possible with odd meters and fast paced picking. It's really REALLY hard to do this twice in the same manner. Take after take after take and patching up regions that stray off the mark just enough to be noticeable.

Experimenting with the Stereo Width plug-in, I've managed to get JUST SHY of the same effect with just the one take. I muted one of the stereo tracks and made the other one split into mono and used the plug-in on EACH of the mono tracks and did some tweaking. It uses delay like you guys mentioned and it'll only use delay up to 8ms. ONLY 8! It aint too bad either. Comparing the the song I mentioned before (Lost not Forgotten by Dream Theater) the stereo "spread" if you will is not far off at all.

[Aster]

I have a related question.

Is there any other way to make the guitar more wider other than recording two identicle rhythms on either speaker? I know it's been asked before but I cant find the thread it was on.

I listen to a lot of Dream Theater and John Petrucci played some of the craziest riffs i've ever heard him play (IE, "Lost Not Forgotten" off their A Dramatic Turn of Events CD) and the guitar sounded so solid and coming through both speakers and sounded as if one guitar was recorded only once. Is there some other trick to it or is JP just that awesome as to play the same riff in the exact same way twice?

Post production. It's mega tough to get fast riffs and solos double tracked perfectly so in the studio, the doubled stems are cut and repositioned so the timing is perfect.

I've seen sometimes that a doubled stem is also stretched to reduce discrepancy of note duration too.

I used this method of post production recently on a track where the chords transcribed proved to be almost impossible to hold with one hand. I had to play them separately and then cut them in place but you can't tell if you do it right.

Look at the two purple tracks (the distortion tracks)

They look almost identical but look close and you'll see they're different recordings double tracked and time adjusted by slicing and repositioning to get perfect timing.

This tiny difference of retiming kicks up the production quality a lot as the notes phase against each other

To get the wider sound I doubled both the left and right track and used two separate patches for each side. One patch was quite distorted and the other quite clean and spanky.

I usually use a combo of mud and clean to get a both a distorted but still very defined sound as it always seems to work better than any single patch I can come up with

You can hear how this double/double tracked rhythm sounds here:

http://soundcloud.com/asterlius/chords-example

That's about as wide a sound I can get before overloading with tracks but I hope this helped

[Sixto]

Good stuff here.

[GarretGraves]

Post production. It's mega tough to get fast riffs and solos double tracked perfectly so in the studio, the doubled stems are cut and repositioned so the timing is perfect.

I've seen sometimes that a doubled stem is also stretched to reduce discrepancy of note duration too.

I used this method of post production recently on a track where the chords transcribed proved to be almost impossible to hold with one hand. I had to play them separately and then cut them in place but you can't tell if you do it right.

Look at the two purple tracks (the distortion tracks)

They look almost identical but look close and you'll see they're different recordings double tracked and time adjusted by slicing and repositioning to get perfect timing.

This tiny difference of retiming kicks up the production quality a lot as the notes phase against each other

To get the wider sound I doubled both the left and right track and used two separate patches for each side. One patch was quite distorted and the other quite clean and spanky.

I usually use a combo of mud and clean to get a both a distorted but still very defined sound as it always seems to work better than any single patch I can come up with

You can hear how this double/double tracked rhythm sounds here:

http://soundcloud.com/asterlius/chords-example

That's about as wide a sound I can get before overloading with tracks but I hope this helped

So you sliced and repositioned for every out-of-phase part? Sounds tedious but the sound is pretty solid. Did you use elastic audio at all?

[Aster]

So you sliced and repositioned for every out-of-phase part? Sounds tedious but the sound is pretty solid. Did you use elastic audio at all?

Yeah, I repositioned all the chords from one track to match the other.

Elastic audio screws with the dynamics. Try to never stretch or shrink the length of a guitar note/chord. You can get away with it subtly but there was one track I listened to here recently where it was very obvious that the part was sped up substantially then repositioned elastically, it seemed like he didn't even bother learning the timing at any speed. I wont publicly say which track but if you're interested for reference then pm me.

If you must speed up a guitar part. Play against a metronome and get the timing as good as possible with solid and consistent dynamics. Try to consciously decrease the dead quiet time between notes and shrink the whole track as one equal part.

If you get the guitar part at 80% speed+ then you're toastieeee.

Some of the best work I've ever heard here has parts that you can faintly tell were elasticated too much.

Don't let your ego get in the way over this touchy subject, I've seen others use these post production techniques to record things that are well within their ability to play organically but wanted to have at a quality level equal to what can be achieved with post production. For some people, 99% is the same as 50%.

This speeding up lark happens all the time in pro recordings. Listen to some dragonforce then watch any herman li lesson, I guarantee he will play like crap with the worst consistency imaginable. I've seen periphery post edit stems and they are hardcore pipe hitting guitar players.

[GarretGraves]

Yeah, I repositioned all the chords from one track to match the other.

Elastic audio screws with the dynamics. Try to never stretch or shrink the length of a guitar note/chord. You can get away with it subtly but there was one track I listened to here recently where it was very obvious that the part was sped up substantially then repositioned elastically, it seemed like he didn't even bother learning the timing at any speed. I wont publicly say which track but if you're interested for reference then pm me.

If you must speed up a guitar part. Play against a metronome and get the timing as good as possible with solid and consistent dynamics. Try to consciously decrease the dead quiet time between notes and shrink the whole track as one equal part.

Seems like a great technique for chords and such. But it seems a bit tough to use for riffs involving fast-picking. I'm still going back and doing takes to get those to match. It's funny cause u figure if u play it exactly the same way u did before it should be on the mark. Especially after playing with a metronome.

Actually, what I've discovered is if you record the left side to the metronome then mute the left side and then record the right side to the metronome, you'll get better results. You might still have to redo a part or two but you'll be doing less of it. I do this because I find that the left side distracts me while I record the right. Probably because I'm trying to follow the left guitar while recording the right. That seems to not work as expected.