Looking for some panning tips and more on heavy guitar tracks - metal band
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Posted on Apr 30, 2010 10:14 am
RockWood610
John
Member Since: May 06, 2007
Hey guys. Sorry if this message looks really long without paragraph spaces. I am using my mobile browser on my celly.
I am currently recording a local metal band. They are done tracking drums and are in the guitar tracking process. They are in full support of the digital Line6 amp simulation, so I recorded their tracks 100% clean and will be adding the line6 gearbox plugin to the tracks later.
They have 2 guitar players, and are each recording their tracks twice. So each player has 2 tracks a piece for a total of 4 guitar tracks. All unprocessed and I can change the tone on the fly via my Line 6 UX8/plugins.
I have found that hard panning the tracks 70% or more to the left and right sounds pretty cool. But thats only using 1 track of each player. I had them track 2 tracks each in case there was some advantages or special mixing tricks I could do. So does anyone have any panning tips for these 4 guitar tracks or any other tips or advanatges for recording 4 total tracks? Thanks in advance!
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Apr 30, 2010 11:40 am I don't have much experience here. But i think the standard is somewhere in the rhelm of 80r 80l 30r 30l. And besides that just experiment with what sounds cool until someone else chimes in (: i will say just from listening habits, different techniques in the bands song writing means different panning techniques as well. Some stuff blends the 2 guitars together mostly, entwined together as "one part". some stuff has the 2 guitars as obviously 2 distinctly seperate parts. And sometimes it seems like the guitars have distinct qualities of separation but go back and forth threwout the section. I think its not so much a "standard procedure" as it is looking at what the effect the band is looking to get out of it. If its more of a "capturing the live energy" recording vs a "larger than life" recording. But i'm not experienced enough to give you any starting numbers besides the 80r/l 30r/l. Just experiment and track(: have fun!
Apr 30, 2010 12:19 pm Thanks Fragile. I was looking for a specific 'proper procedure" if you will, but just some different techniques that maybe applied.
I was going with 80% left and right for the most part. Just using the 1 guitar track from each player. And I loved what came out, and they seemed ok with it. I think they are looking for the WOW factor that you get with a final mix though, so they won't show me a WOW expression until then.
I am not sure if I should even use their second tracks at all or not. This is the first time I have had a session with 2 guitar players in it. I have only a few projects under my belt at the moment...
Thanks for the reply though. If you get a chance, here is a VERY ROUGH of what I have on one of their tunes.
www.speilsplashstudios.bu...floorboards.mp3
Like I said, we are using Line 6 simulation and the tone I put on for just this rough was the same tone. The first guitar player will be using this tone for his track, but the second guitar player will be using a more tweeked/different tone. But I did an 80/80 pan on the guitars. There will of course be a spot here and there where I put in a pan envelope for different parts at their request, but this is the bulk of the idea.
Apr 30, 2010 01:08 pm Hmm. Well, honestly when it comes to tracking other people, i always try and get two decent takes of even stuff i don't plan on doubling, just to have them in case i notice something wrong later on. (i understand depending on a performers attitude/ ability to play cleanly that can't always happen).
So ya, I think you'd really benefit from having them do a second take on it and then mixing the doubles in to taste.
Also, on the guitar tone, i'd recommend using a little lower gain setting. It sounds..."cheap" to be honest. Especially the one on the right (and its more noticable when its the only thing playing. maybe automate the gain?) There are other things you can do to boost the growl of the guitars with keeping the gain low. Getting a second take would help, throwing the boost pedal on. And mucking around with the EQ (which ik this is just a rough take of course). But ya, sorry for blabbing on and on. i do this a lot haha. I guess i could have just left it at "imo turn down the gain a bit."
Nice band though. Night and day difference between this and the last metal project you worked with! i dig the harmonies. One last complaint. The drums, are they live tracked? Can you quantize them somehow? the snare and toms seem a little too off time to me in a few parts. I only listened twice while i wrote this, but there were definitely a few parts that need cleaned up time wise.
Hope this helps! and i hope i'm not being too picky! this is all just kind of "first impression" stuff. I didn't REALLY dig in and listen to this a few times, but i hope my suggestions help somehow!
CptTrippsCzar of Turd PolishMember
Since: Jun 20, 2006
Apr 30, 2010 03:23 pm I would definitely use the doubled tracks if they are tight with each other. For me, with metal, I find it hard to get wow factor without doubling guitars.
I like to pan L100 L80 for one guitar and R80 R100 for the other.
If you like your OH's wider (100L 100R) then you could switch to an 80L 60L 60R 80R.
Either way will achieve that "wall of sound" much better than a single tracked guitar.
I personally like to pan things as they would be on a stage, beings guitar amps are always on the sides of the kit, that is why I pan my guitars wider then OH's.
Now, if there is no singing and one riff is chunky while another is a melody, I will then pan the chunky one L/R and center the melody. If there is singing I don't bring a guitar to the center.
This is also something that can works on doubled vox, center the main verses and pan them out a little on the chorus.
I will take a listen to this once I get home.
Dematrixhttp://www.reverbnation.com/2ndgMember
Since: Nov 27, 2007
Apr 30, 2010 09:46 pm i use fattening also.
do this by panning as mentioned above and then set up 2 FX channal tracks with a short delay say 20 to 22ms
for eg,
2 guitars 80 left and right and 2 guitars 30 left and right.
set up 2 fx channel tracks with a short delay panned roughly 60 "left" and then the same for second 60 "right".
once they are set up, use your sends on your guitar tracks to bring in a touch of the delay channel.
use the delay(fx channels) that are opposite to the guitar track you are using so you get a wide spread.
eg, guitar left 80, you need to use the sends on that channel to bring in fx channel right 60. and so on.
i usually then go for the guitar right 30 and bring in the left 60 fx channel track.
Dematrixhttp://www.reverbnation.com/2ndgMember
Since: Nov 27, 2007
Apr 30, 2010 09:50 pm you will need to eq the delay though so it hangs around up top of the freq spectrum so you dont muddy up the stereo field so much.
so take out quite a bit of the bass and mid freq with a high pass.
CptTrippsCzar of Turd PolishMember
Since: Jun 20, 2006
Apr 30, 2010 10:10 pm I run a single fx channel with similar delay sometimes, never thought of doubling and panning the fx channels.
Will have to give that a try.
May 01, 2010 04:08 pm Awesome guys! Thanks again for all the advice. I'll play around with all these ideas and see what I can come up with.
Fragile, as for the drums, I'm not sure what you mean by 'live tracked'. If you mean tracked as in he played with everyone else, then no. He laid most his tracks down to just a click track, and a few songs had a rough guitar track going with him.
Tripps, you said for panning you like to pan L100 L80 for one guitar and R80 R100 for the other. Do you mean you BOTH tracks recorded by guitar player 1 and pan them 100 and 80? Or do you take one track from player 1 and one track from player 2 and pan them 100/80? Sorry if that sounds like a studid question, but I read over these kinda fast haha.
I two try to get the 'feel of the stage' type of sound when I mix. I don't do much with my drumm panning, as there are some preset kits on my trigger programs. I'll take a gander at what they are set to and see about playing with the OHs some more.
Deon, you had mentioned your fattening tricks before in another post. I'll def. give all of this a try and see what the guys think. After all, there is no 'right' way to do everything. Only if there was.... haha life would be a lot easier.
CptTrippsCzar of Turd PolishMember
Since: Jun 20, 2006
May 02, 2010 03:33 pm Correct, both tracks panned to one side but a little apart from each other to make it thicker.
May 08, 2010 10:27 am Thanks for the tips guys. They ran into a snag with a drum part being rushed or something, and there is a fill they can't get recorded right. They are going to get a hold of me and descuss what they want to do as far as fixing it. Once they figure it out and we can the green light on continuing, I'll have more of the stuff read to go.
When I get to the mixing phase for the guitars, I'll post some samples and see if I am on a good track if you guys would do the honros of checking them out for me.
