Help with tracking guitars...
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Posted on Mar 29, 2012 08:39 am
keevhren
Member Since: Aug 05, 2004
Hey!
I've been recording a friends band for the last week and we're finally onto guitars after tracking drums. Here is a sample of the tracks I'm working with:
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/drum-sample[/SOUNDCLOUD]
We took our time, I think I got some pretty decent raw sounds, and have beat detectived everything a bit to make it nice and tight. The above sample has no plugins/processing what so ever on it. I'll eventually drop in some samples to help beef things up a bit, but overall its a good start in my opinion.
Yesterday we got set up to do guitars and got a tone we thought was pretty good for rhythm but I'm not feeling it this morning. I went kind of overboard with setup, so am currently running the following:
JCM 2000 (Guitar players head) into a marshall 4x12. Mics are (one per cone)... 57, AKG 451B, SM7B, and Audix I5. I'm also running a feed off of a Hughes and Kettner Red Box.
Here are all 5 sources:
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/guitar-1-57-07-12-02[/SOUNDCLOUD]
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/guitar-1-451-07-12-02[/SOUNDCLOUD]
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/guitar-1-sm7b-07-12-02[/SOUNDCLOUD]
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/guitar-1-audix-i5-07-12-02[/SOUNDCLOUD]
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/guitar-1-red-box-07-13-02[/SOUNDCLOUD]
The type of band/style is a tight punk/hardcore style, kind of in the veins of A Wilhelm Scream/Strike Anywhere/Propagandhi. I've tried numerous quick blends of Individual mics but still am not happy with one. The phase for all 5 sources is pretty dead on, and regardless, I will be aligning them all to be spot on once we have the finished product in hand. I'm not mixing this project, so wanted to give whomever the mix engineer is a good amount of choices for tones and also obviously a good source to work with.
Each mic is on a separate cone, at the 'sweet spot' where the cone meets the rest of the speaker.
Also for the amp settings, its at:
Bass - 5
Middle - 3
Treble - 7
Vol - 3
Gain - 1
On the Lead Crunch channel of the JCM 2000 TSL. I just feel like its lacking that power/beef behind it but can't seem to get it while futzing with the amp settings. We're planning on at least doubling up on rhythm parts, potentially quad tracking (based on articles I've read) so I'm under the assumption that less gain is a good thing, since the more stacks of it there are the less I'll need on each individual take.
Thoughts?
Any help would be much appreciated as always!
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Mar 29, 2012 01:42 pm As far as beef, guitars almost always will sound weak soloed but great in the mix. It's all about balance, guitars will usually only need a solid mid section cuz the highs will usually be occupied by the cymbals/vox and the lows will be bass/kick.
My initial reaction was that there was not enough gain and when the fast palm muting hits it sounds silly but if you're quad tracking you're right about not needing a whole lot of gain. Although I personally would bump up the gain a tiddly bit.
Btw I know the post is about guitars but your drums sound really solid. Good job!
