Home » R/E/P » Whatever Works » BIG electric guitar sound!
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #146927 is a reply to message #146922 ] |
Tue, 11 April 2006 12:53   |
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AKG C414 + MD421 close micing and 2x AKG 451e (room.. try this.. think of the amp as a drumkit and mike it like that;)) worked well on my last session.. but 4 tracks for one guitar!!
I like biamping.. just split the signal at the source.. go into 2 amps.. one amp for the balls and the fizzle the other for the mids.. so amp one would be a mesa something.. second amp marshall.. then to the cabs.. mic both.. thats cool..
but lots of troubles..
and if the arrangments are good.. the sound automaticly get bigger
cheers
"BORN A ROCKER, DIE A ROCKER"
George Necola
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #146965 is a reply to message #146941 ] |
Tue, 11 April 2006 14:36 |
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nono.. sorry...
everything is in the player.. if you have a good player with experience he has "good"(whatever that is) gear and knows how to play..
mixing? roll off some bass on the guitars, maybe add delay/verb (depends.. sorry..), expand/compress a bit?? depends..
Ross Hoghart told us to highcut elec. guitars.. works great! I highcut them now at 10khz.. maybe 12.. the other stuff is useless..
thanx ross!
cheers
"BORN A ROCKER, DIE A ROCKER"
George Necola
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #147008 is a reply to message #146893 ] |
Tue, 11 April 2006 16:43 |
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 djui5
Messages: 1511
Registered: May 2004
Location: Phoenix, Arizona |
Platinum Member |
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It's a lot of things, but most importainly it's the blend of guitars and bass in the arrangement.
If you listen closely to your fav guitar sounds, the guitars aren't really that big on their own, but when played with the bass.....
Also, it helps to have a good player, with an in tune guitar, with a well maintained head and cab, and then you can throw up a couple of mic's, blend them properly without phase problems (which cause comb filtering/cancellation of freq's that make your guitars not huge), then mix them well and your done.
Morale of the day? Stop looking at what you're hearing.
yngve hoeyland 07'
Randy Wright
Mix Engineer
Mesa, Arizona
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #147012 is a reply to message #146893 ] |
Tue, 11 April 2006 16:57 |
bushwick
Messages: 602
Registered: January 2005
Location: brooklyn, ny |
Gold Member |
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I had a terrific time last week tracking a single guitar that I wanted to be large in size. A modded marshall 50 watt on a 4-12 loaded with 15 watt bulldogs. SG, Big Muff, some grit from the amp but full power from the amp. R121 on the speaker two coles moved pretty far from the amp and off-axis without too much thought for placement. Holy Balls! By the way, 15 watt bulldogs are far and away my favorite speaker for crunch, certainly for 12's. I have a 4-12 and two 2-12's loaded with them and they are just amazing. They are comparably brighter and louder than greenbacks but when you figure out how to work the combinations, man oh man.
Short of that, a small amp usually yields a bigger sound in my book than a large one. Think champ with a 5AR4, or a slivertone 1482, or a pro junior (seriously). Royers, 409's, 57's, whatever. Double track a part with two little amps like those that are crunched and voila, a great place to start for big guitar sounds.
j
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #147072 is a reply to message #146893 ] |
Tue, 11 April 2006 22:07 |
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after watching the making of metallica's black album i tried tripling the guitars (with an appropriate client), getting the guitarist to play the additional tracks as tight as possible with the original. the original guitar was biamped with a fender hotrod deville 410 & a marshall jcm800 half stack, & the additional guitars were a mixture of DI & a mic'd up small squire amp. the resulting sound is big & tight (at least in rough mixes, as the project is still underway).
previously i've tried a method for thickening and smoothing out electric guitars in a mix, originally specified by sherman keane for smoothing out bass, which i've also found useful. take a split of the guitar track & feed it through an eq, then a compressor, then another identical eq. find the spot, usually around 800hz, where the guitar sounds nice & thick & boost it till the eq just starts to dominate, then double that boost. compress that sound like you normally would a guitar, then, on the second eq, cut the same frequency by half the amount you boosted with the first eq. blend this sound in with your original track. hope i've explained that clearly enough. if not, read sherman's book.
cheers,
glenn
sleep is not an option
jwhynot: "There's a difference between thinking or acting dogmatically and drawing from experience."
Glenn Santry
http://www.myspace.com/glennsantry
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #147076 is a reply to message #146893 ] |
Tue, 11 April 2006 22:28 |
PookyNMR
Messages: 1967
Registered: April 2004
Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada |
Platinum Member |
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Something I've found that can help is to make sure that the pre-gain on the amp is not too high. Sometimes too much distortion on a rhythm guitar part can rob it of it's power. You need to find the sweet spot.
The volume of the amp needs to be in the right spot as well. I like using lower wattage speakers and catching them as they start to break up a bit.
And this will sound like total crap but - some of the biggest sounds I've ever recorded came from some small amps! I've had great luck with a Fender Blues Jr, 1x12" - sounded bigger than many of the 2x12s and 4x12s.
Nathan Rousu
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #147104 is a reply to message #146893 ] |
Wed, 12 April 2006 01:01 |
1gibsonMO
Messages: 20
Registered: November 2005
Location: St. Louis |
Member |
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A couple things concerning this:
Stacked guitars can loose much of the punch and intricacies of the playing because the following takes will be ever so slightly played differently; however, if that is what you are looking for (think smashing pumpkins)... stacking is a great way to get a wall!
I could never quite make out the individual strums and specifics of playing when stacking and then I got a chance to work with Dave Jerden. He used not less than 6 amps (bogners, vox, twin, tweed, etc.) brought them up on the board and just started finding the ones that worked well together. Very little tweaking on the amps, just looked for the ones that gave a good freq. spread.... never had guitars sound bigger!!! One take panned left... Second take panned right with the same group as the first. Overdubs with single amps sprinkled in. One thing to think about as well... Mic wise (I did not look extremely close since I was salivating over the 6 foot high amp cases that he had) I believe he was using a royer and dynamic (57? 421?) on EACH cabinet.
Coupling a high gain pre/master volume amp with something like a vox or twin can really give you a great sound while accentuating (or at least retaining) the syncopation and playing (guitarist has to be able to play though!). To my ears... this always gives the BIGGEST sound
Since then, I have very rarely recorded guitars without bringing at least 6 amps in of differing types (72 twin, AC30, JCM800, Mig50, ampeg jet, bedrock). You could do the same with two or three amps tweaked a little.
Early on before I owned these amps, all of the guitarists in town used to borrow each others amps for sessions when available.
I will mention that it IS a taste thing as well... I am a big fan of the guitar sounds on the Jane's Addiction and Alice In Chains records. So, Jerden's way stuck with me.
Caveat.... I know that it is a high expenditure to own 6 decent amps. But, wanted to use it as an example for the thread
PS, As an experiment, for anyone that has not done it, split a guitar to an AC30 and a marshall (JCM series) and let each one do what they do best. AC30 with the midrange spank and growl and the Marshall with the scooped mid gain..... Good Sounds to my ears!
Good Luck... hope you find what you are looking for!
ja
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #147106 is a reply to message #146893 ] |
Wed, 12 April 2006 01:07 |
jwhynot
Messages: 1591
Registered: April 2004
Location: Los Angeles |
Platinum Member |
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my $.02: ( or maybe more like a few pesos, in 2-cent increments )
Don't add top.
Don't add bottom.
Let the guitars live out in the corners.
Think about the other instruments in the mix.
If you are nearly there, try taking a big heavy sound and automating the ends of the notes - push up at the very end of every note so you hear the thump of the cabinet (or virtual cabinet) at the end of the chords - makes them seem huge without eating all the space in the mix.
I got a lot of inspiration for guitars after basically 20 years doing it, by listening carefully to Brendan O'Brien's mixes (and probably by extension Nick DiDia). One thing I noticed was that when there was a stack of guitars in there, playing the main riff, they weren't really "HUGE" - instead they were sort of chaotic - midrange-y - and out in the corners of the mix.
So the atmosphere and space around the drums was easily felt and not covered or interfered-with - and so ... "ROCK".
"Tiny Music" by STP, even though it's a pretty low-fi mix - is a good example of this. Also the song "Pretty Noose" by Soundgarden. Great example of guitars seeming huge, but not really being a large percentage of the sonic energy.
After focusing on these and other similar records, I started experimenting with top and bottom shelf EQ, to the left. (Yes I sometimes turn knobs to the right but let's just set that aside for now). Suddenly I find room for that hard-hitting snare and present vocal - and still lots of anti-social chaos in the guitars.
Top end is in many ways like bottom end - it works better if you don't crowd the space. Pick your poison and add top and upper mids only to the boss of the region.
Unless you're making a 1980s Billy Bragg album the electric guitars don't live alone.
Herein lies the secret.
JW
PS some more cheap tricks:
Track the main guitars with a not-too-crunchy tone, panned wide. Add a crazy, atonal recto-version (orange amps rule) in the middle.
Use cleaner guitars and dirtier bass.
Fewer, larger tones.
More, smaller tones.
Many large sounds together make a small sound.
Many small sounds together make a medium-sized sound.
A few large sounds and some complementary small sounds make a huge sound.
one of both the most and least successful producers of ALL TIME!
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| Re: BIG electric guitar sound! [message #147180 is a reply to message #146893 ] |
Wed, 12 April 2006 09:35 |
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Vertigo
Messages: 1334
Registered: April 2004
Location: Atlanta |
Platinum Member |
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| Quote: |
previously i've tried a method for thickening and smoothing out electric guitars in a mix, originally specified by sherman keane for smoothing out bass, which i've also found useful. take a split of the guitar track & feed it through an eq, then a compressor, then another identical eq. find the spot, usually around 800hz, where the guitar sounds nice & thick & boost it till the eq just starts to dominate, then double that boost. compress that sound like you normally would a guitar, then, on the second eq, cut the same frequency by half the amount you boosted with the first eq. blend this sound in with your original track.
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Great technique!!! I just tried this out on a particularly unruly bass track. The bassist was switching between notes on the 4th and 5th strings, and every time the 5th string notes appeared this huge 60-125hz boom would jump out that was at least 10db louder than anything else in the bass line. I was really surprised at how well this worked. It seemed convoluted, but after trying it out it makes perfect sense. And it's much cleaner and less convoluted than trying to crush the hell out of the track with a bunch of compression and limiting.
Thanks!!
-Lance
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BIG electric guitar sound!
