With this post I decided to go directly to the point, less talk, more mixing! 😉 Here you are some quick tips to le your heavy guitar shine in the mix, try them directly on your actual mix, as usual, there’s no real “rule” but I always apply these tips to my mixes and they work really well 😉
- Always record almost two rhythm guitar tracks, panned hard left and hard right.
- EQ each track: High pass until about 70 Hz. Low Pass to get rid of some “fry” sound that sometime affects heavily distorted guitars. Deep cut around 250 Hz – 450 Hz, lot of mudd affects guitars in that range. Always listen to what you’re doing, don’t try to apply just presets.
- Send each track to a stereo bus: on that bus a gentle high shelf from 5 Khz could give some good presence, but be careful to what’s going on between guitars and vocals. Just a little boost around 100 Hz could give some bottom end if needed. Be careful with this one, chances are to fall in boominess.
- Compress the guitar stereo bus: a nice compression of about 3 dB (with the right makeup gain to compensate volume loss), VCA or FET like compressors can be great in this case.
