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Cognizance Mix: Guitar

We should do a little bit of guitar first and then you never go straight to the orchestral stuff and and this on an epic note um and uh I'll just say this for ah for those of you who want to know what we're going to be doing tomorrow uh there's still some mixes that we you know we didn't cover today because we have you know we're going to such detail on these things and I don't want to rush I want to make sure that you guys get everything you want to know out of this so we'll still be going over the monuments vocal mixes tomorrow and a few other really cool things in addition to talking to joey sturges talking to enter wade giving you guys uh tons and tons of quick tips tricks that you can do to get your your mix is finalized and session transfer some and there's still a lot of stuff to cover so with that let's talk about guitars for a little bit because we've spent a good amount of time talking about about bass and drums we talked about guitars and reflections too but I feel like wher...

e we just left off was talking about how integral the performance of the base is to the low end of an album and but I mean that's what people end up programming bases because bass players suck and it's better to at least have a consistent low end then tow have garbage so and a lot of the same ways this this applies to guitar um uh anyone who took andrew wade's guitar class knows that guitar tone it is as much if not more in the hands than in anything else and, uh really good way tio a really good example of this would be anybody here ever played a show with that that local band that has more gear than your parents could ever afford like, you know, they all have like really nice shirts with flames on them and racks and racks of gears and racks and racks of gear and the bass player with the dreads and you guys know a band I'm talking about there's the sample you know who they're the same they're in so many cities I don't know how that band keeps on recreating itself in every city and that the nicer gear than most headliners and they sound like total unadulterated shit every night and no matter what their plugging into, they sound like garbage and then you have bands with way less uh, you know, weigh less expensive remote gear, get up after them like the first national active and I and just totally annihilate them with sixty five of fives and they're beat up guitars because it's in the hands always and or for instance, just take this analogy you think that if you're hanging out with john patricia and he let you play on his rig that you would suddenly sound like john future she of course not you'd sound like you so same thing goes with getting guitar tones in mixing uh if you have bad guitar playing badly tracked stuff out of tune cords just bad pick attack improperly played chugs there's only so good is going to get you're not going to have that masterful sounding record if the guitars or track badly just like your low end will never be consistent with the base and the kick drum aren't you know b f f s uh you're not going to get that guitar tone of your dreams unless the guitars or track properly so that said the guitar player in this band is uh is uh pretty phenomenal and uh we had fun lots of cool riffs and uh we'll talk about what we did I'm showing you this so you see that this stuff is not this is not shocked of and aligned to the grid into you know, to a ridiculous amount a lot of it is kept true to how the guy played and this is some technical stuff like if any kind of music needs a little bit of help you think it would be technical death metal but like there was no need I mean sure like I know that you've heard records where everything is faked out and so you think it's tighter than this but it's really not it's just edited and uh and I guarantee you that if you were to listen to the raw guitars on a black dahlia record for instance they were kind of in this range of tightness where it's ah it's not like a computer played it but uh but you know sounds like a bad ass guitar player played it and the one thing I will say is that if you listen through the tones are right off of his hands and that's that's all on just how he plays when he plays trump blows it sounds like a traveler ship please mutes sounds a palm muted stuff should sound and that's all there is simple play the guitar right so other than that show you what's going on in this it's not a very complicated set of just uh the cue and uh a little bit of multi band compression um the is uh you know, cutting things off at around seventy five uh so leaving that for the bass and the drums tio hang out have a good time and uh this I cut off at about ten point two on the low past now you know is that a little bit higher than it was on reflections but this is also a much less noisy uh sound and approach so you know, I had to tame the noise quite as much and but I did get rid of a lot of nasty stuff but the way I acted you goingto fourteen k and just turned it down a lot you know get a cool little mid boost and uh another cool little mid boost and then ah settled on around what is that ninety for the guitar low end and bruce alone that's it it's just simple simple e q uh and now s o bears bear this in mind so pick ninety for the low end of the guitar to kind of emphasize let's see let's take a look at thea the base that I moved down here just so that we could compare to the kick I picked sixty for the base and I believe it was seventy five seventy four for the kick and now you know and this I carved it differently than on reflections but again it's the same idea and made the decision of who which instrument was going to be the lowest and I worked everything else according to that um let's go back to the er to the guitars so here the raw talent now that bad actually in some ways sometimes was funny to me is that sometimes I like non process guitar tones better and process guitar tones but they just don't always work in the mix because you have toe so many other allies to balance that with but check it out this is with no e q nothing you can hear it's not like the raw guitar tone is shit it's fine and ah that's one thing that I think a lot of people need to understand the cue and all this stuff that you add is not there to make it sound like a good tone. The tones gotta be there already has gotta be it's gotta be there on the duke's hands going into the pickups through the type of guitar through the new strings through the cable into whatever amp and ah or rehab it takes all those things, but if you choose the wrong pickups with wrong hands with wrong guitar, it almost doesn't matter what you do afterwards. Is it's going to be is going to compromise, but this guy's a great player and, uh, we we did pick a great ivan as we forget what was what it was loaded with, but it was it was good and, uh and as you can hear, the raw amp tone sounds fine like that's a good tone. Um one thing that bums me out we're talking about yes, sir, when you get, uh, files from a band with no d eyes and just amp tracks and they just send you really bad am tracks, you're really you're really very limited, but you can hear from this just from how it's played that we could react this any number of ways and get it to sound good because the playing is good and then again uh this raw guitar tone is good uh we could run it through any number of different chance and make it work so a lot of times if you're having problems in a mix like something's not working out and you try a million things and just nothing's working, you just need to go back to your source and fix your source um your your raw tones should be sounding pretty good now again if you're recording based e eyes on lee you know base and full of course you're basically as good sound the craft but you know within reason like you know your natural drums who'd sound good without all this processing and samples your app tracks should sound good looking good player played well so all right let's talk about the chain I did that just to get it a little bit more aggressive because it has a lot to compete with and ah then I started cutting out problems why boosted the low meds a little more and took out a lot of six k because, uh you know there's some frequencies on guitar that khun just kind of be the enemy and you had to hunt around until you find them and a being two other albums helps a lot but with guitars usually in between three and seven a lot of times six ish will be the enemy and uh I hope that you guys watching this don't just decide that you're going to cut six k out of all your guitars just because I said that six k can be the enemy um I'm just saying that lots of times it can be plus a times you need it there because if there's a deficiency of six k in the tone why would why would you add to that and just you know you need to listen to what you've got sometimes there's too much for kay who knows you've gotta work with what you've got so basically I gave a little bit more low mids tio this and I actually took down a little bit of eighty and you know is to give it a little bit more ah is to you know keep it a little bit more out of the way of the kick and that's what that notice what let me uh let me actually make a group of quick uh part part of this had to be done in a rush because of a of a timing situation and a lot of the normal stuff that I do I couldn't do so gotta make a group right now that's going to make my life a lot easier guest running mate groups cool idea um going by we talked all right here. Here. Um okay. So notice what happens when I add this uh this u q on until the difference when I add the massenburg a lot of the harshness is gone and now why did I do that like why did I roll off its sixteen k a little and then cut at six? Well, because in my first week you what my whole my whole mission was to make the guitar jump out more and get make it just a little bit more aggressive and just, you know, make it more of a competitor in the mix but you know when you boost high end on guitar understory guitars you bring up a lot of noise and harsh frequencies just things you don't want so that it did a little bit of corrective queuing tio just kind of tame that a little bit uh then you guys all know this trick if you don't I'm surprised it can you ask the chat room if if anybody has not heard of using c four on a guitar and uh if they haven't heard of it um what rock they've been living under for like the past ten years but uh, you know, I have to ask that part but understand this because this exact uh, technique was one of the first things that andy sneak took a screen shot of and posted on his forum in two thousand three and this is like the most spread around uh like setting preset like whatever that I think I don't love in the history of like online metal recording forum geek worlds so anyway, so yeah, but it actually is really, really effective for controlling the low mids to use the sea for you that's not something that you should use every single time on every single mix no matter what but it's just sometimes chugs and, uh, open string risks we'll just get a little war feet and with music that's going this fast, the double bass that's going this fast, you don't need to be adding anyone penis into the situation that's what the sea force for but don't just go and copy the settings you see um, that andy snee posting a lot of guys who did that back in the day they just grab that took a screen shot put into their mr like, why don't why don't doesn't sound like kill switch um if you don't do this properly, what'll happen is that I'll neuter your guitar sound um and that's not the point either the appointees to control the low mids so that your chugs and things like that just don't get out of control the difference listen to this part with and without she's a little more under control is all and then beyond that uh this was bugging me three hundred fucking me that's all uh I'm curious. Let me check it by about three hundred on the base sometimes in a weird way I've noticed a bumping three hundred on base gives it a little bit of warmth whatever that means. Oh, yeah? Check it out. I did bob three hundred on the base right here. So you know one of the thing you need to look out for in balancing balancing all this stuff is just like we talked about balancing out the subs and all that you've got to balance out your loam ids to uh if you decide that you want to add some warm to the base in the three hundred region well, you better make sure the guitar isn't all about three hundred so you know, I just I took a little bit out of there just so that it would fit with the base better and that's it it's nothing too complicated just boost did some stuff to kind of make it more aggressive, cut out the nastiness, tamed the chugs and did a little complimentary cute and make it work with the base that's it but it already sounded good to begin with so that's kind of what you should be going for? Yes sir have you ever like basically we're trying to find little things to notch out of the guitar tone especially if you like re input the rial amp and you have you can have the cab sitting there with the amp running into it and it just kind of the impious coming out of the amp with no actual guitar seem like coming through you can actually find a lot of those little nasty things that need to get notched out just by listening to that that his coming from the cab um I just I've always found that interesting and it sort of helps helps cut to those things you know, without having toe also listen through the tone itself. Well, you the cab it is a big part of everything in my opinion and yet that's ah you're you hear right there a lot of what the amp is just going to be putting out naturally like that yet I know if you people to do it like that um I mean it's not one hundred percent beale and all, but it definitely helps to do that. You have to be careful when you're not doing stuff out andy queuing anything but especially guitars because it's really easy to just keep thinking you're finding little things that need addressing and then all of a sudden you've just completely gutted the tone and nothing sounds good anymore yeah, exactly I've been guilty of that in the past and then end up just literally throwing away all the key was on the guitar and starting fresh and then I wind up with something way better than the direction I was going in a totally well um I mean so let's see what? Okay, the cuts are made um this ah this this one at fourteen k was really just there to kind of help make the uh the low past is just that you do that to kind of tweak the low pass a little bit because you know you're not actually really listening to guitar up a fourteen k but just I've noticed that sometimes if you put a low pass on this a cell here uh and then you mess with uh you mess with your high frequency no symptoms add stuff a pie or whatever it just changes the shape of the low pass some and just how it reacts and that's all but uh so yes oh um nothing was cut out there um you know besides some extreme lows extreme highs and right here just she just uh just tamed some of the stuff that I boosted and then I did cut out harsh frequency and you know we can listen to with six k added back in gross is way better with that thing gone yeah, but I mean the thing is like distortion is noise, so if you have you you can go into a vortex with the stuff and just like you said to start notching out everything and then you just you neuter it that's not the point you but you did pointed you find something that's gross like actually making it gross and just get rid of it and then they got rid of that I wouldn't call this getting rid of anything I just called this controlling something that gets out of hand and then I just got rid of something that I just wanted to emphasize on the base and it really get rid of it just broke down I would say with the six k I pretty much got rid of one of the things that is if if you find yourself needing to do a whole lot more queuing than kind of what you've got on the screen now to guitar tracks you should probably just dialing a new tone yes, exactly it shouldn't it shouldn't be too much for complicated in this um and even this is a lot like in my opinion like a lot of a lot of records that I've mixed or assistant mixed or mix engineered or whatever I've seen to plug ins you know the s s l q and massenburg and that's it because if you dial in a good tone that's all that needs to happen um and uh and like for instance, this last one is not really for the sake of the guitar tone that's for the sake of blending with the base um you know I don't think it needs needed really toe have three hundred dropped is just more because I wanted I wanted to hear the base more that's it um so he is really just three things affecting the actual guitar tones so yeah I think uh yeah exactly right and at the risk of sounding redundant because and I know andrew wade said this in his guitar class too if if you're having a lot of trouble dialing and guitar tone and you end up with a bunch of plug ins the problems probably the guitar tone and uh it could it could even be the guitarist you know more often than not it is um let's talk about leaves real quick ever any questions from people the crowd about rhythms no I wanted to get back to you about the c four thing a whole bunch of people have been using uh andy steeps precept for a long time somebody did ask that we have right uh somebody asked about they said it sounds good it sounds good but not as good as the c six or fab filter pro and b are you familiar with those two I'd be curious to know why it doesn't sound as good to see for c six because uh doesn't see six just add a few more bands in the option the side chain isn't it just the same thing right yeah I don't even have a c six but I don't think you really gain anything extra suppose it was uh c six I mean, it looks prettier and that's bigger I mean, you know, we'll like pretty pretty things to look at but the you just it's almost the exact same thing uh, so I don't know, but if he likes it good no one is going to stop him. I will not be get him. Um the, uh but I do actually use the the five filter one as you can see right here program be definitely have used it on day I think it's good, I do like the fact filter stuff and the found filter stuff is also very pretty to look at it's kind of like you're at a spa or something, um ad like unlimited bands on that one? Uh, I don't know, let's see, at least I know what their u q I think it's unlimited bands maybe it's not unlimited on this one foot, not that you would really need, like let many bands working independently no, looks like six is what tops out of it and you delete these just like that? I mean, look, I'm sure that this thing is fine and I'm sure you can do the exact same thing as with c four, but I'm sure you can also do this with a bunch of other multi band compressors too