How I Record my Rhythm Guitars in The Box! (3 of 3)

UPDATED: 2 Jan 2018

In this final part of three on how I record my rhythm guitars in the box, I'll cover mixing the stems. Part 1 and part 2 can be found here.

Drums (green), Bass (blue), Rhythm and Lead (magenta) and Vocals (purple)

Background

I'll list a couple of YouTuber's that I've learnt from here, about the mixing stage for rhythm guitars. Like in the first post, I am just listing what I gathered from watching their videos and I'll hopefully show enough background to support my own mixing template setup.

Complete disclaimer, I have only been mixing for about a year and still very green. I am in no way an "expert" and am still learning myself!

How Do You Mix Your Songs? | Pete Cottrell

Pete Cottrell is the YouTuber that inspired me to start playing guitar again after a 18 years. I watched a few of his video's and went out and bought my RG8 soon afterwards.

In this video, Pete talks about how he mixes his guitars.

• High Pass Filter somewhere between 90 - 100Hz
• Low Pass Filter somewhere between 4 - 12kHz
• +3dB boost between 1kHz - 3kHz for solo/lead
• Compress palm mutes using Multiband Dynamic Compression
• Compress fast attack (1ms), fast release (5ms) 4:1 ratio
• Compress slower attack (10ms), slower release (50ms) 3:1 ratio
• EQ to taste

How to Record Heavy Guitar | Spectre Sound Studios

In the Glenn Fricker video mentioned in the first blog post, How to Record Heavy Guitar, he mentions:

• Multi-band compression remove palm mutes 350Hz & 850Hz -6dB GR
• Aggressive High Pass Filter at 80Hz
• Gentle Low Pass Filter at 7 - 10kHz

Get great metal guitar tone in 5 minutes | MixBusTV

Also mentioned in the first blog post, MixBusTV's Get great metal guitar tone in 5 minutes video:

• EQ dip the highest low frequency
• EQ boost the lowest high frequency
• EQ cut mid frequencies to taste
• HPF at 60Hz, LPF at 3.5kHz
• Preference to use an ‎API 2500 Compressor / SSL Console EQ

Mixing modern metal guitars: mix trick to make heavy guitars sound bigger and fatter | MixBusTV

This is more a mixing trick than guitar setup - again from David at MixBusTV. After tracking and setting up your guitars, where you have a main theme or chorus, double track each guitar to emphasize the section. To further emphasize these parts:

• Double the bass notes on a piano VST (‎4Front Piano VST is recommended)
• Make sure they are not loud enough to be recognised as piano notes
• ‎Heavily compress them, at around -6dB GR, with HPF, LPF, some EQ dips
• ‎Match the compressor attack settings and EQ with the guitars

After I saw this video, I realised I wasn't really thinking about my "main theme" in my songs. I don't write verse, verse, chorus, verse songs, so there is no obvious main theme. And that explains why I still sometimes create walls of sound. This trick above has forced me to create a dynamic between riffs and start picking which one has to stand out.

My Mixing Template

So, you'll see I've exported my stems from my rhythm guitar tracking project and imported them into the mixing template.

In the screenshot above, you can see my stems.

At the start of each stem FX chain, I have a tape simulator, Variety Of Sound FerricTDS. For me this removes the sterile digital clean sound - which I understand, some people like - but for me, at least I like a bit of tape saturation, even only lightly, on my stems.

I'm using a warmer analogue Variety Of Sound BootEQ as my console plugin. For this project, I was looking for a more saturated warmer sound. You'll notice I've disabled the EQ side of the plugin and am using it just for analogue saturation, tube harmonics and transformer simulation. On other tracks such as the drum bus, I've followed it with Dead Duck Software's Channel2 Console Strip. In all honesty, I could in future EQ each of the stems and perfect them but in this instance I didn't.

In the screenshot above, I'm showing each of the four console plugins for each stem - ENGL, Mesa, Peavey and X530. The BootEQ's have an implied low pass filter to tame the high frequencies.

All those stems are then summed up into a Rhythm Guitar bus, where I've got another BootEQ, but this time with the EQ enabled. I could have followed it with Dead Duck Software's Channel2 Console Strip if I wanted a bit more control over it.

Drums (green), Bass (blue), Rhythm and Lead (magenta) and Vocals (purple)

On the BootEQ, I have a high pass filter at 110Hz. I know that sounds high, but when I look at a spectrum analyser, I can see the kick and bass pretty much fill up sub 110Hz and there is simply no room for the guitars in there.

Next on the Rhythm Guitar bus is an analogue stereo widening with VoS RescueMK2.
UPDATE: I've since swapped out the RescueMK2 for a ThrillseekerXTC Black exciter, focused on mids and highs.

The final plugin is a Tokyo Dawn Studio's Nova EQ I use to "make space" for the other instruments through subtractive equalisation. This is just my own personal preference - I feel like I have more control with this method of EQ. You can see cuts (if the HPF's don't cut them first) at around 80Hz to make space for the kick,  115Hz for bass guitar and 3kHz for vocals, with a gentle Low Pass Filter at 9kHz. These riffs were not palm mute heavy, so I didn't find much use for the multi-band compressor, but the NOVA is very capable of cutting those palm mutes.
UPDATE: I ended up adding a High Pass Filter at 110Hz on the Nova, as the saturation on the Exciter re-added bass frequencies. I also added automation to disable that 3kHz band while the vocals are not present, as it negatively impacted the guitars.

In this project, I've avoided compression on these guitars, as I felt they were already pretty compressed. Any compression done on the mix bus should take care of them anyway.

The MixBusTV Piano Trick

Here is an example where I've used the MixBusTV Piano Trick.

It's quite effective, and when you mute the channel you do notice that it's gone. I used Reaper's ReaTune to create the MIDI from my bass line. It needed some cleaning up afterwards, but it was a quick way to get the MIDI for it.

Conclusion

So that's it from me. I'm not an experienced mixer, but this is where I am at currently. Happy to hear your comments.

How I Record my Rhythm Guitars in the Box! (2 of 3)

This is the second part of three on how I record my rhythm guitars in the box. In this part, I'll cover how I put it all together and what components I use during tracking. I'll avoid talking about mixing until the last blog post in this series.

If you haven't already read it, here is the first blog post of the series.

The Setup

So in a previous blog post about Home Recording Concepts, I referred to traditional recording concepts and how we try to emulate the above setup in in a digital world. Above we see a guitar, played through a power amp, recorded via a microphone onto a recording medium such as tape.

Above is my setup. I have a 2 channel M-Audio M-Track that's connected to my PC via USB. And I need to emulate the "traditional recording setup" graphic above, inside my DAW (referred to as "in the box").

My guitar is recorded raw "Direct Inject" or "DI", straight into my DAW as a WAV file. The WAV file is my recording medium, in lieu of a traditional tape machine. Everything else, I have to virtually emulate inside the DAW. That's what this post is all about.

The Components

In the previous post from this series, I drew up this diagram to demonstrate how I thought Misha Mansoor's setup looked like. I'm going to break up the explanation into two main parts:

• From the Guitar to the Pre-Amp
• From the Pre-Amp to the Recording Medium

From the Guitar to the Pre-Amp

I use Reaper Sub Projects to keep my music compartmentalized into little manageable boxes.

At the highest level, I have my mixing template. The screenshot above is the finished product with the stems already exported and printed, but in the early stages of song composition and tracking, it would be just the top track with the embedded sub-project. I can click-through to my tracking template for my instrument - in this case my Rhythm Guitars.

If you clicked through to that sub project, you'd end up here in my rhythm guitars tracking template. Starting from the right side of the mixer/bottom of the track listing, I'll explain each of the tracks. They go in this order because I use Reaper Folders, which act as auxiliary audio buses, and make it easy to collapse/expand more details/tracks when required.

The tracks are:

• Tracks 24-25: Guitar Left and Guitar Right
• Tracks 23: Guitar DI (sum of Guitar Left and Guitar Right)
• Tracks 13-22: The Amplifier/Cabinet Stems
• Tracks 4-11: The Rhythm Guitar Mix Bus
• Tracks 1-2: Drum and Bass Stems (from other sub projects)

Guitar Left / Right

These are simply the DI recording tracks. I don't use any effects on these tracks - just plain old dry DI audio. I primarily use my Ibanez RG8 for rhythm tracks.

Guitar DI

The left and right tracks are summed here, panned 100% left and 100% right, and they enter the Pre-Amp FX chain. The Reaper stock plugins would work fine for this FX chain, but I use the Dead Duck Software Free Effect Bundle primarily because of their Channel2 Console Strip VST, which I use excessively in my mixing template.

Follow the red arrows for the signal flow

Sorry it's so complicated, but it was the only way to show all the FX in one screen. If you follow the red arrows, you'll see the path the audio travels as it heads towards the amp/cab stems.

VU Meter

The first FX is a VU Meter. I use this to gain stage as best as I can, usually around -20dB RMS/max -6dB Peak.

Tuner

My favorite tuner GTune is used here.

High Pass Filter

This is an interesting one. I sought advice from a fellow Maltese metal guitarist, Tony Micallef of Ferret, as to why I couldn't get a decent Djent tone. He quickly identified that I was letting too much bass through to my FX chain and that a HPF (at around 150Hz) should help shape the sound. And it did - worked a treat! (Thanks again Tony!)

Compressor

High ratio, fast attack, fast release compressor for more sustain.

Gate

The first gate - fast attack, fast release. As was mentioned in the Misha Mansoor video, the sound is either on or off, and when its on its full gain and when its off its completely silent for a more staccato tone.

Overdrive (and alternatives)

Here it gets interesting. I have a number of overdrives I like to use for different stuff. I don't use them to distort the guitar, but to shape (apply high and low pass filtering) and colour the sound, etc. For rhythm and "Djenty" riffs, the TSE-808 seems like the way to go. I recently heard on the FB forums to use two in a row for a sharper tone, but I haven't tried it yet. Ignite Amps TSB-1 is my go to for lead and the TSE R47 has a warmer analogue tone for clean guitars.

Gate

The second gate - fast attack, fast release.

VU Meter

The second VU Meter, I use to gain stage around -18dB RMS/max -6dB Peak.

Pre-Amp to the Recording Medium (Amplifier/Cabinet Stems)

So as per Tue Madsen's Meshuggah video, I send my Pre-Amp signal to 7 different Amp/Cab and Pre-Amp channels. You'll see for every amp/cab combination, I have a gate between the amp and the cab because I couldn't really implement an FX Loop gate. I'll take a guess as to which amps these free VSTs are trying to emulate. My amp sims are from LePou Plugins and TSE Audio.

The cabinet impulses I used are primarily from Guitar Hack's Impulses Pack and I use Ignite Amps NadIR speaker cabinet emulator. I use a VU meter to get the gain staging right, so that the volumes with and without amp sim and/or cabinet stay relatively the same.

• ‎LePou LE456 - Engl Powerball II
• LePou LeCTO - Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier
• LePou LeXtac - Bogner Ecstasy
• LePou HyBrit - ‎Marshall JCM800
• TSE X50 - ‎Peavey 6505
• TSE X30 - ENGL E530 Pre-amp
• LePou's LeGion Pre-amp

So a couple of disclaimers - to date, I don't record a guitar track with less distortion. The closest thing I do is when I'm tweaking one of the amps, that is not taking a primary role in setting the tone, I'll turn down the distortion to get a clearer tone overall. The role of the pre-amps are to do something similar for the bass and low mid frequencies.

LePou LE456 (Engl Powerball II)

I use LePou's LE456 as my ENGL. It's actually a really nice tone, my favorite for my RG8. I'm using the NGL Pro 4x12" impulse.

LePou LeCTO (Mesa Triple Rect)

LePou's LeCTO is a Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier sim with a Mesa 4x12" impulse.

LePou Xtac (Bogner Ecstasy)

Although I have this muted in this project, this channel is for LePou's Xtac Bogner Ecstasy sim with a Bogner Ubercab 412STU impulse.

LePou HyBrit (‎Marshall JCM800 + Plexi SLP)

I also have this muted in this project, this channel is for the LePou HyBrit Marshall JCM800 sim and a 1960A T75 impulse.

TSE X50 (‎Peavey 6505)

This is the TSE X50 ‎Peavey 6505 sim with the Peavey 4x10" and Delta Blues 15" impulses.

TSE X30 (ENGL E530 Pre-Amp)

One of my favorite pre-amps, this is the TSE X30, an ENGL E530 pre-amp sim. I'm trying to use it here as the "C-Watt style" replacement as mentioned in the Tue Madsen video, to add bass and low mids to the tone. If you watch Tue's video and hear what he has to say about the C-Watt, it sounds like an enviable tone to strive for.

LePou's LeGion Pre-Amp

This is LePou's LeGion Pre-Amp. I don't think it's trying to emulate any real hardware - but it's a great tone! For this particular project, I didn't use it. but I have used it as an alternative "C-Watt".

The Rhythm Guitar Mix Bus

These tracks are routed from the stem tracks, so that I can mix my tone without affecting those stem volume levels when I export the stems. I usually use this "Mix Bus" this while composing a song, but I recently read Glenn Fricker's article about using a mixer while recording multiple mics, and committing to the tone early, rather than constantly tweaking during the mix.

So I am now considering, rather than exporting each amp sim/cabinet stem and tweaking them in the mix, that I could commit early to my tone and simplify the process.

The left most tracks in the pic above are my drum and bass sub-projects, that I use to track against. I can click through to them if I need to modify anything quickly.

Conclusion

So as I mentioned earlier, there are dedicated stem tracks that I use to export from. These stems are then used in my (parent) mix template, just like faux mic'd amp recordings. I do this separation on purpose to primarily keep sane, but also to commit to a recording so that I can move onto mixing and hopefully not keep going back and forth in those final stages.

So I hope you found the second part of this series interesting. The third part will focus on the mix.

How I Record my Rhythm Guitars in the Box! (1 of 3)

I've taken what I've learnt from a few YouTubers and Internet sources, to shape the way I do my rhythm guitars on my tracks. Again as is my way, I use only free VST's. I'll do my best to walk through my thinking and how I got here but it might get confusing - so bear with me.

I'll do this in three parts:

1. Background information (this post)
2. Tracking setup before the mix (next post)
3. Mixing (the last post)

Periphery's Misha Dialing in a Modern Metal Sound

One of my favorite modern guitarists is Periphery's Misha Mansoor. This is a great video and you can find out more detail about his setup here at SevenString.org.

If I understood correctly, it's something like this:

Guitar + Tuner + Compressor + Gate + TubeScreamer + Gate + Stereo/Chorus/Flanger + PreAmp + FX Loop Gate + Power Amp

In summary:

• The sound is either on or off, and when its on its full gain and when its off its completely silent
• He starts by resetting the knobs to noon/defaults
• Enough gain to saturate, crunch and sustain on palm mutes
• Adjust EQ to taste (Bass, Mids, Treble)
• Adjust the Resonance and Presence. He explains that Resonance and Presence will boost high and lows without changing the colour or character of the tone.
• He ‎uses overdrive pedals (no gain) to tighten the sound before the preamp
• Gate before preamp and noise-gate in amp (FX loop) to give staccato riffing
• A piece of ‎tape or hairband on the strings at the headstock to stop them resonating

As you read on, you'll notice what's being recommended here is in alignment with a number of the other authors. You know you're on a good thing if it's being recommended by different people.

Tue Madsen mixing Meshuggah

I'll start with this Nail The Mix video, Tue Madsen mixing Meshuggah guitars.

Firstly, he's running 5 to 6 different amps (including the C-Watt Preamp) per guitar. I'm guessing these are:

• Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier
• ‎Marshall JVM410H
• ‎Engl Powerball II
• ‎Torpedo Studio
• ‎Torpedo Reload
• C-Watt Preamp

This video is why I started using multiple amp heads and speaker cabinet VST's in my tracking. And because you can - it costs you nothing to get this setup.

They recorded two single takes, one with full volume on the guitar pickups, the other with half volume on the guitar pickups. This is important because you'll see this technique of different levels of distortion used elsewhere below. I find I usually do the two takes as normal, and then lower the distortion via overdrive VST.

You should note, he sends only the high gain/full volume take to the C-Watt is guitar preamp. This distorts/overdrives, adds bass and low mid range frequencies, and is mixed in parallel with the other amps.

Each take is grouped and EQ'd together. He mixes the full gain first, half gain second.

Once the four groups are done, he removes annoying frequencies. Compares with original (A/B) to confirm it's better without the frequency and sometimes compensates by increasing a higher harmonic OR boost highs EQ after it.

How to Record Heavy Guitar | SpectreSoundStudios

In this next video, Glenn Fricker gives a 2-part run down on how he records guitars.

• Recommends 4x12" Celestian Vintage 30 cabinet
• ‎SM57 microphone
• Start by resetting your EQ on amp to noon/defaults
• Distort enough to saturate
• Output enough for the cabinet to move
• Place mic dead centre of each speaker to find the best speaker
• Once identified, re position mic for best sound (suggests off axis cap edge)
• Finally EQ the amp last, first bass, mid & treble, then presence and resonance

On the guitar bus in the mix, he uses:

• Multi-band compression to remove palm mutes at 350 Hz & 850 Hz, around -6dB Gain Reduction (GR)
• Aggressive High Pass Filter (HPF) @ 80Hz and gentle Low Pass Filter (LPF) between 7 kHz - 10kHz

Loads of good tips here. In a VST speaker cabinet scenario as I'll be using, while the amp is at default settings, choosing the best microphone in the centre position is a great start. The Multi-band compression tip is also a good one.

How to record heavy guitar 2 - Dialing in your amp | SpectreSoundStudios

The second part of these videos, he provides more details for the following steps:

• Using a Peavey 5150 and Mesa 4 x 12" cabinet
• Start with ‎all settings neutral
• Increase pre gain green channel just enough to saturate
• Dial in Bass, Mid, Treble first
• Next do Resonance and Presence, prefer using Treble over Presence
• Just enough post gain to move the speaker
• Use overdrive for clean boost pre-shaping signal before it hits the preamp

The tip to prefer Treble over Presence is a good one.

Get great metal guitar tone in 5 minutes Quick Positive Grid Bias test, discussion about metal tones | MixBusTV

One of my favourite YouTuber's is David from MixBusTV. This is an unusual video for him as it's not specifically about mixing. What I really liked about it was, the concepts he was describing align with the other authors I had watched, so I better understood why I would do such things.

• Track your guitars straight to DI using 2 tracks and pan hard left and right
• ‎Add amp sim and cabinet
• ‎Adjust left and right tracks to different levels of distortion
• ‎Route to stereo bus
• HPF @ ~60Hz, LPF @ ~3.5kHz
• EQ cut the highest powered, low frequency lower
• EQ boost the lowest powered, high frequency higher
• Cut mids to taste
• ‎Duplicate tracks with clean/crunchy amps (less distortion) and mix to taste

I really like this duplicating to less distorted amps, as we saw in the Tue Madsen video also. You get a clearer tone overlaying the thicker guitars.

Conclusion

So you can see, here are a number of authors all promoting very similar concepts and themes.

As I record end-to-end in the box, I will go through in my next blog post my rhythm guitar tracking setup in detail. For me, tracking is just getting the right tone to a recording medium (WAV file) in it's driest, most original format.

Read the second part of this series here.