Seperations

[shultzee13]

I am sure this is a fairly common problem but on my mixes I want to learn how to get seperation on the instruments so everything is heard clearly. I understand about EQing and panning and all those things are great but....

On a recording with alot of tracks - lots of instruments...distorted guitars don't seperate well from acoustic guitars as an example. Looking for insight.

thanks.

[albee1952]

Lots of ground to cover here. Using EQ to carve out some instruments so others have some "space" to fill. I almost always use gentle compression on acoustics(never on distorted guitars as they are already crunched by the saturation). Distorted guitars are tough and many players(especially those with less studio experience) will tend to run their typical live grinding distortion, and actually backing off the drive level will yield a better recording. Panning you already know. Sometimes, you just need to pull a part out entirely. Especially if you recorded like a bunch of guitars, looking for a wall of sound. Remember that, sometimes less IS more. Try your acoustics panned at 10 and 2 and push the electrics out to 8 and 4(or all the way out). Solo's I usually put in the middle or off center just a small amount.

Another trick is to play the acoustic parts capo'd up higher so they are not in the exact same range as the electrics.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Lots of ground to cover here. Using EQ to carve out some instruments so others have some "space" to fill. I almost always use gentle compression on acoustics(never on distorted guitars as they are already crunched by the saturation). Distorted guitars are tough and many players(especially those with less studio experience) will tend to run their typical live grinding distortion, and actually backing off the drive level will yield a better recording. Panning you already know. Sometimes, you just need to pull a part out entirely. Especially if you recorded like a bunch of guitars, looking for a wall of sound. Remember that, sometimes less IS more. Try your acoustics panned at 10 and 2 and push the electrics out to 8 and 4(or all the way out). Solo's I usually put in the middle or off center just a small amount.

Another trick is to play the acoustic parts capo'd up higher so they are not in the exact same range as the electrics.

Well said !!!

[daeron80]

Originally Posted by shultzee13

distorted guitars don't seperate well from acoustic guitars as an example.

The general problem I'm familiar with but ac and el gtrs not separating from each other? That's not usually too hard. Were the ac gtrs recorded with mics or pickups? If pickups, there's your problem, and the only good solution is to re-record the ac gtrs with a good condenser or two, pref small diaphragm.

Let the el gtrs give you sort of vocal range tones while the acoustics give you warmth and sparkle. Roughly speaking, acoustics in big mixes should usually sing a little somewhere between 200 and 600 and in the 9k-12k range. El gtrs, depending on whether they're clean or distorted, and how they function in the arrangement, should sing somewhere in between. Maybe 800-1k, and/or 2-4k. Only if they don't get in the way of the vocs. That can be a big fight, and it's all about the guitarist playing around the vocs. If they keep happening at the same times, just duck or remove the el gtrs, because they shouldn't do that. They don't belong there. A good arrangement will almost mix itself.

[Keybeeetsss]

Originally Posted by daeron80

The general problem I'm familiar with but ac and el gtrs not separating from each other? That's not usually too hard. A good arrangement will almost mix itself.

[shultzee13]

i am just a young fellow learning....do you guys have any links for instrument EQing? when it comes to mixing.

[RiF]

The "trick" is (not that I master it) to give each instrument it's own frequency spectrum. Not everything has to be totally on it's own, only the frequencies that make up the instruments need to have their "free space" that is not occupied by others.
A frequency analyzer plugin that shows the freq-curve can help the untrained ear a lot (Voxengo SPAN throught the VST2RTAS Wrapper is a good starting point).
I don't know your track, but maybe you could start by trying to separate the acoustic from the electric by saying: OK, the acoustic has some nice high end sparkle that I want to feature and the electric guitar has a pretty low-end/low-mid ooomph because there's some palm-muting stuff going on. Then you would like to cut the low-end and low-mids from the acoustic, boost some highend and to pretty much the reverse on the electric.

Then go to the next stop to separate the electric from the bass... ;-)

This example is a bit over-exaggerated and is just meant to show "the way".

Start with only the most important instruments in the mix and try to separate them. If you don't get them separated, it will not get better if you add more instruments (I know what I am talking about, I did this in my early years, too).

[obiwan177]

Also one thing to realize (which I am still trying to do) is that you will never be able to hear each instrument perfectly when there are other things going on. Also listen to commercial recordings, most of the time the acoustic guitar you only hear the attack of the pick hitting the strings, and the actually tone is completely lost within the wall of distorted guitars.

[themadarchitect]

Originally Posted by daeron80

A good arrangement will almost mix itself.

[albee1952]

Here's another thing to remember. You can spend an hour in SOLO mode getting the acoustic to sound stellar all by itself, only to have it get buried once the other tracks are turned on. This is why I rarely solo anything for more than a few seconds(unless I am digging for noises/hums or squeaks).

Also, I can't stress enough how important it can be to NOT play the acoustic and the electric in the same registers all the time(this can happen a lot if its one player laying down several guitar parts. Its easy to just play it the same way on both electric and acoustic, but this will be counter-productive). If you do 2 acoustic tracks, maybe play one with a capo at the the 5th fret, or play the acoustics with all open chords and use barre chords on the electrics. Apologies if I am repeating myself and getting redundant(after all, I work for the department of redundancy department)