All good advice from
Charomine! I'm just adding my tuppence ....
Charomine wrote:The best method is to just record the take twice though.
In fact, on that doubled guitar part, try playing one side on a different guitar and/or higher up the neck and/or even downtuning but then capo-ing back up to your normal tuning. Anything to get the guitar/strings to react in a slightly different way, even if the "notes" are the same, will help with getting that wide, hard-panned stereo rhythm guitar vibe. If you can't be bother to mess with the guitar itself, then even a slightly different amp model or different settings on the same amp model can help differentiate the tones to help them sound more stereo.
Charomine wrote:Doing something similar with bass, with one track focusing on the higher frequencies with the lowers cut, also sounds good imo.
You could record the bass in one pass, but then duplicate it into two bass tracks in the DAW. Roll off everything
above 200-250 Hz on one, roll off everything
below 200-250 on the other. For the "low bass" track, keep it DI and brutally smash it with a compressor to get super even, fat, bottom end. For the "high bass" track, you can process in Amplitube with bass amps and/or even guitar amps. Guitar amps working on just the higher end of the bass sound can be great for adding grit that helps the bass cut through. You can then bus the "high" and "low" bass tracks back together and do further processing on that bus, as necessary.
You could, of course, effectively do the same thing "live": instead of duplicating the bass track, have a pre-fader/processing send from the recording track to an aux. (And they could still be bussed back together
after the individual "high"/"low" processing.)
Charomine wrote:For the punchiness, I think a fair amount of that comes from the bass guitar and kick drum. One thing you might want to look at is side-chain compressing the kick and bass.
Side-chaining bass and kick is a pretty common mixing technique in many genres, so you can find lots of YouTube videos explaining it in different DAWs and with different plugins, etc.
However, for my part, I haven't found it
as applicable for many rock/metal-ish things. (Though I am sure that other's love it for such genres and can explain why I'm wrong!) I prefer to use some EQ shaping, though. Like, the kick drum can live below 100 Hz, the low end of the bass guitar lives in 100-220 (but I like midrangey bass; if you like super low bass, consider swapping it with the kick's frequency range), and the guitars could live up around 300-400 (where I'm usually cutting from the drums and bass). Sure, all the kick, bass, and guitars also need places to poke out in the higher frequencies, too, but I've had satisfactory results from trying to slot their lower-end fundamentals into those spaces.
Charomine wrote:Some eq might help the guitars too. I found having multiple eq's in the chain lightly cutting mostly 250hz/310hz helped my guitar sound a bit better (humbucker), with a pedal eq before the amp additionally boosting 500hz lightly. I also like applying a very light scooped-mids eq to the master track, just enough so it's not too mids focused. It's generally a good idea to just cut the frequencies under 150-250hz for the guitar too.
High-passing can be one's friend. I'll tend to high-pass the bass just above where I want the kick, and the guitars a little higher. (It depends on the situation, but you can often high pass guitars at least up to 100, quite often up to 150 Hz, without losing much that you need; sometimes considerably higher!) But unnecessary low end from the bass and guitars can do a lot to mask the kick. Plus, if you're working in headphones and or with sub-standard speakers in questionable space (as I, for one, amateur that I am, certainly usually find myself!) then you can easily get crazy low-end build-up in a mix without really noticing it. Heck, as necessary, I'll high pass the kick to tame it's lower frequencies, too.
The snare can be tricky, as it can want to live the same zone as the guitars. You can try a notch or even a dynamic EQ on the guitars where you need the body of the snare, but I am lazy and will usually just try to slide them around each other. After all, the snare lives in the middle of the stereo, and my guitars usually way off to the side.
Multiple EQs that each do a little of the work can sounds better than one EQ doing all the work. This is a rule of thumb that goes for compressors, too.
Charomine wrote:I'd also suggest making two tones - one for recording and one for practicing - if you end up finding something that sounds great in the mix but horrid on its own, for what sounds good with drums and a bass might sound thin and harsh by itself.
I'm no kind of pro either, but, again, yes: Many things that sound great in a full mix sound pretty weird (or even horrible!) on their own. Guitarists love hearing their tone with the bottom cranked and the mids scooped out -- but that's basically the opposite of what works in a mix! Bass players can be very variable in terms of what they think is a good tone, but IMO rock/metal basses are often lacking in high end, as this is what can make the instrument cut through in a mix. (Thus my suggestions above about having relatively clean, heavily compressed bass in the 100-220ish zone as a foundation, and then other bits of bass poking out higher up, in the 700-800 zone, and then also in the 1.5-2.5khz zone? The lower freqs provide fullness, but the higher freqs make it audible in the mix.)
