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[TheDecline]

Yo,

Im about to undertake a home recording project and im struggling with mixing the above as a single entity, has anyone had any experiance with mixing who could offer some tips ? ATM tracks are sounding Weak and congested.

Cheers

[Sentientdeth]

Make sure your volume levels for the original recordings are as high as they can be without clipping.  This will ensure you have a loud sounding final product that won't be maimed by quality-loss through manipulating volume levels via software.

[Willfor]

Using EQ, cut the midrange on separate drum tracks if you can, but leave the drums centre panned. Pan the guitar either hard left or hard right. Vox should be centre. If you have a software program that allows automation, you should spend about an hour or two just going through the vox and making sure it sounds "right" through length of the song.

Mute everything except for the drums and the bass (if you have any). Those sounds together should be about 60% of the final volume you're going for by themselves. Change to taste.

A large percentage of a good mix is making sure the everything is recorded properly, so you should look up youtube videos on proper micing techniques. ("How to mic drums" - "How to mic vocalists" - "Micing a guitar amp")

My Qualifications: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsVO0_D29Qs

[TheDecline]

Hey thanks for the tips, im Not actually "Mic" ing anything as its all software EZDrummer, Line 6 and guitar rig , however the difficulty im having is getting the drums to pull through once the distorted guitars are overlayed.  Hard panning the guitars is totally what im after doing but this seems to leave them sounding a bit weak. Im still very much a noob but its somthing ive always dabbled in and decided i want to take it a lil more seriously.

One other hard thing is getting the distorted guitars to sound as clear as the clean stuff, the clean guitars in a verse sound awsome but once chorus kicks in even though its louder it loses its power. ( if that makes any sense ) im sure im falling into one of those mixing pit-falls somewhere.

I suppose i could post somthing on youtube and see what you think.

Also do you know a good Bass guitar VST ?

[Willfor]

It really depends on the genre you're looking to emulate. There are different ways of doing things between even, say, rock and metal. Actually, there are different ways of doing things for each of the different rock or metal genres. The stuff I gave you is general and works across most genres, but I'd need more specifics to help you with the rest. For instance, I could tell you to make a few different guitar sounds with your vst, print them as their own sound files, and then layer them in the background on both sides of the track. It has an entirely different sound than if you added a send to another track to double the volume of the guitar being sent to the mix bus, and then adjusted it to taste.

Unfortunately, I've never found a good bass guitar VST that worked out of the box. If I have to use a real bass guitar sound I use Fruity Slayer's bass preset, and heavily modify its settings/effects until I can stand to use it.

[TheDecline]

yer fruity slayer has some unique sounds lol, hmm to be specific id say its more hard rock sounds, maybe nirvana like with clean and heavy parts to a single song.

your probobly right i should revisit the guitar tracks and layer them, however ive always been a fan of basic recording of 1 of each instrument but i might add a third guitar to sit in the middle and overlap the other two ?

Thanks for the input its rare i get the chance to speak with people who know what there doing lol.