When I Mix Guitars...

I've heard people say when they mix guitars they mess with the overall EQ of each guitar track to make them fit together in a mix. But I'm a guitarist. When I record I like to give each guitar the best fundamental tone I can for the part it's supposed to play and LEAVE IT like that in the mix, and just pan the guitars to different spots.

Here's something that I was messing around on, let me know if the guitars sound mudded together or anything weird that would be fixed by EQing the whole track. There's a rhythm guitar playing power chords all the way to the left, an overdriven lead guitar playing some high riffs at 10 o'clock, a clean w/phaser guitar playing some riffs at 2 o'clock, and a rhythm guitar with some phaser playing powerchords and octaves all the way to the right. The guitar all the right does the solo, but I bring it a little more towards center and give it a bit of a volume boost when it does so.

It's a cover of Cheeseburger In Paradise by Jimmy Buffett that I wrote a MIDI drum and bass part for, then I played all the guitars and sang the vocals (using the microphone built into my MacBook, it doesn't sound the greatest but oh well). Oh, and I sampled a song called "Whoa Oh" by Forever The Sickest Kids before the bridge. Country music is my #1 thing, but I thought I'd have some fun with this one and step out.

Thanks
-Jim
http://soundcloud.com/jimlill/cheeseburger-master-mp3

1st the guitar Playing is great, the rhythm distorted guit sounds very good, the rhythm section and that guitar sit well together.

The solo is a great and fun and over the top 80s style.

My opinion: the Vox Is the weak link. Too much echo, reverb push it too far back, and you've got too much sibilance on it. It needs background harmonies to support it in the chorus. You want it to sit up front, and whether people like it or not, the lead vocal makes or breaks a record. It needs a stronger lead vocal.

The extra guitars are distracting and the panning is also. Lead solo and other little bits have gimmicky effects on them. Too much stuff.

Strip it back down, work on it like this: if you had to play the whole thing and you just had one track, how would you play it? I use to pan guitars, thousands. I eq'd them too. Don't! Have 1 GREAT guitar track, 1st! Have 1 GREAT lead vocal., etc. you build off that. I used to put nice dresses on my little pigs. It took a lot of seeing live music done well to appreciate the LACK of overdubs. Well played overdubs can ruin a mix! Too much stuff is distracting.

Your foundation is great, it takes a Buffet song and puts a pop-punk / ska spin on it. The sound of the midi stuff is not bad actually.

You mix great. You play great. Take the effects off that Vox, and only add a bit gradually.

Watch out for too much compression across the whole mix. On your guitars try 4:1 -10db.

Awesome, I'll try out those pointers. The vocal is completely scratch, I literally recorded it with the computer mic, so there's not much I can do to keep it from sounding hollow and midrangy. I'll take off the effects and see how it sounds, though. Are there any suggestions on what frequencies to boost/cut on the vocals to put them out front AND make them sound full?

I'll look out for the overall compression, too. I just took a stab at the mastering part after exporting the whole mixdown, kind of using deductive reasoning as I went along. I'll mess with automation to take the phaser off of the guitar solo. I like how the phaser sounds for the rest of the song since the guitar is just sitting off to the right playing simple stuff, but for the lead it does kind of cover some of the notes and seem like too much.