4 Ways to Add Life to Guitars

Are your guitar tracks too static? Joey shares four great methods for adding life to guitars to make your mix sound more dynamic. What are your favorite ways to liven up your guitars? Let us know in the comments!

0:00 Introduction
0:38 EQ
2:33 Stereo Widening
3:40 Reverb
5:51 Bass Reverb
6:52 Recap

Tags:home recording,audio production,mixing tutorials
#homerecording #audioproduction #mixingtutorials

[beatplugprod]

It’s really simple but there’s a Pro Q preset called “Phone” and I’ll use it on a duplicate guitar track and then roll off the volume. It brings out a little more transient in the guitars if adjusted right to the tone you’re already using.

[ernestobenschop]

This the hero we dont deserve, you guys are amazing❤

[wildstringdom]

Best part of the whole video is the headbanging at 6:46!

[jazzzfer]

Joey. Your tutorials are practical. Loving what you do with the channel. Love your plugins too

[philippgrunert]

The way you mix the guitars reverb here resolved a year's old problem of mine. Thank you

[beachboyvince]

My favorite sound was stage 2, the yellow track with just EQ+Widening. I felt the added reverb took away from what this particular song was going for. Still sounds amazing either way. Great tips!

[No-srfb]

The vids here particularly the past year or so have been so helpful, thanks dudes

[xtakerux]

For lead tones i love to mix between two reverbs, one dedicated to process Early reflections, the othr one is a plate reverb for the decays, results are huge lead tones with great depth that takes it to another dimensions where it ironically cuts through like crazy

[christopherharv]

That EQ tip is great and I notice a lot of benefit from it, except that it makes the guitar transient (the pick attack) more present on one side of the stereo field than the other. I've got mine set a little lower than yours, at 3.2K and 1.5K. Is the transient something you're considering when choosing the frequencies with this trick? Do you think of a "high transient" and a "low transient" in the pick attack, so that the pick attack from both left and right guitars still retain a strong presence in the stereo field?
I can hear it in your example going on a bit, the right sounds brighter and more present than the left after that trick. In the mix, especially during hi-hat passages, or passages where the beat is kept by a cymbal on the left of the field, this is fine. But there are passages where it can make the right speaker as a whole sound brighter than the left. Is this something that you balance out later in the mix?

[tinnitusattack]

I like having the guitar signal splitting to two amps and IRs, one with two front mics. The other with a room and back of cab mic. Blend to taste. Run all the guitars into in channel, add reverb there so they sound in the same room. The back and room mic amp signal i turn gain down and level volume to just give some clean fat end.

To guys double tracking, make sure you record each part separately or all you will do is increase the volume of the guitars.

[kylehowdy]

Wow insanely good info, thanks for the vids!

[insertanynameyouwant]

1-st trick is mostly for the cases with 2 identical guitar tones

[kshitijk]

ohh these were some cool ones, i was actually using eq one, different type of eq of both sides, and a widener at the mastering stage!! Thanks Joey!!

[StarWarsRumors]

I always learn so much from these videos. Thanks!

[XvdkaX]

i heard that reverb trick in rick rubins work before. pretty cool ngl

[aadityagoswami]

Thanks Joey! Just a question, how come you duplicate tracks instead of creating sends for them?

[jasonwright]

Couple of quick questions for you: I think I heard in one of your other videos that you typically quad track the guitars for a big chorus right? If that's the case then would you recommend putting all 4 tracks into one bus, or putting two rights into one bus and two lefts in the other when mixing like this?... Thanks for the content man. This is helping me a lot as I am just getting started with some of this stuff :).

[FoxMulder]

i don't know why in the recap i can't hear the difference... i'm sure that what you did is doing something, but it sounds the same to me, gotta train the ear i think...