Mixing a great guitar
Posted by Björgvin Benediktsson on 24.6.2009
Today’s guitar segment will be divided into four parts. I’m quickly going to run through the basic steps for mixing electric and acoustic guitar, pointing out good starting points in both eq and compression. Let’s start!
- Electric guitar
- Compression – It depends on the instrument and how it is played if you need compression for electric guitar. Saturated rock guitars usually do not need compression because they are already compressed when distorted. But funky electrics and clean chords may need a bit of compression to even them out a bit and pull them up in the mix.
- Equalization – You can usually filter the electric guitar quite severely if you have a nice bass track in the song. The electric guitar is a mid-frequency instrument and therefore has a lot of it’s energy in the middle of the frequency spectrum.
- For extra oomph and body-thickness try augmenting a few dB’s around 240 Hz and for if your guitar lacks bite I would scan through the areas around 2 – 3 KHz.
Process well and they will love you for it
- Acoustic guitar
- Compression – For chord strums I usually fiddle with the threshold at around -10 with a fast to medium attack. I play with the ratio depending on the feel of the song, but it’s usually around 4:1 – 8:1. For me, I never compress the same way, and I don’t really have a method. Especially when it comes to acoustic guitar, it’s a case by case basis, so you’ll have to fiddle the knobs until it feels right.
- Equalization – Looking over a few of my mixed songs I seem to favor the 500 Hz when it comes to equalizing the acoustic. Just a little boost seems to give mine a little more character.
- For a lack in thickness you can sweep around 240 Hz but for more bass you can go all the way down to around 100 Hz. I like giving my acoustics a little air and shelve them a couple of dB’s up from 8 Khz. Maybe even at 12 Khz?
- Just make sure you’re not boosting around 3 Hz if it gets in the way of the vocal. The acoustic has enough frequencies as not to have it fight the territory of the vocal. That said, you can get a little bit of the sounds of the strings and strumming at around 5 Khz.
This was supposed to be a quick post but I got a little sidetracked with researching my mixes and resources. I hope you can use some of these tips for future projects. And as always, every instrument and player is different. These setting may not work, but they are a good starting point.
