18-08-2014, 02:37 AM
Each guitar is one amp tracked with 3 different mics, two of which are off axis... and there are some really serious phase nasties if you're not careful. Some of your guitars have a nasal quality that I think probably stems from the phase issues. Are you trying to EQ the different tripled mics individually? Unless you're using a linear phase EQ that can really get you in trouble, especially if you do decide to spread them out.
I imagine the intent is to spread out the sound a bit... pretty much every 4 piece rock band records this way these days to get a much bigger than 4 piece sound. but hard L/R is probably not a good idea with all of the phase stuff going on. Guitars might disappear entirely.
Generally I have two go-to solutions when something like this is going on: First thing I'll try is fanning the mics out over a small piece of stereo real estate, maybe 20% total and bus them to a group channel. Check on that group channel's EQ/Compression needs and see if I can get away with any more wideness. Sometimes, tracks will be recorded this way with the intent of producing intentional phase anomalies for a nasty, nasal sound. Trent Reznor is supposedly fond of that technique.
And failing that, I'll just pick the mic that sounds the best... and if I need more wideness, very short, very dense plate reverbs will usually do the trick. Key is to make sure it doesn't sound like reverb
Having said all that, though, I think this is decent. It's a very difficult mix... multimiked ensembles always are. The guitar tones feel pretty nasal to me but as I mentioned, many many people strive for that sound, and among my own personal favorites, Frank Zappa was notorious for it (Check out "apostrophe" to see what I mean.)
I imagine the intent is to spread out the sound a bit... pretty much every 4 piece rock band records this way these days to get a much bigger than 4 piece sound. but hard L/R is probably not a good idea with all of the phase stuff going on. Guitars might disappear entirely.
Generally I have two go-to solutions when something like this is going on: First thing I'll try is fanning the mics out over a small piece of stereo real estate, maybe 20% total and bus them to a group channel. Check on that group channel's EQ/Compression needs and see if I can get away with any more wideness. Sometimes, tracks will be recorded this way with the intent of producing intentional phase anomalies for a nasty, nasal sound. Trent Reznor is supposedly fond of that technique.
And failing that, I'll just pick the mic that sounds the best... and if I need more wideness, very short, very dense plate reverbs will usually do the trick. Key is to make sure it doesn't sound like reverb
Having said all that, though, I think this is decent. It's a very difficult mix... multimiked ensembles always are. The guitar tones feel pretty nasal to me but as I mentioned, many many people strive for that sound, and among my own personal favorites, Frank Zappa was notorious for it (Check out "apostrophe" to see what I mean.)
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!