ZEN Amps
Well-known member
I know I've been talking a lot about putting these damn youtube videos together but it is actually happening, very slowly. Thanks again to the brave beta-testers that sat through my draft versions and provided feedback - legends!
Here's a final query for the gallery before I commit to a few things - it's about overall eq and your personal preference for listening to isolated guitar.
So let me say this - we're going with close mics with a small amount of room blended in, depending on the genre. The heavier stuff sounds better with little to no room, as you would expect. Anyway if you hate the sound of close-miked cabs no need to read further as you'll hate everything that follows.
For everyone else the question is about low and high end really. I'm pretty experienced with tracking and mixing but this is an odd project - the guitar clips will mostly be raw and lonesome, no band to compete with. The target audience is all sorts of YouTube watching folks, many of whom aren't used to hearing in-your-face, close miked tones like the more experienced guys and/or pros. This has prompted the following discussion our end, the options are:
- sculpt the tone as you would for an album: lean low end, keep the highs bright and sizzling
- go the other way and round the highs, leave all the lows in-tact
- a compromise between both
I should say this won't be done with drastic eq - we're keeping post processing to an absolute minimum. So the options really are the balance of the mics (two per cab - a bright one and a darker one), and possibly simple high and low-pass filtering as is commonplace.
Here's a quick example, excuse the slightly loose riffage:
The chapter things should work if you want to skip around.
Decent monitoring is required, the differences aren't massive. The brightest one seems a bit abrasive at first but it's about average for modern album work. The other two are dialled back a bit to potentially work better in an isolated scenario. Who knows, it's not like there's any agreement whatsoever on what good isolated tone is, or what good tone even is in general!
I'm so used to hearing close-miked, bright, HP filtered guitars that I thought it might be wise to get some broader opinions, so let's hear them.
Here's a final query for the gallery before I commit to a few things - it's about overall eq and your personal preference for listening to isolated guitar.
So let me say this - we're going with close mics with a small amount of room blended in, depending on the genre. The heavier stuff sounds better with little to no room, as you would expect. Anyway if you hate the sound of close-miked cabs no need to read further as you'll hate everything that follows.
For everyone else the question is about low and high end really. I'm pretty experienced with tracking and mixing but this is an odd project - the guitar clips will mostly be raw and lonesome, no band to compete with. The target audience is all sorts of YouTube watching folks, many of whom aren't used to hearing in-your-face, close miked tones like the more experienced guys and/or pros. This has prompted the following discussion our end, the options are:
- sculpt the tone as you would for an album: lean low end, keep the highs bright and sizzling
- go the other way and round the highs, leave all the lows in-tact
- a compromise between both
I should say this won't be done with drastic eq - we're keeping post processing to an absolute minimum. So the options really are the balance of the mics (two per cab - a bright one and a darker one), and possibly simple high and low-pass filtering as is commonplace.
Here's a quick example, excuse the slightly loose riffage:
The chapter things should work if you want to skip around.
Decent monitoring is required, the differences aren't massive. The brightest one seems a bit abrasive at first but it's about average for modern album work. The other two are dialled back a bit to potentially work better in an isolated scenario. Who knows, it's not like there's any agreement whatsoever on what good isolated tone is, or what good tone even is in general!
I'm so used to hearing close-miked, bright, HP filtered guitars that I thought it might be wise to get some broader opinions, so let's hear them.