1- listen to other recordings of the type of music you're mixing, and try to emulate them.

2- For beginners perhaps it's best to visualize the 2 gtrs in a live performance. Maybe the rhythm player is slightly stage left while the lead player is slightly stage right. This would involve mixing in stereo to create this balance.

3- What size room do you visualize the players in? A small nightclub or a large stadium? Add early reflections, reverb and delay to create the space.

4- When you listen back with your eye's closed is the recording an accurate representation of a live performance?

5- After you've succesfully accomplished that, then go forth and be creative.

TheEtherealTicket, love your handle!

When I'm mixing a musical event for live television, I generally follow the optical principle of audio mixing. I mix it like I see it, with few mixing exceptions, i.e. bass guitar in center, bass drum and snare drum in center, lead vocalist in center.

When I'm doing something in the studio for strictly musical purposes, I might take the rhythm guitar, pan that to the left Channel and also feed some of that signal to a digital delay device, which gets panned to the right Channel to spread that rhythm guitar apart. Then the solo lead, goes mono Center, with perhaps some additional stereo DSP, to give it a feeling of space or even stereo Mike the room if the solo takes place after the tracking session?

The bottom line is just creating a great sounding stereo mix, however you get there. Rarely have I miked a guitar cabinet for stereo, because there is no stereo. Sometimes, I'll come across a guitarist running stereo cabinets and for that, you've got to give them stereo. It all depends on the music being played, really. So many choices, so many mixes.

Going through change of life (I'm going to try ProTools)
Ms. Remy Ann David

TheEtherealTicket wrote: Hi all!

I'm very new to recording. I want to know how to mix a rhythm guitar and a solo together? Do I use mono or stereo? Do I process the sound of one of the guitars in one ear? Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks! :roll:

well, it would more then likely be easier for you to mix in mono as mixing in stereo can start to sound muddy really easy.
[natural] is correct about mixing left and right and all that means is that after you have recorded a single wave mono track move the balance to the left or right about half 50%.

now if you want to get technical,.... first you can clone the track with your edit clone feature then balance one 60% left and the other 40% right. Now those are not (NOT) specs to live by but just an example.
now do the same with the solo but mix it 25% left and 50% right.
this kind of separation will help define your mix.
Use reverb in moderation as it can very, very easily blend your mix to much. just enough to take the edge off.

post your mix on a free site and read the reviews that you get and adjust your mixes accordingly if you want.
Acidplanet.com is one of the free sites that does that kind of thing.
http://www.acidplanet.com/
There is lots of free stuff there, under tools.

let me know how it goes.
Brad

Thank you so much! You all have helped me lots, and I appreciate! I owe you one.

Thank you!

Jared

Going through change of life (I'm going to try ProTools)
Ms. Remy Ann David

Good luck RAD. maybe you can tell us what you went to PT from and how was the Learning curve.

Brad

I figured, it's time to at least learn the program? So I purchased a M-Audio Transit, since I'll be using it with my API 3124m's. A friend of mine just got a M-Box 2 pro along with the full ProTools LE 7 M-Powered along with a number of plug-ins. So now all I have to do is give them $75 and I get to start playing with ProTools. Now this is not the same as having a nice fully blown HD ProTools system, with plenty of onboard hardware DSP. But it will do some plug-ins, on some tracks up to a point, in real time. I loaded the 30 day trial and played with it for about one half hour but I've been too busy to play with it and now it has expired. It's great if you have nothing else to do. I don't. Now I should be able to learn it at my leisure? Besides, I don't do much hip-hop, loop based, highly manufactured recordings. I generally record people playing instruments and using their voice. So I really never ask much from my software. I don't play video games either.

OK, OK, so I played PacMan a couple of times when it came out in 1978
Ms. Remy Ann David

OK, OK, so I played PacMan a couple of times when it came out in 1978
Ms. Remy Ann David

Ha!Ha!Ha!, now the truth comes out, LOL.
Yip I new it, Your just as normal ?? as the rest of us
I think were normal,? LOL.

Anyway, it sounds cool that you will get a chance to run it through the gears, I haven't had the pleasure yet.

I have tried most of them but I decided to do a stretch with sonar 6 first,
so now that I'v paid for it ILL have to wait for a year or two and replace some of the other cheep gear before I jump into P.T.
It seems like each program has its usefullness.

let me know which parts compare to other programs,
after you've played with it for a while.

Thanks for the feed back.
I love feed back, LOL
Brad