Fitting in the mix sonically

Vaiai

On our band Facebook group chat it transpired that the female singer and a few of the others in the band as well as a sound guy who recorded a gig for us recently, all said my sound is competing with the singer and vice versa and that we need to do some EQ to be out of each other's way.

Any advice on this? Not sure how you EQ for the mix without losing how your guitar sounds - bear in mind we have 2 guitars, I use a Victory V30 and a 1x12 and play without too much top end and the other guy uses a Boogie with a Jaguar or Les Paul and a bit more jangly. I also play mainly with gain so not sure where we are clashing?

Tips on how to get the mix right or what to boost/drop on the amp eq would be interesting. 

steamabacus

This is a useful vid on sculpting your tone to 'fit in' or 'cut through' (or even both)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcCjFTvUFls&index=10&list=PL154F3490A9330475

Danny1969

Generally I find I don't ever need to do much to a live guitar other than lose everything below 100Hz and sometimes a cut between 250 and 500hz on some amps. 

Lead vocal though I use a lot of EQ cuts and boost depending on the singer, the type of PA and other factors. Maybe it's the vocal treatment that needs addressing

Generally a dirty guitar is a constant level as the dirt = compression. To keep a lead vocal ever present in a mix without being overly loud use some compression .... not much typically 3:1 ratio with a medium attack and lower the threshold until you see about 4dB of gain reduction on the loudest vocal parts

Try hi passing the vocal at 120hz ish - try a largest cut around 300 to 400Hz and try a boost between 3 to 5Khz ..... can't say exactly cos every singer \ mic \ PA is different but that should get you in the ballpark 

We got 3 guitars in one of my bands and still no prob keeping the vocals crystal clear using the above techniques 

Cirrus

Without hearing the problem for ourselves it's hard to know what to suggest.

Quite often people think in terms of EQ when that's not really the problem. The musical arrangement is usually the most important thing to get right, which requires an awareness of everything that's happening in the band and constructing a part that fits into the whole. Just as a couple of examples;

-In a verse with quiet vocals, I'll quite often do somewhere between very little and nothing. So rather than chugging along with full chords, I might pick a single note that musically compliments the vocal line, or completely stop playing to give the vocalist more space.

-If there's a bit that needs to be full on balls out everyone thundering away, I might still pick chord voicings that leave space for the vocalist - like low open strings combined with chord shapes right up the neck to leave the middle ground open for the vocal.

I'm not going to judge your vocalist, never heard her, but an issue that's quite common with female singers is that they're not very loud either in terms of volume or in terms of how well their voice cuts through a mix. Again, this a performance issue rather than an EQ issue.

That said, assuming you've got the arrangements and performances - the vital stuff - down, if it's still an issue typically 2-3kHz is the region that gives the most cut, clarity and intelligibility to the human voice so cutting down on the upper mids/treble might help. Compression (as @danny1969 mentions) is really important too in most situations to hold the voice in a certain point of the mix - check out Tool's Undertow (even if you're not into the music) for an example of how unpolished a vocal can sound and how quickly it sinks into the background when there's not much or any compression on it. That'll give you some idea of how ubiquitous compression is on vocals in popular music.

ICBM

This is sure to ruffle a few feathers but the most important thing to do sonically is *cut your mids* - especially the upper mids and low treble, if you have a female singer who is in danger of being overpowered, and another guitarist. But "guitar is a midrange instrument"... yes it is, but that's part of the problem. Too much in the midrange - muddy instrument mix and inaudible vocals. You do need to make sure the two guitars don't sound the same, but it sounds like you already are.

You may also need to EQ the bass to get it out of the way of the lower of the two guitars (probably yours from the description) - if you then can't hear any note definition in the bass, oddly you may need to add a bit of high treble to it - this is why many modern bass cabs have tweeters. Make sure you have the bass amp flat down on the floor and the guitar amps raised, that will help naturally separate the fundamentals.

I very much agree with Cirrus about using the arrangement to leave space for the vocals as well - less is very often more. Try to keep the overall energy density roughly equal at all frequencies, then you will get an intelligible mix that sounds balanced. If you have too much density at any point, you either need to reduce the level there (EQ) or the complexity (fewer instruments in that range). A really good mix will almost always look like a fairly level graph if you average the frequency response over time.

nickp

can you post a link to the video or recording?  that would probably help

thomasross20

Hmmm, so better to scoop (turn down) the mids? Maybe only boost mids for solos? 

Interesting...!!!

Fuzzdog

With vocalists, I tend to use the mids to control level in the mix more than the volume control - less mids, more room for vocals, then add a bit of mids with a pedal or something for when the guitar is more prominent.

Did have a big argument with a sound guy once who kept bitching at me about my sound smothering the vocals, which it absolutely wasn't - turned out to be the bass player with his epic rig taking up pretty much every frequency range known to man.

thomasross20

Yeah bass can really muddy the whole thing up

D28boy

thomasross20 said:

Hmmm, so better to scoop (turn down) the mids? Maybe only boost mids for solos? 

Interesting...!!!

This is not what I thought you should do. I'm sure I researched this and the advise was that guitars tend to loose mids and generally in a gig situation you should turn them up? Confusing?

Cirrus

"Mids" is massively oversimplifying a vast frequency range that covers the majority of all the musical tones we'll hear, and can lead to lots of generalities. Plus, quite often advice like "Turn up your mids, turn down your gain" is aimed at n00bs with mid scooped metal tones on line 6 combos but because it is internet wisdom it turns up EVERYWHERE, regardless of context or whatever the particular issue to be resolved is.

That's why I suggested a frequency range, and why ICBM also honed it in to a specific midrange area - the upper mids, heading into the range that guitar amps label "treble".

2.5kHz and 400hz are both in the midrange, but boosting/ cutting each of those frequencies will have a vastly different impact on a guitar tone.

In the real world, there have been great guitar sounds with all kinds of different midrange voices ranging from thick to cutting to hollow to boxy.

D28boy

Cirrus said:

"Mids" is massively oversimplifying a vast frequency range that covers the majority of all the musical tones we'll hear, and can lead to lots of generalities. Plus, quite often advice like "Turn up your mids, turn down your gain" is aimed at n00bs with mid scooped metal tones on line 6 combos but because it is internet wisdom it turns up EVERYWHERE, regardless of context or whatever the particular issue to be resolved is.

That's why I suggested a frequency range, and why ICBM also honed it in to a specific midrange frequency.

2.5kHz and 400hz are both in the midrange, but boosting/ cutting each of those frequencies will have a vastly different impact on a guitar tone.

In the real world, there have been great guitar sounds with all kinds of different midrange voices ranging from thick to cutting to hollow to boxy.

The benefit and danger of the interweb I suppose. Best to use your ears but in a gig situation that can be hard/impossible and so an understanding of the potential pitfalls is helpful. I always thought the rule of thumb was as you get louder turn down distortion and turn up mids but I'm an old tosser so maybe that's crap nowadays. Btw luv the video on the Facebook page

Vaiai

Ok, excuses - this was our 2nd gig and the other guitarist had only joined us 2 weeks previous He is not the guitarist with us any more.I'm on the left using the V30 and GG Charvel (which is a bright guitar anyway)

We also had 10 mins to get on the stage, plug in and go! During the Edinburgh Festival this pop up venue does about 14 bands in a 14 hr period so you literally get on and play whicle the sound guy messes about with sound - we also found he had the 3 mics linked so couldn't adjust the singer's mic level separately.

Danny1969

3 mics linked ? I've done sound professionally for years and I can't think of any situation you would "link" mics ...... send em all to a sub group maybe, share monitor aux sends maybe but not linked in terms of front of house .... that's insane 

Changing the arrangement doesn't really work for covers .... if you change the arrangement it won't  sound like the original

Honestly with good gear and people who know how to mix you don't get problems with vocals not cutting through

Vaiai

@Danny1969 It makes sense that he may have been talking about in monitors - I doubt it was to FoH - I stopped playing for many years and just got back into it in the last few so been a while since we got a gig with full PA - did one recently and made the mistake of asking for more guitars in the monitor. Sounded awful and I played there again and made sure I could hear my amp sound on stage that time

Danny1969

Vaiai said:

@Danny1969 It makes sense that he may have been talking about in monitors - I doubt it was to FoH - I stopped playing for many years and just got back into it in the last few so been a while since we got a gig with full PA - did one recently and made the mistake of asking for more guitars in the monitor. Sounded awful and I played there again and made sure I could hear my amp sound on stage that time

Ah right maybe he was using an old analog board with only 5 sends or something, even then though I would almost always put the lead vox on it's own monitor mix as that's the most important monitor mix

Maybe he was running the monitor mix post fader so couldn't turn up FOH without the monitors rising as well, all basically comes down to this. 

If you can't get the vocals right mix wise in a simple 2 guitar and bass  \ drums  band then you've done something wrong as it's generally pretty easy, especially now PA gear is so good 

thomasross20

@Vaiai - what venue?

Vaiai

thomasross20 said:

@Vaiai - what venue?

It was The Cowshed in the Cowgate - everyone else was acoustic and we turned up with full band lol...was packed and good fun

Also did Whistle Binkies a few weeks back - it's the old "Showcase" night where 3 bands play for free...but we did it anyway. What else is there to do on a Tuesday night

thomasross20

F*** sake everybody has done Whistle Binkies apart from us! What is the contact for Whistle Binkies lol??? Let me know when next you play..

thomasross20

Wow that's a long vid and good quality - who took it? 

Will check it out in more detail probably next week as well busy rest of this week. Good stuff so far from what I've seen!!

Vaiai

It was a friend of the singer who does it professionally and it's the whole set - we are gonna chop bits out for promo vid. The contact for Binkies is Gaz They just opened Stramash too - a new place in the old Wilkie House - same contact - just try them on their FB page