EQ-ing distorted guitar until it sounds totally different

[slipperfan]

Well, since Mr. Slipperman pointed out that this forum is a bit quiet nowadays I thought I might post this question.. I'll be adding soundclips to this post tonight, when I'm back home..

Situation: 22 tracks from a band that recorded partly in a rehearsal studio for drums, guit, bass & vox at a house of a friend. I had no part in the recording process, they decided to find a mixer AFTER the recording of the tracks. Retracking is not possible nor really required. Its a grind-deathmetal band a-la Carcass Necroticism..

Specifically about the guitars: they (the guitarplayer is the 'boss', so in-fact he) like the Carcass sound and claim to sound alike. To me the Carcass sound sound OK, it fits the total mix nicely, but for a live sound it stinks. No mid's at all.. They have a faily 'open' rehearsal & live sound for sure, not mid-scooped at all.. but now after recording with that same sound they want a more-carcass sound. This means that I'll have to eq the sound pretty heavy.. I tried it and it works pretty OK, but the sound is not great, you can hear the effect of heavy eq-ing fairly good.

I'm working in-tha-box only and don't have too many plug-ins available.. Maybe I should look for a linear-eq-plug or maybe a multiband compressor.. not sure.. But does anyone have tips on how to prevent the heavy eq-ing to degrade the soundquality too much? (If you can speak of quality with this type of music :Wink:).

Thus: back to distorted guitars I say..

[knightsy]

I am told the AUD Cambridge works reasonably at the sort of guitar EQing that Slipperman was doing on the Team Handbag stuff. I've had a quick try with the Sony Oxford but couldn't really be sure. Has anyone found an plugin EQ that really worked for them in trying to implement these techniques? I've tried the usual suspects, Waves SSL, RenEq, Digi3, all with no real joy.

So if you're staying ITB you might wanna get a UAD card. Unless folks know of another plugin EQ that does the job on guitars.

Actually I have a $200 Nady outboard EQ here that does the job better than any plugin I've heard so far. Although I've never heard the UAD myself.

[AxeSlash]

*Sigh*

Oh how guitarists love their scooped mids, when it's not necessarily the best option.

I mean the first question you gotta ask is thus: Carcass? WHICH Carcass sound? Their sound changed from album to album; compare Swansong to Necroticism and you'll see what I'm talking about.

To be honest I would have no quarrel with aiming for a Swansong sorta sound, but I don't think Necroticism did them justice; it was an early death metal recording, and sounds like it.

Personally, if you *must* copy something, I'd find something more recent in their style to look to.

For the record, I have absolutely NO problem with EQing the FUCK out of a guitar track in order to get it to sit properly and do the job it's meant to do. I can, and have, slapped multiple 4/6 band parametrics across guitar tracks to obtain a good sound when retracking has not been an option. Often, even with a good tracking session, I find 4 bands too limiting; but then again I nitpick with the guitars because I AM a guitarist, therefore anything less than perfection makes me feel like I've failed.

At this point, without hearing the track, I would suggest that if you are new to mixing this kinda material that you acquaint yourself with some recent recordings of the "big boys" in this type of music: the Vaders, Niles, Morbid Angels, Cannibal Corpses and Aborteds of this world. Not many of these sound particularly amazing to be perfectly honest, but they will give you a feel for the kinda sounds they will expect to hear on the recording, rather than aiming for one goalpost (which you may miss), aim for a few: you have a better chance of hitting at least one of them, and may possibly end up with something better for the band in the process.

Oh and I defy you to name a recent metal album that sounds like the band do live. It just doesn't happen; the trend in mixing metal this days is to make everything your bitch and do what the fuck you need to do to it to get it stand up and dance. Throw the "capture the live sound of the band" idea outta the window if you intend to mix this kinda material.

I would suggest being VERY careful with "scooping" a metal guitar sound; namely you have to know WHERE it needs scooping. Don't just randomly whip mid out of it in an attempt to Carcass-ise it. If you listen to the early Carcass stuff, there's a lot of low mid in it, and very little high mid. That's a classic early death metal mix; recent (good) death meal stuff has a much more equal amount of high mid. The "scoop" these days is narrower; usually a wide, slight dip around the 400Hz mark, rather than an indescriminate chunk of everything between 250Hz and 4KHz.

All you need to do is load up something from Necroticism and something from Swansong in your media player and listen to one after the other, and you'll hear the difference I'm on about. Like someone mentioned recently in another post, recent metal seems to have a dense concentration of frequencies up around 2.5KHz; because it seems to work. It lends some clarity to the guitars.

Indeed, if you whack the average metal guitar sound these days through a spectrum analyser, you'll see it's a very broadband instrument, that's usually pretty "flat"-ish (I hate that word) between 300ish and 2K, with humps around 2.5K and 125Hzish depending on the mix. There are usually very few sharp spikes above about 400Hzish; it's usually broader humps up there, and most have one of those humps around 2-3k somewhere.


You can boil a lot of what I've said there down to this: get the sound somewhere into the current ballpark in terms of good guitar sounds, then tweak from there to suit the mix.

I've no doubt Slippy will tell you to fucking ignore everything else that's out there in the world at the mo and do what the fuck you want...but I get the feeling he's been at it for long enough to know what the ballpark looks like subconsciously anyway ;)

Back to your original post, whaddaya mean by "degrade the sound quality" exactly? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds a little like you're kinda new to this game. If that's the case, I would really not worry about linear EQ or multiband compressors yet. Learn your existing EQ as it is before moving onto those; read the threads aimed at Carey Chilton on the Uni/MILAR forums for reasons why I say that.

If you have been doing this for a while now and just phrased your question in a strange way...can you give me more detail? What problems are you having? We may be able to help you with "when I do X to the guitars, Y happens and it sounds shit" problems, but we need to know what X and Y are first!


Oh and as I hope you've gleaned from the Slipster's ravings here, guitar sound is a fucking subjective thing. So what I'm reccomending here may be a complete waste of time in terms of what you are searching for/trying to do...I'm just going on my own experience and what others tell me. I'm well into heavy metal, and I've heard a helluva lot of albums be described as having great/shit guitar sounds, but there do seem to be some common ones that 99% of people seem to agree have a good sound, and there seems to be some common factors to those sounds that I have outlined above.

Meh, make of it what you will, I'm hoping I've been of some use here.

In related news, here's some analyses I did a while back to help me with some mastering shit I was doing; I analysed a shedloada "good" sounding albums, and overlayed the results in Paint Shop Pro, producing a sort of "average". As you can see, there's quite a bit of variation between the tracks, but there IS a trend. Bear in mind most of these are bands on the more thrashy side of death metal (In Flames, Arch Enemy, Testament, Dew Scented, etc); the trend may be a little (but not massively) different for the more brutal side. Equally, this will not apply to utterly non-metal styles. You wouldn't expect a jazz recording to fit this trend.

Oh and these are also analyses of an entire song, not just a guitar sound, but it may make my point somewhat seeing as a large portion of the RMS stuff in a metal song is guitar.

...And the rapid drop at 14/15Kish is because some of these analyses came off MP3s (yeah, I know, baaaaad).

Meh, I've just looked at this and it does kinda go against what I was saying about stuff being scooped at 400ish these days...but I'm guessing that hole is usually filled by something else in the mix.

Enjoy.

[Slipperman]

OK. I'm knocking off and going home.

I'm gonna bust out the laptop and put some effort in here.

Today was my first "day off"(HOHOHOHAHAHAHA-YAAAAAA) in something like 3 months, if you don't count the 4 days between 4/18 and 4/21... which I spent pissing out of my ass and puking my brains out into a bucket next to the bed. A situation I got myself into by doing a slew of records in a row and getting NADA for sleep week after week. Then, in my insuperable wisdom, I proceeded to put the final nail in my own coffin by doing a 72 hr. "no sleep burn" to beat yet another meaningless mix deadline. Which wiped out my beleaguered immune system and landed me in that particular pickle.

News flash to Slipperman:

You are no longer 25 years old.

Hands down, I am the biggest fukwit on the planet.

Back soon with a water balloon.

SM.

[Slipperman]

OK.

Here's the dealio as I see it.

CONTEXT.

Hate to restate the same bullshit I've spouting for the last few years... but the more I work... the more hours I spend Eqing guitars in mix(and I spend, and have spent, a truly HORRIFYING portion of my adult life doing just that - how WELL is another story) the more I see "context" as having the single biggest impact on the ultimate perception of the guitar sound in final mix.

Here's a little dreadful journey I have been going on for years, over and over again... like a fucking idiot.

Part one:

Get drum and bass sounds together.

???

Whatever the fuck THAT means...

Anyhoo.

Part two: Twist guitars around for "good sound".

...


Right.

Uhmmm....

OK. Initially "good sound" means ELIMINATE THE SHIT THAT SOUNDS LIKE COCK AND BALLS AND ANNOYS THE FUCK OUT OF YOU on an INSTRUMENT SOUND basis.

Then...

"Good sound" SUDDENLY means.... Find and boost shit that makes the guitars various musical parts CLEARLY AUDIBLE against der bass und drumz.

Then...

Ya "reverse engineer" in a series of COMPROMISES to the guitar sound which make yer guitars work with yer suddenly TINY drums and bass.

Ahh me.

THEN....


THEN....


Ya jam the vocals into the picture and suddenly...





yer fucked.




It's ALL wrong.



HOHOHO.


Context.


Everything affects everything.


And BTW...

I am NOT claiming the old school: Throw up all the faders and do it "all at once" is necessarily gonna get BETTER results... or even FASTER results.

It's a fucking stew.

Ya whip the shit in there as ya see fit and START STIRRING.

End of story.

Which I had a better prognosis.

HOHOHO revisited.

OK. Be back tomorrow to talk about the original posters question on whether "softie Eq's" can do the "phase shapey" stuff I've been harping about and demonstrating in some of my past shenanigans.

Ahh.. fuck it. Let's do it now.

Short answer is:

Not a rat's ass compared about a half dozen hardware Eq's I can name off the top of my head.

WHY? this is... I have no fucking idea.

I've got about 2 dozen of the softie Eq. plugs(including UAD Cambridge)... And make no mistake... I LIKE a lot of them for shaping stuff UPSTREAM from the desk. This is because they DON'T do much of the weird phase-smeary stuff when you start twisting bands against each other. Especially directly adjacent bands, or very narrow peaks and notches. Usually... I can take little slices out without losing a whole lotta mojo in the overall signal integrity.

Waves SSL E channel is one of the closest I have been able to find in the virtual arena to the activity of it's counterpart hardware Eq. It's very useful for getting a rough approximation of the SSL 'plasticky' thing going.

Metric Halo, URS and McDSP stuff can give you some fairly decent twists as well. I just don't see any of them as "finishing Eq's"... Whatever the fuck that means. Actually... I sure some of you chaps know EXACTLY what I mean.

Well anyways... As Knightsy mentioned, with the hardware stuff, even the cheap hardware, it often seems like ya get much more dramatic and musical(for lack of a better term) results without nearly as much twisto.

OK. Gotta flee.

See ya soon.

SM.

[slipperfan]

Pplz, many thanks for going in to this item as you did.. You guys rang a bell in my head: am I really going for 'copying' a sound of another band? Maybe it can be used as a guidline, using more various records from Carcass and other bands.. I realized yesterday that my search for the copy-sound took lots of time and after i felt that I was as close as I could get the next day its totally off.. I just fooled myself to be close to the sound but I wasn't..

Also I should have learned by now that i should be looking at the big picture.. neurotically playing around with only the guitar sound might become totally useless when the rest of the instruments and vox come in play..

The 'degrading' I was refering to is just the effects of deep cuts and boosts at certain freqencies in the eq.. some extreme modifications generate a sort of 'ringing' effect on some frequencies..

Hell, I should just focus on the big picture, make the guitar fit with the rest and THEN try to approach more or less reference material if need be.. I'm doing it the wrong way around. Well, its the best way to burn some time away ;).

Basically the reply from Slippy (Thank you for that! And now: get some sleep and get well soon dude!) sums it up in the best way possible: Context!

Maybe I should indeed look at some outboard gear to play with.. Extreme eq-ing in the DAW is just not a good idea..

Making the best mix of the material I received without aiming too much on sounding like something else might be a good idea I guess..

Thanks guys.. back to the drawing board... :very happy:

[AxeSlash]

Now here's an interesting topic the Slipperstein can perhaps weigh in on...instrument sound EQ and "mix" EQ, and the differences therein; I think a lot of newbies seem to think that both are the same, or perhaps don't even realise that EQ can have two purposes.

I find myself spending a SHITLOADA time getting it to sound less like a chainsaw being used to fellate a lion and more like a guitar to start with (usually with a lot of narrow-ass EQ), then after that it's all about getting it to sit in the mix. I don't think I've ever sat down and mixed a song where I've tried to do all of that at the same time. I mean, sure there are occasionally things that become more evident later down the line that you wished you'd picked up in the "instrument EQ" phase, but I've never tried to go for an "in the mix" sound straight away, or (worse) tried to "mix EQ" something purely in solo.

In related news, I rarely find myself boosting narrow in distorted guitar world because more often than not you get that "ringing" effect. That said, this seems to depend wildly on the particular EQ you're using; e.g. Nuendo's basic EQ plug is a fucker for ringing/whistling/whatever you want to call it, but the Waves REQ stuff is far smoother. Either way, I find that due to the steady state nature of heavy guitars, doing narrow boosts becomes VERY audible. I usually only find myself doing that if I can hear a "hole" in the sound.

In fact, looking back on most of the shit I do, I think I only really tend to boost shit during the "mix" phase. During the "get rid of the annoying shit" phase, I seem to mostly do cuts, to chop out the peaky bollocks that get on my nerves. The boosting comes later during mix when I can hear it lacking stuff.

Anyone else wanna spew some ideas on that?

All of the above is just MY way of working at the mo, but I'm interested in hearing other people's approach to all this.

(threadjack imminent)

[AxeSlash]

.. I realized yesterday that my search for the copy-sound took lots of time and after i felt that I was as close as I could get the next day its totally off.. I just fooled myself to be close to the sound but I wasn't..


Woahhhhh. I'm seeing some classic symptoms of the "ears fucking with your perception" syndrome.

Next time you're mixing, get to somewhere reasonable, then STOP.

Faders down, get out of the chair, go make some coffee, have a chat to someone, do whatever as long as it's not loud.

Then get back to the mix. It will sound completely different.

Do this regularly. Eventually you'll be able to tell when your ears are doing weird shit by a sort of pressing feeling on your eardrums. That's the "STOP" point. Listening to loud shit does exactly the same; don't stick your head into a Marshall 4x12 turned up to 11 and then sit down to mix. You're gonna need to leave a while for your ears to recover from that shit.


Herr Schlipper has touched on all of this a few times, and it is some of the best advice I've been given; after a while sat in front of the monitors, your ears will start to compensate for the material it's hearing; e.g. if your mons (or even just your mix) are/is overly toppy, your ears (well, your brain actually) will start to lose sensitivity at the top of the range. Thus giving you a much different perception of what is ACTUALLY going the fuck on. The tendency will be for you to keep boosting the top to compensate, then when you come back the next day (with fresh ears), it will sound like...COCK AND BALLS :D

A trick I do with this is that when I sit back down to carry on, I play some other reference material that I know well just so I can get my bearings on what the monitors sound like again. I don't have expensive monitors with a reasonable frequency response, thus I have to keep reminding myself of their peculiarities. I'm hoping that the longer I have these mons, the less I'll need to do that. Either way, it a) gives me a break from hearing the same shit over and over, and b) lets me figure out what the fuck I'm listening to, rather than sitting down and trying to EQ out a 2.3K peak that is inherent to the SYSTEM rather than the MIX.

Which comes back to the age old topic of learning one's monitors. I'm still in the process of doing this.

[slabrock]

The 'degrading' I was refering to is just the effects of deep cuts and boosts at certain freqencies in the eq.. some extreme modifications generate a sort of 'ringing' effect on some frequencies..

You're right, that's what happens when you start to EQ a track with a single tube amp on an extreme setting. The reason being, that the sound is only peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys...

I've got two simple ways of working around that. First, i almost never track a single amp if i know that i'm going to EQ the sound (you'd be surprised how often the guitar goes through the process with no other alterations than a low shelf EQ) but prefer to make every sound as a combination of various amps even in tracking. But that's just me...

The other way around, which i recommend you too, is to do the minimum of adjusting for a single guitar on a single track, make a (stereo) subgroup of several guitars, and do all the subtractive EQing (which you need to get the vocals and the drums back in picture) there, for the fat wave that is a guitar group instead of doing it for the thin wave that is a single guitar.

Did this make sense to you?

Peace,

Slabrock

[slipperfan]

Guys.. Thanks!

Some of the suggestions I knew already of course.. but beeing the stubborn fuckwit I am I've not done it yet.. things like:

instrument sound EQ and "mix" EQ, and the differences therein

I rarely find myself boosting narrow in distorted guitar world because more often than not you get that "ringing" effect

classic symptoms of the "ears fucking with your perception" syndrome

the age old topic of learning one's monitors

All these things I knew already, of course.. Slippy has been clear enough.. and many others.. Great to see that everybody right away realizes that the dumbfuck 'me' is not 'playing by the rulez'... common sense I guess..

For the rest:

"The other way around, which i recommend you too, is to do the minimum of adjusting for a single guitar on a single track, make a (stereo) subgroup of several guitars, and do all the subtractive EQing (which you need to get the vocals and the drums back in picture) there, for the fat wave that is a guitar group instead of doing it for the thin wave that is a single guitar."

Great!

I'll work on it this weekend.. see what I get. ThanksThanksThanksThanksThanksThanksThanksThanksTh anksThanksThanksThanksThanksThanksThanksThanksThan ks


:very happy:

[knightsy]

How many tracks of guitar have you there?

[Slipperman]

I gotta agree with AxeSlosh.

It's a never ending battle to "pick yer poisons" properly at ANY stage of the battle.

I have a tendancy to POLISH the shit outta everything in the early running and end up 'easing back' on a LOTTA stuff as the "Big Picture" of the mix start to develop.

In the end it's ALL just GAIN SCHEDULING.

Just a whole lotta "Freq. dependant" GAIN SCHEDULING.

You just keep GUESSING what the fuck yer gonna NEED downstream and as you do more and more of it, you hope your guessing starts giving you a better and better statistical yield.

SM.

[otek]

It's quite common in my world that bands start asking me about getting a certain sound in the mix.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that if those guitars sound nothing like Carcass when you simply pull up the faders.....

.... they will continue to sound nothing like Carcass whatever the fuck you do to them.

It's not just about the actual guitar sound either. If you could go back to those Carcass mix sessions and solo the guitars, chances are they would sound completely different to you, because you just took them out of their context. In order for the guitars to sound like Carcass, the drums, bass, vocals, song and arrangement has to also kind of sound like Carcass.


I sometimes was able to get closer to a certain stylistic mark using reamping, though of course that requires DI signals.


otek

[AxeSlash]

.... they will continue to sound nothing like Carcass whatever the fuck you do to them.


Nail, Head, The, Hit, The, On. Rearrange as appropriate.

Otek is exactly right: there is a helluva lot more to a guitar sound than purely the EQ and dynamics that are changeable in mix. When I talk about the "base distortion" of a rig, this is what I'm talking about. Different combinations of guitar/pick/playing style and amp REALLY define the tone of the guitars. Everything else is merely to make it fit in the mix. If you try and get the Carcass sound with an old JTM-45 and a semi-hollow played with a thin pick by a guy who was brought up on jazz, you may as well quit now. No matter HOW you treat it, it will NOT sound like Carcass. You can EQ and compress it til the cows come home, and it will still sound like the same rig.

The only way to get around the "shit rig" syndrome is reamping, and even then it's too late to change the pick/player/guitar (although to some extent you may be able to semi-emulate other guitars).

It's easy to assume that due to the bucketloads of gain involved in metal guitar sounds that all the stuff pre-gain doesn't really matter, but that's a mistake you'd rather not make.

[meLoCo_go]

It's easy to assume that due to the bucketloads of gain involved in metal guitar sounds that all the stuff pre-gain doesn't really matter, but that's a mistake you'd rather not make.

This is so true! It is just ridiculous to find out how a guitar or pick up or strings change your sound at high gain set-ups! Way more than any EQ, compression or whatever, and I had hard time learning this. Now I tend to think that any change before distorion become sorta "imprinted" to the wall of harmonics that distortion generates and therefore changes the overall "tone perception" much more than anything after distortion.

And as otek said everything contributes to the specific tone.
However - I had an occasion recently when a band wanted one band sound on guitar and other's band sound on drums etc.. But the way I figured out they were looking for sorta "impact" that bands have and I didn't make my work best to give them that. After I stopped chasing this-sound-that-sound and looked for a way to make the whole stuff agressive and punchy as those bands they immediately liked the result.

[otek]

Otek is exactly right: there is a helluva lot more to a guitar sound than purely the EQ and dynamics that are changeable in mix.

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across in a fatalistic, it's-all-for-shit kinda way.

But that's sort of the honest truth.

I tend to see it like someone working as a makeup artist: it's their job to take what they have and reinforce the character that's already there.

I think what a guitar sound will become, or at least the ballpark it will end up in, can be heard quite clearly when you pull up the faders. I think the important thing is to recognize that character and make that into something cool and unusual.

It's a hell of a lot easier to work with sounds if you're not trying to make them into something they're not.

The irony is not lost on me that in today's world of cutting, pasting, tuning and fixing, that's exactly what we end up doing anyway - and way too often.


otek

[AxeSlash]

I think what a guitar sound will become, or at least the ballpark it will end up in, can be heard quite clearly when you pull up the faders.

I'd go one further and say that you can tell what the basic character of the sound will be when the player gets noise from his cabinet for the first time. You can tell right there whether it's gonna be a fuzzy, muddy, anarchic mess or a tightly focused slab of heaviness.

[Jason Phair]

I find myself spending a SHITLOADA time getting it to sound less like a chainsaw being used to fellate a lion and more like a guitar to start with


Funny, for heavy shit, I tend to spend my time making the opposite change.

[nobby]

It's quite common in my world that bands start asking me about getting a certain sound in the mix.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that if those guitars sound nothing like Carcass when you simply pull up the faders.....

.... they will continue to sound nothing like Carcass whatever the fuck you do to them.



But...

Oh, I get it. Carcass is a band!

I thought it was a metaphor for something. If there's a band called Donkey Balls, please indicate that it's a band if you use it in a sentence. :grin:

[Jason Phair]

But...

Oh, I get it. Carcass is a band!

I thought it was a metaphor for something. If there's a band called Donkey Balls, please indicate that it's a band if you use it in a sentence. :grin:


Now why isn't everyone asking nobby to clarify Donkey Balls, but I had to explain what Donkey Dick sounded like?


Hm.

[otek]

If there's a band called Donkey Balls, please indicate that it's a band if you use it in a sentence. :grin:

Nah, I'll just rely on people actually reading the thread before they post. :D

[nobby]

Something that hasn't been mentioned (maybe it's too obvious?) is that the guitar/ amp/ amp settings can get you close to what you want before you start messing with the EQ.

I tried to get my Marshallazed Bassman to get that Marshall sound like they had on Donkey Balls' Careful What You Eat album but no matter what I did, I couldn't get there.

With a Marshallized Traynor YBA1, it was there. almost no EQ was necessary. I think the EL34s distort differently (more mid rangey) than the 6l6s.

[otek]

Something that hasn't been mentioned (maybe it's too obvious?) is that the guitar/ amp/ amp settings can get you close to what you want before you start messing with the EQ.

I think the problem in this case is that the original poster is getting tracks to mix.


otek

[Jason Phair]

I think the EL34s distort differently....than the 6l6s.


What a bold statement!

:lol:

[AxeSlash]

See, this is why Slippy is so misunderstood. "Cock And Balls" are actually a band...

[twonky]

But...

If there's a band called Donkey Balls, please indicate that it's a band if you use it in a sentence. :grin:

Welcome to Richmond VA, my friend! You want a band called Donkey Balls, we have (well, had it) !