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Attention guitar players: Bass is where a lot of the energy lies in a song recording - not really the guitar. Pay attention to it. A good bass track with some movement in it can make or break you. A song is about the song - NOT only about your guitar. I'm a guitar player and not a bass player. Took me a while to learn this.

somehow, the more skilled the musicians are, the less they are concerned about their performances being edited because they're generally already realized how music production works.

Waiting to mix until the song is complete is so crucial. I literally learned this yesterday. A solid vocal will make everything so much easier because at that point, there's no reason to geek out over guitar tone because it's no longer the focus when there are vocals. Great video.

Thanks for the post man. I remember the old (4 track tape) days and in those days, you had to commit to your performance (usually with the other guys). Now it is really cool to be able to develop ideas and then to create some sort of arrangement and then just cut (and paste) sections as you work something up. My current process is to get a shape/groove and direction before anything else. I'll have a theme (to which I may or may not write the words to) and sometimes leave empty space which I specifically leave to fill later when jamming with the piece sometime later. I'll edit, I'll re tune every take, I'll try guide vocals ( and really try to avoid the obvious), and in the end I will turn down elements which may be too loud and polish elements (like bass) being lost. The DAW world is fucking awesome. I say embrace it and I'm over 60.

To add on to point number 1 in this video is "Intonation"...Don't just tune your guitar and bass with open strings. This may work for band practice and maybe a live setting but, not even then really. So Intonation is when you hit you open string and lets say its a A note and your tuner says its a perfect A ok cool but, now hit your 12th fret on the same string it should also say a perfect A or what ever string it is. If not you may need you make your string longer or shorter and that is done in a few ways but, mostly at the bridge of your guitar and bass with what ever saddles your bridge has. Your string action , your neck bow aka neck relief and even your string gauge can effect this as well. Another tip is make sure the guitar and bass player uses the same tuner and the same tuner for Intonation as well because at least if there off they will be off together and not fighting each other. (What me (guitar player) and bass player did is just buy the same brand and type of tuner and set them to the same settings). Another tip when tuning strings is go lower then the pitch you want to hit and tune up to that note and never tune down to the note because your strings are more likely to slip this way and if you're like me you do some pretty hard bends on the strings and if they slip you tune them up again.

Solid advice, man. I've done all of the B.S. above, and suffered from sh*tty mixes for years. I think the worst habit to break was the "too much stuff going on" part. Always thought it's my thing, sounds orchestral and etc., but in the end of the day the mix was bloated and honestly no one needs 10 guitar tracks playing the variations on the same riff at the same time, lol. The rule nowadays -if i can't make it sound coherent on a single acoustic guitar/piano -it's not a song, just a riff collection.

Thanks for the straightforward, no BS advice man. As someone who has been playing guitar for a while and recently picked it back up and am taking mixing and editing seriously, while just starting out, these tips help a ton and I recall watching a video where you used some cheaper equipment and still got a kick ass sound out of the production. Keep up the great work and looking forward to more of these!

Plugins hide a secret "Sound like Shit" algorithm and when you send your track to a pro engineer they just turn that algorithm off....

Solid advice. Keep it coming. The hardest thing i find is doing things in a useful order and maintaining that discipline. I end up going back to stuff i should have already sorted/edited/automated/tuned and end up chasing my tail so to speak. It comes from enthusiasm but ends up drawing out the whole process. Tips on this would be appreciated.

Solid suggestions. I can see every producer and sound engineer simply nodding for the whole video like I did :)

Spot on. Trying to be the band is hard 🤘 respect to all you taking on the production phase

I've bought all the gear. The plugins, the hardware, the comps, the eq's, the mics, the instruments, the interfaces, RME, Neumann, Shure, Sennheiser, Daking, UA and on it goes. All that's missing is musical talent. I have none.

A good tip I've came across to reveal if guitars are too loud : slowly turn down the monitors volume, the vocals should be the last thing to disappear. If it is guitars, they are most than likely too hot.

Man, your vids and theories are the best. Thank you.

Awesome advise man! Watching on my TV but had to come off and go to phone to comment … you are da man. Appreciate your wisdom! 🤘🎸

Pretty on point...I find I have a problem of putting my guitars too quiet because I want to avoid someone listening and saying "This was mixed by a guitarist" lol I play everything but my main instrument is Guitar. So I find I put the guitars upfront because I love guitar lol...Its a balancing act but sometimes I'll listen to my mix and catch myself putting the guitars too loud...

As a guitar player I was doing number 4 for a while. I wouldn’t notice it until I would go back and listen to things later and realize the guitars were consistently too loud. When I’m mixing now I always lower my guitar a bit more than I think it should be initially. Often it will even drop a bit more when I’m finishing a mix.

now that's a great name for a course: "You Will Never Not Edit Ever Again"

Its weird, my main instrument is guitar but I always seem to mix the drums way too loud initially. I found that double checking on headphones, earbuds, and car speakers help me get a better balance.

The day I learned the importance of bass, my songs started sounding waaaaaay better. I'm a guitar player and decided on investing more money on my bass guitar just because of the difference it makes! Also, a good bass foundation helps your vocals sit better. At least in my case, I try to record my vocals while listening to a piano midi track (melody as reference) and a loud bass; this helped me a lot with vocals and I was always complaining about my vocals before doing this.

Had to mention, David GIlmour literally treats his vocals as an after thought. Although he does have his wife interpret his tonal mumbled some what rhythmic vocals he records while writing the music. Works for him sort of. He hasn't hit Floyd status with his albums, but I'm glad he knows he doesn't have to compete with the past. Honestly, the elites control our music, though we never expected to understand that. It's been happening quite a while.

Hey Bobby, speaking about vocals, would you automate some instruments to go down when vocals appear? i know you say that rhythm guitars should go lower when solo guitar comes in but that`s it

I'd love to see how you mix all Bogren products! They're all good and I'd love to hear how you'd approach a mix using them.

workflow is meta, if you cant make a pro mix take a step back and utilize any structures you miss understanding of, most mixes should sound good before mastering, even if it means to seperate your project and work out some kinks like guitars in another mix to capture what your going for without being distracted by the structure of ghe rest of the song, im an amature writing progressive powerful doommetal and i have a lot of learning, but going back through and ironing everything out and even rewriting stuff has been a great help

Okay thank god I dont do all of the mentioned things. But I have a bad room, abd cant tame the background noise :( cant use RX at the moment

Thank you for this video brother

I agree with most of what's said here. The things I disagree with mostly come from personal philosophy and taste. Like, what if you DON'T want to sound like a modern production? The reason I would avoid overly editing any and all instruments is specifically because I don't want to sound like Periphery or modern metal in general. I get that if you get raw unedited tracks and you're expected to turn those into a modern metal production, that will get pretty infuriating real quick but I'm very much at the point where I'm tired of that production style. Hell, most of the music I listen to now is from the 70s anyway.

I learned about the importance of editing on your channel but actually also on others like Joey Sturgis or watching videos from Mick Gordon (I basically learned what Crossfading is from reading about his conflict with Id Software). I try my best to follow your advice and mix formula and simultaneously learn tricks from other producers. But my Tracks still kinda suck 😂 I think it's coming down to 3 issues in my case: 1. I'm relying too much on presets when using Mastering Plugins or Plugins I don't fully understand. 2. My Songwriting just sucks (at least sometimes). 3. Maybe I still don't really understand compression (I think I understand EQing by now though - thanks to your videos 🤘)

Great points👍 Would have been cool with some sound-examples as well.

And yeah, I kind of accidentally found out the mightyness of editing, meaning what an impact it has working-wise. We were recording our band's guitar and bass tracks at our home studios and I just pointed out how I can do some editing and all of a sudden I was hired (free-of-charge, surely!) to edit all the bass tracks, record acoustic guitars etc.

People say editing is cheating, and I have to hide and edit everything.😂😂🤣🤣

Here here, Mr. Torres!

One big thing is if its not broke dont fix it. If you hear a problem then fix it if you dont know how to then research how. But dont go adding plugins or changing stuff just because

Most of those things I don't do, even as a guitarist I try and balance the mix pretty well and ensure the guitars are not too loud. What I am not good at, and have only just started dabbling in a bit is automation which I know makes a huge difference, and is another huge thing that makes a massive difference to a song and also the difference between amateur and pro.

Doug Mark's said they re-intonated guitars at specific areas so that the recordings were absolutely perfectly in tune no matte what

Thanks!

Do you edit timing before every double of vocals and guitar? Especially harmonies. Are you editing every take before it’s doubled.

Thank you for stressing how important the vocals are. Such a huge thing that us guitar players forget. Also important to have drums, not guitars drive songs.

Excellent advice! You have some great tips on every video I've seen from you. Tuning is super important, and getting your instruments setup properly beforehand too. Can't a vocalist have the vocals too loud though too, and then you know that a vocalist mixed the album??? Reference tracks is a must though which I've neglected a little in the past.

I prefer not to edit, unless there's a considerable need to (i.e., cutting tom tracks to remove the bleed altogether when the toms aren't played, removing some miscellaneous noises, fixing BIG mistakes). Generally, I prefer realistic performances in extreme metal, there's no way I would quantize drums in a grindcore, sludge or brutal death recording, unless big fuck ups are made. The way I look at it: there's no crime in editing tracks, but one shouldn't abuse it when there's no real need.

Tip #2 doesn't apply to industrial music by the way. The Downward Spiral has like 6000 tracks per song. It's ridiculous but taking any of them out would destroy the record. Just throwing that out there.

A-Fuckin-Men Brother! I was saying this to my clients this week!

plot twist - we put a dumb amount of layers in our songs specifically because they’re good :)

One thing I have heard to learn to do is, TURN GUITARS down. Way down. You can always turn stuff up. What forced me to do this the most is that I added piano/keyboard parts. Try balancing the synthesizer with that "sick lead guitar part". All of the sudden, you will turn your guitar track down.

I understand editing is the norm but I'd much rather retrack a part that's out of time. I wouldn't feel good about trying to sell a manipulated performance. That's just me.

Editing doesn't have to be done to the grid, the grid is just an easy reference to line up to but you can edit one take to another take and they'll be in the pocket with each other while still allowing some amount of natural ebb and flow in the tempo. It's just that when we say editing it always seems like the discussion is around an assumption that everything will be edited to the grid when it could just as easily be lined up to some other time source like a live drum take or something.

Hi Bobby. On this note, what is your opinion on plugin aliasing and sample rates?

I don't edit much, but I zoom in, and go through looking for notes that are just too far off the grid and move them. How far is too far off is the question!

I’d love to see a video about editing tracks in the pocket.

Editing is a skill set like mixing. So if you did some editing before and didn't like the way it sounds, it's your skill set that needs to improve.

Do you ever forget the name and call it BrightFox recording?

Too many layers: GUILTY!

Do you have any tips of vids or lessons for recording noobs? Like I am aware of what compression is but how do I apply it? People just say, "or cut this or boost this at "x" hz"....I'm like ok...what do I click on to do that exactly? I feel that your paid courses might be for intermediates and not noobs so much

The legend says the downstrokes of james hetfield needs little to no editing . That's how in time he is. Just insane

You also have to set up a guitars intonation, most guitar players don't know how so high notes are out of tune.

Nice new intro music

"way back in the 80's" .... Damn man, making me feel like an old man. 😂

If you watch a year and a half in the life of Metallica part 1 the engineer is cutting and splicing tape together, proof of editing !

Acho seus vídeo muito massa! your videos are very cool.

Songs with poor or worse no Arrangement are a total killer. It will not matter how nicely I Mix em, with core problems in the song itself, it will always feel weak. More LOUD + W-I-D-E will not fix the missing Story. Aah, guitarists mixing: ALL 57 layers of Guitars, no vox. I am not a fan of over-editing, but if the band wants that over-edited sound, they have to edit (preferably before I get the files). A loose performance will not fix in the mix, actually it will get worse. The better the mix, the more it shows off what is there. :-)

'I want my production to sound like Nickelback'- Scott Stapp

80% of Mixing is Editing! After these step is mixing easy and more fun!

Actually, they don't

Dude how old are you?

HA HA , 70% of the people who do all these things are the ones who tell ya' they don't do these things. but if only a few folks can have some Introspection the video did its job.

Not in tune: Solution, buy a guitar with evertune, done 😂 I want a guitar with evertune honestly maybe ill get one one day. Would make my recording life easier.

Editing is cheating!? I'm pretty sure Sgt. Pepper was chopped up in production back in 1967.

Melodyne can tune your guitar for you…

tune after every take

Spot on man :)))