TABLE OF CONTENTS

CRAFTING CLEAN DI GUITARS FOR THE FINAL MIX - 01

1.Start With a Clean Take - 4
2.Edit Before You Process - 4
3.Use An Amp Built For Clean Tones - 5
4.Effects Build Space - 5
5.Clean Post-Processing - 6
3 Must-Have Guitar Tools For The Studio - 8
1.Get A DI Box - 9
2.Amp Sims That Don’t Suck - 10
3.Impulse Responses - 11
Picking The Perfect DI Box For Your Studio - 14
1.Understanding What A DI Box Does - 15
2.Why Your Interface Sucks - 16
3.The Features You Need - 18
4.Bonus Round: Stepping Up Your Game - 19
5.What To Do Once You’ve Got The DI? - 20
How to Digitally Restring Your Guitar - 21
1.Rusty Strings... - 22
2.Replacing Strings with Transify - 23
3.Still Not Getting Your Desired Result? - 24
If You’re Not Doing This With Your Guitars, You’re Behind Everyone Else - 27
1.Bigger, Wider Guitars - 28
2.Creating Tonal Variations - 29
3.Are you keeping up with your competition? - 32
Pocketing Perfection: Dialing In A Bulletproof Guitar Mix - 33
1.Basic Training - Your Guitar Bus - 34
2.Too Hot to Handle (Beware!) - 35
3.Account for Variation - 36
4.How Are You Mixing Guitars? - 37
8 Ideas For Building A Better Guitar Mix - 38
8. Double Tracking - 39
7. Time-Shifting - 40
6. Delays - 40
5. Reverb - 41
 4. Spatial Widening - 42
3. Lots of Amps - 42
2. Supplements with Impulse Responses - 43
1. Finish as a Single Instrument - 43
Cut Your Demo Sessions In Half With This One Simple Trick - 45
1.Only Track Rhythm Guitars Once - 46
2.Don’t Sacrifice Width for Convenience - 47
3.Why Tape Delay? - 48
4.The Impact - 49
The Beginner’s Guide to Guitar Post-Production - 51
1.Reversed Parts - 52
2.Stutter Edits - 54
 CRAFTING CLEAN DI GUITARS
FOR THE FINAL MIX
Electric guitars recorded directly into the computer are more commonplace
in the studio than ever before - and for good reason. It’s easier to make
edits to a DI track and you can tweak their sound as much as you want (at
any point in the mix process).

When you’re adding overdrive or a distortion to a DI, it can be easy to mask

a lot of mistakes. Things like string noise and softer ghost notes disappear
under the heavier, processed tone.

There’s the other side of the dynamic that comes into play though. The
nuances of a well-played clean guitar have their place in music too. With
clean guitars, there is no “burying” of mistakes. Each little noise can ring
out, and the softest of notes can create an unmatched intimacy with your
listener.

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Too many guitarists give up their clean tones when recording DIs, because
the resulting track with no processing can sound boring, bland, and even
brittle when tracked with cheaper equipment. Luckily, there are plenty of
ways to take your clean DIs and make them shine in the mix.

Start With a Clean Take

A good performance during guitar tracking is always important, but it may be
even more so with clean guitars. You’re usually stripping away other parts of
the mix to make room for clean instruments, and each layer that gets pulled
back brings your guitar further into the spotlight.

Once it’s there, you don’t want to be dealing with fret buzz, string noise, and
other issues. You want a well-rehearsed, well-performed take. It’s rarely
going to sound amazing going direct into the computer, but at least you
know your talent can’t be blamed if you put in the effort from the start.

Edit Before You Process

Don’t bother adding any effects to your guitar DIs until they’ve been
scrubbed clean. Even if your take was flawless, there’s a good chance you’ll
still need to be on the lookout for pickup noise.

A good gate can work wonders on a guitar tracks that have pauses in
between playing.

You’ll also want to be sure you’re removing pops and clicks as necessary,
especially if you’re doing a lot of punching-in and punching-out on a single
track. In a lot of ways, clean and lead guitars should be treated a lot like
lead vocals before ever reaching the mix stage.

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Use An Amp Built For Clean Tones
You’re rarely going to find an amazing clean tone in an amp that’s built for
mind-blowing leads. The power structure behind an amp just isn’t set up
that way. You wouldn’t order Chinese food from an Italian restaurant, would
you?

We’re fortunate in the digital realm that we’re able to use plugins designed
with multiple amp models. It solves our conflict while keeping our costs
down.

Virtual guitar rigs are great at bringing high-gain amps into bedroom studios,
but they’re changing the clean amp gain too.

Collections like Toneforge Jason Richardson were built for balance –

including distorted lead & rhythm channels, but also soft cleans and the
effects that work so well with them.

When you work with a rig that was built with clean tones in mind, you’re
putting your DIs ahead of the competition (too many of which are struggling
to get their stock plugins to make a DI usable).

Effects Build Space

The reason a lot of clean guitars sound rough when tracked DI has to
do with the time-based effects (or lack thereof). Double tracking a clean
can add some space, but you’re sacrificing the tightness of a single
performance. Rather than going through the hassle of tracking and cleaning
two takes, using delay and reverb to achieve your ideal space can be a
great solution.

When using effects like delay and reverb, it’s easy to make a noticeable
difference in your sound. Depending on how they’re applied, delay can
create width from a narrow, mono source and reverb can add depth to it.

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Creating a 3D space around your clean guitar, you can take full advantage
of softer sections in a song without feeling burdened with a need for more
instrumentation. Check out how Fluff goes about doing exactly that around
the five-minute mark:

Clean Post-Processing
Your post-process should be pretty transparent for most clean guitar parts.
Pumping, breathing & harmonic distortion can be effective techniques when
used correctly, but for a shimmery, ethereal tone, you’re probably not going
to want to use them.

Instead, use lighter compression with a softer knee and slower attack and
release. You want your clean DIs to develop their own space, but they’re
usually not trying to cut through a dense mix.

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Tip: In instances where clean guitars are fighting for space, try using your DI
as a side-chain input for another track. Too much reduction will be apparent,
but done right, side-chaining should pull down other elements just enough
for your clean guitar to peek through.

Apply EQ as needed, and beware of boosting too much of any one

frequency. DI tracks are notorious for being very dynamic, so a strong
attack on a note can cause a large spike when coupled with EQ. Your post-
processing and guitar rig go hand-in-hand which is why we usually prefer to
keep them together whenever possible.

Have any of your own tips on capturing the

best clean tones?
Drop us a note or share it in the Joey Sturgis Tones Forum if you do - we’re
dying to see if anyone else is finding the same clean guitar tricks we are
when mixing with Toneforge Jason Richardson!

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 3 Must-Have Guitar Tools
For The Studio
Tracking guitars can be an extremely long process that requires an acute
attention to detail – not just from the guitarist, but the engineer/producer as
well.

Even after the perfect takes have been captured, there’s still the whole
process of editing & mixing the guitars, and choosing a guitar tone that fits
in well with the rest of the instrumentation.

If you’re serious about capturing the best guitar recordings, here are the
three tools you absolutely must have to create the ideal guitar tone for any
situation:

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Get A DI Box
Too often, a poor recording environment can decimate a good performance.
If you’re playing particularly technical guitar parts, you know how hard it can
be to nail the perfect take. The last thing you want is a siren, cell phone, or
air conditioner cutting into the microphone and ruining the take.

If you need to use the DI built into your interface, that’s completely fine, but
I’d still recommend using a dedicated DI box. Why?

It’s simple: Nine times out of ten, if your interface has a DI/Instrument input,
it was put there for convenience; not quality.

A good interface has a lot of hats that it needs to wear as an all-in-one

solution. Converters, preamps, monitoring, headphone amp, talkback mic…
where do you think your DI falls on that priority list?

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It’s the same reason you see the price for each of those elements skyrocket
as you move into high-end equipment. Everything in that category is made
to complete one task to the best of its ability.

Fortunately, DI boxes are one of the few pieces of gear you can pick
up without a ludicrous price tag while still maintaining high quality and
performance. There are a few boutique options out there that creep into the
thousand-dollar range, but the majority of good DIs will start at about $50 -
$199 depending on the features you’re after.

Amp Sims That Don’t Suck

I won’t let this section run off into self-promotion of the Toneforge line, but I
do need to take a minute to talk about amp sims.

If you don’t have an amp sim yet, you need one. That recording you
conveniently captured with your new DI when someone’s car horn went
off? An amp sim is the easiest and fastest solution to take that raw guitar
recording and bring it back to its full glory.

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There’s no reamping or patching that needs to happen in the box – that
alone should save you hours of setup and teardown time. On top of that,
you gain the flexibility to change every aspect of your guitar tone with a few
clicks of your mouse.

A good amp sim is so much more than a replication of a hardware amp: it

should give you more tone options, better effects that a digital amp offers &
complete control of everything down-chain of your guitar.

A well-designed amp sim will give you flexibility while also remaining
cognizant of your processing power (a low buffer and low processor
overhead means real-time amp simulation). We’ve built every instance of
Toneforge around this mindset that your amp sim should give you mix-ready
tone, not just a replication of hardware.

Impulse Responses
If you’re unfamiliar with impulse responses, prepare to have your workflow
turned upside down.

Impulse responses are the single biggest time

saver and quality assurance tool we have when
working with electric guitars.

Impulse responses (IRs for short) are a capture of the sonic imprint of the
signal chain between a guitar amp head & your DAW. It’s everything from
the guitar cabinet, to the microphone and mic placement used & the preamp
used to capture it.

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If you’re already using live amps that you love the sound of, capturing an
impulse response will let you replicate that sound time and time again in-
the-box.

For those that are looking to upgrade their guitar cab options on a budget,
there are hundreds of readily available IRs on the market. Over the
past few years, we’ve made it a goal to capture IRs whenever possible,
especially when the cabinets are rare or unique.

What started as a few dozen modern Mesas, Marshalls & Peaveys quickly
expanded to include Zillas, Harley Bentons & vintage options.

Now our Conquer All collection is up to over 200 IRs to choose from.

If you’re new to the IR concept, don’t worry. We’ve got a free Beginner’s
Guide, as well as a more advanced guide on drilling down your process.

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Are We Missing Something?
If you’ve got another piece of the puzzle that’s essential to the guitar
tracking process, we want to know about it.

Share your guitar tracking techniques and tools with thousands of like-
minded engineers and producers over on the Joey Sturgis Tones Forum.

15
 Picking The Perfect DI Box
For Your Studio
Picking the right Direct Input (DI) box is one of the biggest upgrades you
can make to your recording rig. Whether you’re an independent musician
looking to improve your home setup or a studio owner looking to add a new
color to the palette, there is a DI box out there for you. There are hundreds
of DI solutions on the market, so with so many to choose from, where do
you start your search?

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Understanding What A DI Box Does
A DI box has a very simple task: to match the impedance of your
instrument’s pickups to the mic input of your recording system. They step
down the high-impedance levels of a guitar or bass to a low-impedance
level that works better with recording equipment, which, for most of us, will
be the converters in our interface.

Without a DI box, going directly into a preamp comes with it’s own set of
unique problems. A non-DI signal from a guitar or bass can lack volume and
clarity in it’s high-end frequencies. Engineers may be able to compensate
for some of this with EQ, but it’s nearly impossible to add what’s not there.

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Outside of impedance matching, every other feature on a DI box is an
added bonus. Nearly every DI box will have a Thru to pass your signal on
to amp, and most also include a Ground Lift. Before we get to what you
should look for in a DI box, let me explain why what most home recording
engineers are using just won’t cut it.

Why Your Interface Sucks

I don’t care if you’re running a next-gen Thunderbolt interface with
128-channels in and 256-channels out; your interface is not a substitute
for a quality DI box. Will the several-thousand dollar interface have a better
sounding DI than the cheap one? Probably, but it’s still not going to compete
with the dedicated box.

You see… interfaces are tasked with a world of requirements. That list gets
longer and longer as you start getting into higher price ranges too. Things
like clocking, conversion & monitoring all get packed into units that are
compact enough to take up one or two racks spaces at most. When you’ve
got all of those things happening, manufacturers need to find a balance
between features and price, or they price themselves out of the market
completely.

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Your DI isn’t special in this case. There’s a reason you can buy clocks,
converters, monitoring systems, preamps & everything else in your interface
on their own (at their own crazy price points) – and that’s because it’s just
too much for one box to do all those things perfectly. The manufacturers
do a great job making products that sound amazing, but they’ve got a
production price they’ve got to stick to.

Fortunately for all of us, DI boxes are one of the least expensive parts of
the interface that we can upgrade. Unlike the master clocks and converters,
good DI boxes start under $100. If you’re looking to drop a bit more cash for
a feature-heavy DI, you’ve got plenty of those options out there as well.

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The Features You Need
Alright, so getting down to brass tacks, the first thing you need to decide on
when buying your DI box is Active vs Passive. A Passive DI uses a more
transparent signal processing approach, primarily transformers to step
your impedance down to a lower level. By contrast, Active DI boxes use an
additional built-in preamp to help with the impedance matching. This comes
in handy with low-output pickups (single-coils), which, when run into a low-
impedance Passive DI box, can end up with reduced transient response and
high frequency levels.

If you can afford to spend a bit more, I’d recommend picking up an Active
DI box, mainly for the flexibility it provides. An Active Box will come in clutch
with low-impedance pickups and provide some extra headroom for active
pickups.

For those that would prefer to minimize the amount of processing happening
to their guitar or bass, a Passive DI box might be more your style. While a
good Active DI box can add a decent “professional shine” to a track, some
of the more boutique options definitely add more of their own color to the
sound. If you’re running the DI through a virtual guitar rig like Toneforge,
the color applied may be minimal; focusing on getting the cleanest signal
possible to the rig should be your main priority.

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Check some reviews on whatever model you might be considering before
purchasing – Countryman, Radial & Whirlwind all make some great sub-
$200 DIs (active and passive) that make great options for your first DI box.

Other major features include pads, level control & even pickup emulation.

Bonus Round: Stepping Up Your Game

If this isn’t your first DI box purchase, you’ve probably already seen the
difference a decent DI can make in the recording/mixing process. Maybe
you’re looking for ways to add a bit of color to the setup you’ve already got
– something to round out your bass’ low-end or increase the clarity of your
guitars.

To achieve this, a boutique DI might be exactly what you need. There are
options on the market that incorporate high-end Jensen transformers & tube
designs. By improving the components of the DI, a clearer or fuller tone can
be achieved right from the DI without applying tons of t in your DAW.

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What To Do Once You’ve Got The DI?

Once you’ve got your new DI box hooked up in the studio, you’ve still got
some steps to take to capture the perfect recording with it. Check out our
guide on Crafting Clean DIs for some tips on getting the clearest sound
possible. You can always supplement your DI setup with a great virtual rig
and IR combo – giving you the best possible guitar tone for your mix. We’ve
also got the Ultimate Guide to Beating Up Your Bass DI if that’s more your
style.

If you’re looking for recommendations from other engineers & producers,

come ask the Joey Sturgis Tones Forum. We’re constantly talking gear and
recording, so if you’ve got a specific DI you’re looking at, chances are we’ve
got someone that’s used it and can provide honest feedback.

See you there!

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 How to Digitally Restring
Your Guitar
You guys must think I’ve lost it, right? Why else would I be talking about
putting strings on an instrument that was recorded a month ago? Stick with
me, because this one could really salvage some of your mixes…

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Rusty Strings...
Let’s step back for a minute and look at a guitarist that we’ve all met at
some point. For the sake of this story, we’ll call him Rusty.

Rusty absolutely hates changing his strings. He’s under the impression
that between all his pedals and gain, nobody’s going to hear the difference
between a new set and the ones he’s had on his guitar since the last tour in
2015.

Rusty’s mantra is that he’ll play his “lucky strings” until they break, and even
then, he’ll have to consider if he needs to restring, or if he’ll just switch to his
other guitar (spoiler: those strings have been on there since he bought it off
Craigslist in 2010).

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Disgusted Yet?
I know you already get what’s wrong with this picture, but like I said from
the start, Rusty’s parts have already been recorded. We’re in the mix now,
and wondering why anyone would’ve agreed to recording these dull, lifeless
parts. Hindsight is 20/20, so how do we fix this mess?

Replacing Strings with Transify

When you find yourself in the ruts of well-recorded, poorly maintained

guitars (or other stringed instruments) it’s easy to get disheartened. You
know that the intentions were good, but the execution missed a step
somewhere along the way. It’s not limited to guitars – but for instruments
that are difficult or expensive to restring too (looking at you, $50+ bass
strings).

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Luckily, multi-band transient processors can pump some major life back into
dull strings. What can a tool like t do that other plugins can’t?

Since you’re isolating frequency bands, you can treat just the range of the
transient that is missing in the guitar tone. For dull guitar strings, this usually
means a bump around the upper-mid range. Playing around with the attack
and sustain can result in a natural sounding guitar tone than you’re able to
pull out of a take with dull strings.

Is it a replacement for proper guitar maintenance and restringing before a

recording session? Not at all, but it can certainly save you in a pinch and
can save you a ton of time that would otherwise have to be spent retracking
guitars.

You’ll need to play with the cut-off and frequency bands depending on the
tuning and instrument, but with a bit of critical listening, finding the missing
transient content can become second nature.

Still Not Getting Your Desired Result?

Transify includes a clip circuit for especially difficult sources that need a little
more push. More often than not, adding a bit of frequency-specific peak
clipping can help put your tone in the right zone.

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If that doesn’t cut it, you may have to step back and analyze what else is
potentially “off” on the track. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of enabling a
different band in the plugin and dialing back some sustain there.

Important Reminder: Digital Restringing is Not

A Permanent Solution
Once you’ve fixed the problem in your mix, it’s important that you provide
feedback to whoever was responsible for the recording. If you recorded the
guitar yourself, you’ll want to let the guitarist know to restring before his or
her next session if they want the best results.

Unless your guitarist likes their “lucky rust”, most are open to doing what it
takes to get a good recording (especially if they’re paying you for it).

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Do You Know a “Rusty”?
Friends don’t let friends record with dull strings. Feel free to forward them
this post so they know what a headache they put you through each time
you need to fix it in the mix for them. They’ll appreciate you more for what
you do, and you’ll always be able to remind them about what you told them
regarding new strings at each session.

It’s a win-win for everyone, except Rusty’s old strings in the trash.

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 If You’re Not Doing This With Your
Guitars, You’re Behind Everyone Else
Guitar production is key to a great rock or metal mix, and there are certain
elements of tracking and mixing that have become commonplace in
modern productions. While some of them are age-old tricks that have been
modernized, and others are new techniques that engineers couldn’t have
even dreamt of a couple decades ago, these practices are something you
should be putting in place on every session you hope to see the light of day.

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If you’re not, you’re going to be missing out to your competition.

Bigger, Wider Guitars

Huge guitars are nothing new – the wall of sound has been something
engineers have strived for since the 60s. For modern rock & metal
engineers, the wall of sound can most commonly be achieved by doubling
(or even quad tracking) your guitars.

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By tracking the same performance more than once, you’re able to achieve
slight timing and phase variations that copying & pasting alone cannot
attain. Even the best guitarists won’t be able to t for an entire song, and
that’s exactly what we want.

These double tracked guitars give us a thicker, fuller sound that we can pan
wide to create width and depth in our songs. But double tracking alone isn’t
enough…

Creating Tonal Variations

Tonal variety is the second half of an ideal double tracked tone. By capturing
two performances, you’re picking up on the timing differences, but your tone
is going to be nearly identical. For the average listener, this isn’t enough to
distinguish between the two. Instead of sounding wider and fuller, it will just
sound like something weird is going on with your guitar.

By treating your guitars differently through virtual guitar rigs and dynamic
processors, you can add the variety needed to separate the two with just the
right amount of variety.

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Some of the simplest tricks are using different amps on each track. Try
loading up Toneforge Guilty Pleasure on your left rhythm guitar and
Toneforge Menace on the right. You don’t even have to change any settings
to hear a difference – the amp circuitry does it for you.

Dialing in the right tone on the left and the right takes a bit more practice,
and variety can be achieved without using two completely different amps,
but you’ll need to trust your ears and intuition to get there in each mix. For
more ideas on adding variety using multiple amps, check out Nick’s guitar
production tips:

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Once you’ve got a full, wide guitar mix, there’s still more you can add to
give those performances depth. Just like a great vocal, a guitar can reach
superstardom through the use of time-based effects.

Tools like reverb and delay do a lot of heavy lifting regardless of the
instrument they’re being applied to, but for guitars, they can be the
difference between a professional sound and an amateur sound.

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Guitars don’t need to be drenched in either effect to sound good. While
a long delay tail and big cathedral reverb might help your guitars sound
ambient and spacey, for all other practical purposes they’re not going to be
as much use.

Instead, you should be using time-based effects to put your guitars in a

common space, whether it be a small tracking room or a large stadium,
the key is consistency. Then, when it comes time to break out the big guns
and launch your guitar tone into the stratosphere, feel free to load up the
maximum delay time on a tape delay like JST SOAR and let your guitar go
wild!

Are you keeping up with your competition?

Mixers and producers are becoming more and more common, but
knowledgeable ones that know what they’re doing, and more importantly
why they’re doing it, are always going to have value in the music business.

If you’re looking to stay ahead of (or at least keep up with) your competition,
come join the conversation with thousands of engineers and producers in
the Joey Sturgis Tones Forum on Facebook.

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 Pocketing Perfection: Dialing In A
Bulletproof Guitar Mix
Guitar tone is the Holy Grail for a lot of engineers – it’s something that
some struggle with more than any other part of the mix. Give them stacks
of vocals or a twenty-piece drum kit: they won’t bat an eyelash. Give them
a dozen guitar tracks with different panning, dynamics & playing styles, and
these same guys and gals might run for the hills.

Fortunately, you don’t need to live in fear of multi-track guitar sessions.

While a standard left and right track with some double tracking thrown in is
common, there are still those out there that can’t get the basics right for a
good guitar mix.

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For those that can handle the basics, are they able to apply the same mix
techniques when you start introducing more and more tracks? They should
be.
Basic Training - Your Guitar Bus
Regardless of your source material, most experienced engineers are going
to recommend summing the tracks together somewhere. Whether it’s 2
tracks or 200, you can always work your way down to a single guitar bus.

This bus comes in handy in many ways. For starters, it gives you a place to
monitor and adjust your guitars as a group. Think the guitars are just a hair
too quiet in the mix? You can bring them all up together on a single fader.

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To account for large amounts of tracks being routed to this bus, a
compressor like BG-Guitars is a must-have too. You don’t want the hassle of
going down the line one-by-one to find a guitar track that’s poking out of the
mix. By taming the transients with a good compressor, you’re taking control
of your guitars’ dynamics.

Too Hot to Handle (Beware!)

Monitoring shouldn’t start at your guitar bus. By the time a single clipped
signal reaches it, it’s too late.

Your guitar bus can monitor your summed levels, and acts as the perfect
indicator if you’re worried about your guitars clipping as a whole. If you do
notice a single track jumping out of line in front of the rest, you’ll still want to
treat that earlier in the chain (before it ever reaches the bus).

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A lightly clipped signal, while not ideal, is not a lost cause. Using a
guitar-focused compressor or even a clipper can mask the effects of an
accidentally clipped signal. The key is to turn it into something interesting
and useable before it gets grouped in with the rest of the guitars.

Much like camouflage hides soldiers in nature, your plugins can disguise
less-than-ideal guitars in the sea of good ones.

Account for Variation

Not all guitar tones are equal. A picked string has a completely different
sonic imprint than a strummed guitar. The same goes for bass when you
compare a player who fingerpicks to one that uses a plastic pick.

Sometimes the best thing you can do to your bus is to clamp down on
the dynamics to standardize the levels across the board. See how Nick
balances palm mutes with his other rhythm guitars using BG-Bass below:

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As you can hear, his compression technique tightens the sound of his palm
mutes, giving them a better pocket to sit in within the mix. More importantly,
he’s achieved a balanced guitar mix throughout the track.

How Are You Mixing Guitars?

The types of guitars you work within a track are really going to dictate how
you approach mixing them. If you’re someone using just a left and right
guitar track, you might only need a single bus with some light compression.

For others with denser sessions, there’s nothing wrong with grouping your
rhythms, leads & octaves into their own busses before summing them.

Do you have an approach to mixing guitars that works best for you? Come
let us know over in the Joey Sturgis Tones Forum.

Happy Mixing!

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 8 Ideas For Building A
Better Guitar Mix
In rock & metal, your guitars are your lifeblood. Sure, the vocals are the
focal point at the center of the mix, the drums need to sound big, and the
bass needs to be full and powerful, but guitars are the one element of your
mix that can be stacked one on top of another filling out a huge amount of
space in your mix.

Adding all of these stacks can be a huge time-consuming process, and it’s
easy to loose inspiration when tracking the same thing over and over again.
In order to keep the creative juices flowing, here are eight of the biggest
ways you can add variety and depth to your wall of guitars:

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8. Double Tracking
Perhaps the most commonly used technique; double tracking is a great way
to add variety to your guitar sound. By tracking the same exact thing twice,
you end up with small variations in timing and tone. These variations give
you harmonic complexity, making your listener’s ears perk up.

Double tracked guitars are often hard-panned left and right to create a
pseudo-stereo guitar tone.

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7. Time-Shifting
For those that don’t play consistently enough to double-track effectively, or
those that are under a time crunch in the studio, time shifting can be a great
alternative. Time shifting involved making a duplicate of your guitar track
and nudging it a few milliseconds out of time with the original. The offset
created should have similar tonal characteristics to an actual double-tracked
guitar.

A word of caution: If you’re time-shifting guitars, make sure you’re checking

for phase cancellation between the two tracks. While a little cancellation is
inevitable, too much won’t do anything to improve your sound.

6. Delays
Another option for those limited to a single guitar track is to use a slapback
delay to create a copy of the original guitar. When done correctly, this
slapback technique remains relatively transparent, with a fast delay time
and similar volume to the original.

If you’re looking to make a copy of your guitar using a delay, create a send
from the original to a new aux track set to nominal gain (0 dB). Then, add
your favorite delay to the aux track and set it to a super short delay time (10-
20 ms should suffice).

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One of my favorite plugins for this is SOAR because of its tape delay
features. By adjusting the age and contour of the tape, I can actually add
some harmonic variation to the aux track as opposed to a traditional delay
that would just make an identical copy.

5. Reverb
Like peanut butter and jelly, reverb and delays always find their way into
these lists side by side. If one is going to give you width, you might as well
use the other to create depth!

A good reverb is going to place your guitars in a room – but the room
selection is up to you. If you’re feeling like your room needs to set the vibe
of an intimate performance, go with something small with plenty of early
reflections. If you’re going for over-the-top superstardom, a cathedral or
stadium setting is completely acceptable.

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4. Spatial Widening
Widening is a tool that can be used just as easily as a reverb or delay in the
mix. A spatial widener can be added to almost any track in your session –
mono, stereo, aux, etc… Wherever you see fit!

My only caution with a widener is on a mono track, where you should be

sure you’re using a mono-compatible widener like SideWidener, without it,
you might end up with something that sounds great when played back in
stereo, but disappears completely when listening on a mono speaker (like a
cell phone).

3. Lots of Amps
Sometimes the most exciting way to add variety to a guitar tone is running
it through different amps! Using virtual guitar rigs like Toneforge Menace
and Toneforge Guilty Pleasure, you can get all kinds of distorted, high-gain
options, as well as cleans and everything in between. By having these amp
options in-the-box you can do some non-destructive experimentation to find
the tones that work best for you.

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2. Supplements with Impulse Responses
Amps alone are only half the battle – you can get just as much variety
out of a good impulse response pack. Impulse responses commonly get
overlooked when engineers and mixers are looking to add new sounds to a
mix. Instead, they just find a setting that works once and don’t revisit it.

If you’re looking to add another guitar track, you might as well take the time
to find a new cab that works for it. Using the same cab over and over in a
mix can begin to sound stale, but adding variety will help the overall depth of
your guitar tone. When it takes 30 seconds to toggle through 20 tones, don’t
you think it’s worth the effort?

1. Finish as a Single Instrument

Much like your drums should be bussed down to a stereo aux for group
processing so should your guitars. With all of these tonal variations and
options, you need something common to tie them all together. Most of the
time, this will come in the form of bus compression.

Tools like BG-Guitars are optimized for these exact situations, and glue
your guitars together in a way that sounds full and harmonically pleasing.
Consider it the icing on the cake, whether it’s a single-layer or some
towering creation of your own.

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Did We Miss Anything?
Are you doing anything else to create a fuller, wider guitar mix that I forgot to
add here?

If so, let us know over on the Joey Sturgis Tones Forum, where engineers
and producers are sharing their experiences each and every day.

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Cut Your Demo Sessions In Half With
This One Simple Trick
Recording guitars for a demo can be a tedious task. For a lot of us, we know
these demo guitar tracks aren’t going anywhere near the final mix.

If you’re tracking guitars live for a demo session, you’re much more likely
to set up a mic quickly – looking for a “good” tone, but not really dialing it in
perfectly.

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If you’re tracking guitars in-the-box for your demo, you’re probably going to
take a similar approach – picking an amp sim and cab that sound “decent”
without making many adjustments.

Both of these approaches are perfectly fine, especially if you’re capturing

a DI that can be reamped later, but how do you save time and energy on
making the demo so you can focus your efforts more on writing the song?

Only Track Rhythm Guitars Once

One of the most tedious aspects of recording, whether on a demo or a full
session, is trying to match a performance when double-tracking.

The sonic characteristics of double-tracking is a much needed element

in many genres, none more prevalent than rock and metal. The “wall of
sound” that comes from wide, heavy guitars is enough to send chills down
your spine. And when you lock in two performances perfectly? It can take a
decent demo from good to great.

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But if you’re recording a demo, it can take away from the writing energy if
you’re trying to match your rhythm guitars down to the millisecond. Not only
is it time consuming, but if you’re not hitting the take just right early on, it’s
easy to lose the creative flow in search of technical perfection.

Instead, you could focus your demo efforts on nailing just one rhythm guitar
performance. Get a good take that paints the picture of what your rhythm
guitars should sound like, and save the double-tracking for when it really
matters later.

Don’t Sacrifice Width for Convenience

Tracking a single rhythm guitar doesn’t mean you need to give up that
space in the mix that your double-track would fill. There’s a quick and easy
fix to wide, full guitar tones, even in a demo-mix: faux double-tracking using
a tape delay.

By picking a tape delay with a short delay time, you can hard-pan the delay
to one side of your mix and pan the original guitar to the other side, creating
a natural, slightly offset double of your guitar.

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Why Tape Delay?
Tape delays impart a bit more character into your sound when it comes to
handling your guitar’s signal. Most digital delays try to replicate the original
sound with no variation – a sterile carbon copy.

Our goal isn’t a carbon copy. Instead, we want something very close to the
original, but with it’s own characteristics, much like we’d hear when tracking
two guitars. Tape delays like JST SOAR will give you access to wow, flutter
& health controls that all contribute to harmonic distortions and variations
from the original signal.

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These variations don’t have to be distinguishable enough to pull you out of
the mix, just enough to add some depth and differentiate the guitar you’re
hearing in the left and right channels.

The Impact
By reducing the time you spend tracking your demo’s rhythm guitars, you
buy yourself time and creativity that’s all too often wasted trying to chase
perfection way earlier in the recording process than you should have to.

This trick comes in handy after the demo process as well. In circumstances
where you’ve either lost a second guitar track or the tracking engineer never
provided one (it happens) you can fall back on a tape delay to help fill the
space.

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Your band will thank you for saving them from going through an additional
round of tracking, and you’re sure to come out looking like a hero that’s fully
capable of “fixing it in the mix” should the need arise.

Have Other Time Saving Tips?

If you’ve got techniques you’re using in the studio to save time that’s better
spent on creating music, we bet there are hundreds of other producers and
engineers that would love to be doing the same.

Share your approach with them over on the Joey Sturgis Tones Forum.

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 The Beginner’s Guide to Guitar
Post-Production
Great guitar production is a very subjective and highly debated topic. You’ve
got traditionalists that try their best to make the guitar on the recording
sound exactly like the live guitar being played through the amp in the room.
Others take their guitar productions to new heights with crazy studio tricks
and production techniques that supplement the guitarist’s abilities.

This post-production approach to guitar isn’t new – the virtuosos have been
using it for decades. Some of the biggest names in the guitar realm know
that the studio is just another tool to use for new sonic exploration, and
that’s a big reason studio albums from the likes of Buckethead, Steve Vai &
Joe Satriani have all kinds of techniques applied.

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These guitarists know that the studio effect can add to their sound and
they can work to add it into their live sound later. This is a massive shift
for traditionalists that would never want to do something in the studio that
couldn’t be replicated live in a heartbeat.

Let’s take a look at two of the biggest post-production techniques being

used on guitars today.

Reversed Parts
Digital effects processors have begun implementing replicas of some
studio techniques, but in the case of reversing a guitar part, nothing is more
effective than your DAW at making this happen.

Ambient swells & swirling complex tones are the first thing that should come
to mind here. From a mix perspective, reversed audio can be confusing
at first. It’s not surprising – the attack comes at the end, the tail at the
beginning… What are you supposed to do with that?

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There are two ways to get an effective reversed sound. The first is to do all
of your processing prior to reversing, print down to a new track (effects and
all), and then reverse the freshly printed track. This will give you an exact
copy of the audio in reverse, which you can chop up and use as you please.
A lot of engineers don’t leave reversed guitars in the exact same spot –
instead they’ll effectively “sample” the reversed guitar and place it where
they see fit.

The second approach combats one of the biggest problems with reversed
audio: their sharp cutoff. Because the attack comes at the end, reversed
guitars can sound abrupt and harsh. To fix this, engineers will sometimes
add time-based effects to offset the choppiness. t applied to reversed tracks
can soften the edges, making a more usable reversed guitar.

Experiment: Try applying a reverse delay swell

to your guitar solo.

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Stutter Edits
Stutter edits aren’t exactly new to the guitar universe – they’ve just referred
to them as killswitch effects since before we were actively using them as
a production tool. Whether applied through a stomp box or by toggling
between two pickups (one on, one off) this technique has been around for
decades.

What’s new though, is the level of accuracy we’re able to achieve in-the-
box without sacrificing the performance. Imagine a guitarist trying to shred
out a bunch of notes while simultaneously fussing with his toggle switch. By
moving the stutter into the recording session, you can get perfectly timed
stutters without losing the performance.

These edits come with their own flexibilities in the studio too – speed is
no longer a factor as you have control down to the millisecond. You can
move notes around to recreate an all-new stutter pattern and more. While
I wouldn’t recommend doing this without consulting the artist, if what
you’re doing supports their artistic vision you can really get some complex,
interesting sounds with these kinds of edits.

Check out Nick’s approach to basic guitar solo stutter edits here:

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See how much of a difference a 32nd note stutter can make to add
complexity and depth to a simple solo?

Want More Guitar Post-Production Tips?

These are a couple of my favorite guitar production tricks, but there are
dozens more that you can achieve with virtual guitar rigs and other common
studio plugins.

If you’re interested in a more detailed guide walking through all of the post-
production tools I use for guitars, let me know over in the Joey Sturgis Tones
Forum and I’ll keep them coming!

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