Electric guitars in the studio are one of the few instances where the effects happen in front of the mics. With guitarists’ and engineers’ ideas of what constitutes the ‘right’ effects level, we outline a few ways to make printing with ear candy work for both artist and mix.
Studio Diplomacy
The best insurance policy is the one you never have to claim on. That said, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have a fallback plan. Take the guitarist with that new pedalboard. They want to hear what they’ve paid for, which can sometimes influence where they set the dry/wet control. The perennial challenge for the engineer is to deliver both what the artist wants to hear and what the record needs to have. Sometimes these aren’t quite the same thing.
Working With The Sound
How many times has an engineer walked into the guitar booth, and thought “I can’t record that without losing most of that spring reverb”? Often, slightly less is more, but the problem comes when that means loosing the guitarist’s faith in you when they hear back a sound that isn’t them. The point here is that while sometimes the engineer might have a better idea of what is going to work in a mix, clipping a performer’s wings by taking away any aspect of their sound is pointless if they hate what they hear. Go with it, assuming it’s not actually unusable. After all, you’re recording them, not you.
Mark Ronson echoes this below in this short video for BBC Maestro’s Music Production series. Although aimed at beginners, it still provides a further perspective on printing guitar effects.
Keeping Options Open
That said, diplomacy doesn’t need to mean a bad mix. While it’s paramount to show the artist that their wishes are valued, so is making a great sounding record. Below is one way to maintain control of sounds, while giving the artist all the pedalboard real estate they want in their cans, via their amp.
This set up affords some advantages. When in record, the artist gets to hear their sound in its entirety, including the amp. Because it’s already committed to disk, it’s there straight away for playbacks. In the mix, it can be used as is, but if things were overcooked earlier, there are options that cover scenarios from too much amp overdrive or reverb, to over-wet sounds from the pedalboard itself. With everything in situ, most guitarists are happy for the engineer to take some prints with alternative settings while they are on a break.
Recording With Dynamics
With compression to disk for level control considered redundant by most, recording with it happens largely for creative reasons. In the case of guitars, clean or semi-clean sounds can really benefit from some studio-grade compression, but increasingly, guitarists are bringing their own. Certainly compression that happens in front of the amp can be overdone as a result.
Despite various tools offering upward expansion, the fact remains that over-compression is very hard to unpick entirely, as anyone who has tried will confirm. If a more compressed sound is needed, speaking to the guitarist to under-compress in record, and re-compressing in the mix is more reversible and often turns in smoother results. Studio compression or the re-amp rig mentioned earlier comes into its own here.
Most would agree that committing noise gates at the front end is unnecessary, and many amp noise problems can be negated by changing the positioning of player relative to amp. When left with no option, plugin gates in the box can be used if latency allows. The first DI feeding the pedalboard or amp is gated with care in the DAW before being fired out to the rest of the rig.
Getting Guitar Right For Everyone
Electric guitar is unique in as much as processing from floor-based or guitar rack effects is an intrinsic part of the sound that happens long before the guitarists hits the studio. This is opposed to virtually any other mix element, where it’s understood that their recorded character only truly develops once captured. As such it needs care from the engineer to get the most out of the artist by giving them the sound in their head, while preserving qualities that are better for the mix. With nothing more than a handful of extra cabling and a couple of DI boxes, everyone’s sound is there for the taking.
Cover mage by Tim Toomey from Pixabay