Mixing Clean Guitar and Applying Reverb Tips

A clean guitar does not have any effects. And sometimes it can be tricky to mix. This is a simple tutorial on how to mix clean guitar and apply some reverb on the guitars.

Double Tracking or Overdubbing?

If you have read the tutorial on mixing electric guitars using double tracking. It requires only one guitar take and it’s done. In this tutorial, every guitar take is done twice. This naturally adds the delay because no two recordings are exactly the same. The delay differences between the two tracks sound great in the mix especially if you pan one track on the left and the other on the right

To do a simple overdubbing of clean guitars using DI technique follow the steps below (DI method is recommended for recording clean guitars):

1.) Plug the clean guitar sound to your audio interface input (no effects).
2.) Get the record levels right (-16dBFS to -6dB maximum peak). And configure your recording hardware and software to record at least 24-bit/48KHz.
3.) Hit the record button to record the first guitar take.
4.) Then do another take playing the same music piece.
5.) What you have in the end are two guitar tracks. Although they sound similar, they are not exactly the same because of naturally added delay. For example below are the completed guitar tracks recorded using Reaper:

Panning the Clean guitars

Personally I would pan the guitar plucking and specialized guitar solo on the hard right and hard left. These correspond to settings (-100, +100) on your audio mixing software. Sometimes they labeled it as percent (-100% or +100%).

Then for guitar strumming and rhythm guitar, I would pan them at 50% left and 50% right. In mixing, I use Adobe Audition although you can use any mixing software. Below are sample guitar tracks panned using the above setting:

EQ’ing the Clean Guitar

Even with perfect take. The guitar needs some EQ to sit properly with the rest of the instruments in the mix. I use Q3- Paragraphic Waves plugin to EQ them in the mix.

Supposing the rhythm guitar track is a steady power chord strum while the solo guitar tracks consists of low to high guitar notes. Then I EQ them as follows:

For rhythm clean guitars:

For solo clean guitars:

Both of them are cut at lows ~250Hz using low shelf filter and mid (2000Hz). The primary reason of cutting the lows using a low shelf setting is to remove the bass components of the electric guitar because it conflicts with the more important bass sounds like the kick drum or the bass guitar.

The reason why 2000Hz is cut is to make a hole for the vocals to properly sit in the mix(not needed for instrumental music). Also for rhythm guitars; it is cut at high frequency (5000Hz) using a high shelf to remove sibilance with the string strumming.

However for solo guitar, it is important to shine them on the mix, so it’s boosted. Take note that this setting does not apply to every clean guitar mix and use your ears always.

Applying Reverb on the Clean Guitar

I only apply reverb on the guitars that are panned at the hard left and hard right. While I do not put reverb on the rhythm guitars which are panned somewhat nearer to the center. This will create a nice stereo effect on the guitars because the solo guitars have some nice ambiance and reverberation while the rhythm guitar provides a steady dry rhythm.

In the tutorial on how to apply reverb on the mix, the reverberation will usually go up as it goes farther from the center in the stereo field. This concept is also applicable when applying reverb on the guitar.

One of my favorite clean guitar reverb is Waves TrueVerb using Rock Guitar room preset:

This is the sample guitar mp3 mixed using the above techniques:

Content last updated on August 5, 2012