Mixing: Acoustic Guitar with big dynamic range

GussyLoveridge · Post by **GussyLoveridge** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:15 am

So here's the skinny:

Going to the studio tomorrow night to start mixing a record that is based mostly on acoustic guitar and vocals, but has a number of other elements at different times including, some fiddle, chord-organ, whisling, moog, among other things.

The issue that I'm expecting to run into, is that there is a pretty massive dynamic range on the acoustic guitar, lots of light thumb rubbing on the strings and then some finger picking/plucking. Overall I'm happy with how it all sounds, but it's going to be a problem to get the quiets, loud enough and the louds tamed enough.

Looking for some insight on how to treat it. I haven't been able to get anywhere when I was doing quick rough mixes that didn't make the spikes on the guitar sound unnatural.

Also - string noise - it doesn't bother me that much, in fact, i like it, it sounds like a guitar to me, but i'm wondering how many of you find it annoying and if so, how you deal with it?

Ryan Silva · Post by **Ryan Silva** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:23 am

Sometimes I can spend hours trying to find the right Compressor/limiter/EQ combo to make these kinds of recordings behave. When it needs to sound natural and unprocessed I find riding faders and judicious volume automation is where it's at. When the Dynamic range of the recordings is very wide, compressors just can?t do all the work.

Good luck

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:40 am

I'd treat it the same as a dynamic vocal.
If you're in the digital world I'd automate to even things out and then compress post fader. If you do it well the compressor should never get slammed (because you've already done the big level adjusting) but it'll give you another stage of leveling.
I usually like to use an opto compressor for this type of thing. LA2A, LA3A, or even the Pro VLA.

As for string noise, it's usually not something I mind but if it drives you crazy you could try de-essing.

wren · Post by **wren** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 10:12 am

I've found the easiest way to manage that kind of thing is to split it into different tracks in your DAW and process and mix them differently; you end up with, say, soft fingerpicked part(s) as one track, strummed part(s) as another track, and harder fingerpicked part(s) as a third. That way you can EQ or compress them differently if you want/need to, and if you want to slap a compressor on all of them you can just bus/send them to a global track (which can also be your "overall acoustic guitar volume" fader when you have the balances between the different sections right).

jgimbel · Post by **jgimbel** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 1:26 pm

I think the volume automation/riding the faders suggestion is definitely the way to go, I just wanted to mention that sometimes even EQ automation can be just the ticket, or just make things a bit sweeter. I recently mixed a song that was mostly finger-tapping, ala Kaki King, but then had a couple parts in the song where it switched to LOUD hard strums just for like half a measure at a time. The majority of the guitar was quiet and having a good bit of high end really sounded great. For this particular song compression seemed to work pretty well, but even when I got the volume to a good, still natural place, it still felt like those parts were ear blistering. The guitar was a very..stringy sounding guitar, if that makes sense. I ended up doing a light high shelf and automating it in just for the few loud chords, taking out a bit of high end in those spots. It got the loud parts to sit in more nicely with the rest of the song, without sounding ducked. It's not really a suggestion that's going to fix all dynamic range problems, but sometimes when you're putting more and more compression and it's hard to find a spot that sounds natural but doesn't have volume issues, working with just a certain frequency range on top of it can really complete things.

Editing the pieces separately on different tracks as suggested in the post above would be the same essentially, though with automation you could get it to happen more gradually if you needed to. It's not a trick I use too often, but it can be just the ticket.

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 6:32 pm

The tips on light compression, split tracks, and the "human compressor" bit (fader riding in an active mix) are great suggestions. Also remember to keep your monitoring volume reasonable, and check at an even quiet level... Don't get too bent out of shape about dynamics; it is what it is and they are what they are. Don't forget about "apparent volume" (solo acoustic tracks can sound very loud next to full band tracks, even when they're reading the same on the meters.

String noise can sound nice if it's light and manageable; nasty if it's all over the place. Try to para-eq out the most offensive squeek frequencies.

GJ

drumsound · Post by **drumsound** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 6:49 pm

Volume automation and parallel compression can do wonders. If you run the compression in parallel, you can be a little more aggressive with it, because what you really want form the compressor, is bringing up the volume of the soft parts and sustain of the instrument. Something fast, but not too crunchy.

inasilentway · Post by **inasilentway** » Fri Mar 04, 2011 9:13 pm

if the studio you're at has nice outboard compressors, I would use two in series. one that is only doing a couple db of smooth compression on the louder parts (preferably a nice tube thingy so its "warm" and all that) and one as a limiter to hit just the extreme peaks. that way neither compressor has to work all that hard, and you won't get huge bursts of dreaded string noise when it kicks in.

however, judging from the date, this already happened. how'd it go?

GussyLoveridge · Post by **GussyLoveridge** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 8:51 am

hey all - thanks for the advice.

we've started mixing the project. haven't got to the tunes yet where this will be the biggest opportunity to try some of this stuff out.

I would totally considering using some outboard gear for this, my problem is that the studio that I'm working in has a digital board (Baby Oxford) with no way to insert outboard while mixing. There is a few nice outboard comps there (Oram Sonicomp II and a Summit DCL 200) but like i said, no way to insert them for mixing. I could bus out to them and record back in, but I'd have to adjust for latency somehow, i think?

Here's the studio if you guys are interested. The owner just launched a new website. I've been super lucky to be able to take projects in there and he's a great dude and a good mentor.

www.soundpark.ca

drumsound · Post by **drumsound** » Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:54 am

GussyLoveridge wrote:hey all - thanks for the advice.

we've started mixing the project. haven't got to the tunes yet where this will be the biggest opportunity to try some of this stuff out.

I would totally considering using some outboard gear for this, my problem is that the studio that I'm working in has a digital board (Baby Oxford) with no way to insert outboard while mixing. There is a few nice outboard comps there (Oram Sonicomp II and a Summit DCL 200) but like i said, no way to insert them for mixing. I could bus out to them and record back in, but I'd have to adjust for latency somehow, i think?

Here's the studio if you guys are interested. The owner just launched a new website. I've been super lucky to be able to take projects in there and he's a great dude and a good mentor.

www.soundpark.ca

Are you sure there isn't some sort of latency compensation or something on that console? I know Michael Wagner had two of them for a long time and he had tons of outboard and was mixing from a 48-track Euphonix recorder for a long time.

JohnSuitcase · Post by **JohnSuitcase** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:22 pm

I agree with Tony's advice about parallel compression. You can even set up an aggressive parallel comp/limiter, then blend the tracks and send that whole mix into another compressor set to ride things a little more.

Another thing to try, if you have the option, is some sort of tape saturation plug. Applied carefully, you can smooth things out without getting into audible distortion.

Lastly, you can try a de-esser, to de-emphasize any really annoying squeak-type stuff.

Good luck!

GussyLoveridge · Post by **GussyLoveridge** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 3:38 pm

@Drumsound - hrm, I'm not sure, the studio goes digital into the board from Protools, my understanding is that there is a way to compensate manually by figuring out the latency - but i'm not sure how to figure that out really. I really don't know too much about that kind of stuff. I'm pretty new to sorting out that sort of stuff. I have done a bit of pecking about through google trying to find out.

@ John - swell advice, I back at it this week. Going to try a few different things. Will definitely be trying out parallel compression. So then bus both signals out and do a slight comp on that bus as well is what you're saying?

As for the string noise, I'm not finding anything nasty about it so far, it's kind of nice.

JohnSuitcase · Post by **JohnSuitcase** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 7:46 pm

Yep, buss the uncompressed with the compressed version, and compress that combination.

The string noise might not be a problem, but once you start compressing things, it could get a bit more aggressive!

gavintheaudioengineer · Post by **gavintheaudioengineer** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 4:07 pm

This topic instantly made me think of John Martyn's 'May You Never'. The guitar sounds great IMO and there's definately some pretty heavy but well controlled compression on there.

Anyone know any details about that track?

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Mixing: Acoustic Guitar with big dynamic range

Mixing: Acoustic Guitar with big dynamic range

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