Wall of guitars?

[zorrow]

I played one the rhythm guitars on a track for a fellow band and was trying to come out with a "wall of guitars" sound in one of my parts. Experimented quite a bit, but stacking four distorted guitars up has proven to be a true PITA.

As the deadline just arrived, I finally decided to give them the four tracks and let the mix guy to decide what to do with them -enough is enough, and anyway the final mix will change a few things quite a bit.

However, I'm left still wondering how the hell Brian May does his "wall of sound". Would you please point me to any trustable resource and/or give me some tips about the subject?

[zenmindbeginner]

I don't know about Brian May but, you'll want one tone that is your favorite and all around best sound... that is your MAIN sound.

Next, you engineer a GREAT high end sound with lots of great zingy treble (Cut all bass and low mids from this sound).

Third, you create a great low end sound (and use it sparingly to emphasize dynamics and when you want the chugga chugga stuff to sound super thick). Scoop all of the mids from this sound

Fourth, you want to create a real warm and round sound to thicken up lead parts because the low end sound should only be used for rhythm parts. Cut the sub frequencies and scoop the high mids on this one.

You may want to create an ambient room mic type tone for your MAIN sound too and be able to add that in for color (you can do this in the post).

The key is to keep the signal path for your MAIN sound as clean and as short as possible. You may need to process the shit out of your companion tones in order for them to sit well in the mix.

Oh and you'll have to have some way of playing all of these sounds at once, multi-tracking metal riffs is a quick way to get things sounding really muddy real fast. Double track what needs to be double tracked but lay down the multi-sound rig all at once... 4 tracks should be enough to start with (you can create even more variations with these four tones for even more multi-rig insanity!). This is basically how Jerry Cantrell laid the guitar tracks down for Dirt.

Re-Amping could prove to be plenty useful for this purpose.

Brian May's guitars all have absolutely no low or low mids in them and the mids are scooped out accordingly. It's easy top get 6 tiny guitars to stack up nicely... remember that.

[tomteriffic]

In addition to the above, try playing a couple of tracks in different positions on the neck.

[hardheartedbill]

Way less distortion on individual tracks than you want in the end. Bass cut @ 80 hz and below . Use midrange. Don't use room sounds to track . Play fewer notes in each track like just the root and 5th

[Hamer Time]

Here are some tricks I've learned, they may not all work for you.

Pan 2 gits @ around 80 L/R, and the other two around 30-40 L/R.

Hi pass filter @200 to cut down on low end build up, and clear a space for the bass and kick.

EQ the two gits closest to center the same.

The two wide panned gits EQ opposite, whatever you raise on one lower on the other (except the hi-pass).

Give wide panned gits a bit more hi end than the other two.

Other than that EQ depends on what the gits sound like. (were all 4 trks recorded with the same git and amp set up, or do they all sound different?)

If you've already cut mids on the amp, you might not want to cut them in the mix for example.

Depending on vocals though sometimes it's good to cut the mids overall, on everything, to allow the vocals to fit better. Cut too much mid on guitars and they loose their power.

De-tune Lt git a couple of cents of one panned pair, and the opposite git of the other pair.

Slight delay on one side, again switch side for other pair.

Compress gits individually, and together through a send channel.

You want to use LESS distortion on each git than you would for one git. You want the wall of guitar, but you don't want a wall of noise. If the gits combined are still too clean, then put a distortion or warmer plug-in on your send channel with the compressor (assuming ya using plugs). You could finally put a limiter in to get them louder. Putting all the gits through the same plugin, or hardware of course, helps to gel them together.

[zorrow]

All great points, thanks!

Thus, I experimented with less distortion + cutting the lows and the lower-mids, placing each guitar in its own niche of the frequency spectrum... and it does sound way better now! I had already the four tracks panned to 82 L/R and 36 L/R, so that's OK for the panning, I guess.

The only problem now is that the overall tone no longer fits to the rest of the song. But in any case, the deadline is behind me -talked BTW to the mix guy and he said he would use just three guitars, so that's OK.

However, I'll try to work more on this my side when I'll have more time, just to do the exercise for my own knowledge and fun.

Thanks again!

[murkat]

millisecond delay times between each guitar.

Randy Roads is a good example as well.

He would do multiple takes, play along while recording

on top of the original track as well as Brian,

end result would be the slight nuances would create

the "wall" of guitar sound.

[zenmindbeginner]

Randy Rhoads also had mad comb filtering and almost tubular and nasal sounds at times depending on what kind of time modulation tricks that were being used.

One reason why Eddie, Lynch and DiMartini's tones were superior, is that they didn't go nuts with the overdubs.

Randy Rhoads was constantly trying to stuff 100 lbs of guitar awesomeness into a 50 lb. bag... it's a common thing that guys do, we can't help it... sometimes hard work can get you nowhere (I'm talking about myself now. lol!)

Delay affects phase and as far as panning goes... using the full stereo stage can be a bit of a trap. Monitoring dense mixes in mono can allow the engineer to get a better picture of the phase relationships between the different tracks and what effect the various time based effects are having on the mix.

What I do like is using stereo expanders on individual tracks while monitoring in mono FWIW.

[Armitage]

I always liked an acoustic guitar, strung Nashville, deep in the mix, it always added a lot of size.