Tips for Mixing Layers of Acoustic Guitar

Greetings, my name is Ian Vargo and I'm with theproaudiofiles.com. And today I'm going to be showing you how to mix acoustic instruments with a focus on acoustic guitar. The name of the song I'll be using is covered in love by the band Ugly Ugly Words. Please check it out on iTunes. The basis of this song is really focused around an acoustic guitar which was finger picked and a lead vocal melody. Let's take a listen to the first verse. [acoustic guitar + vocals] Ok. I really wanted a bright clean, I wanna hear the finger picking of the guitar. So I started really focusing on the sound of the lead vocal and the acoustic guitar which went throughout the duration of the song. And built everything else around that. So I started with the acoustic guitar and as you can hear — let's get rid of this and this — this is the EQ I used on the acoustic guitars, the API 560 equalizer. Let's bypass it and take a listen. [acoustic guitar with and without Waves API 560 EQ] As you can hear, I'm doing sort of a low shelf with this equalizer here. I'm getting rid of a lot of low frequencies: 31, 63, 125. I'm cutting a little at 500. Some at 1k which really opened up the sound for other instruments to fit in. And I boosted at 16k and 8k to really add airy brightness. This EQ does a great job of that. After that I've got this API 2500. And truthfully there is not a lot of compression going on here. I used this only as sort of a tone. Sort of warms it up very subtly. Ok, so once I had a sound for the lead vocal and this guitar, I built around everything. As you can see, this guitar goes throughout the duration of the song, then in the almost second verse we have this Taylor guitar here which comes in. And I EQ'd pretty aggressively here. Let's bypass. Ok, so I did a hi-pass filter up to 270. I cut at 100. I cut drastically at 470. Drastically at 5.6, and boosted at 15. The reason I did this is because there were so many other instruments going on. I only really wanted this guitar to be sort of a presence that you heard but not really felt in terms of low frequency warmth. Take a listen one more time. [acoustic guitar + vocals] I wanted to hear the finger picking but not as much as the harmonic content. Another reason I did this is because later in the song we have a beautiful mandolin part that comes in. Let's show you that right here. And I found that had I not performed this EQ right here, which cut out the low frequencies of that guitar, that guitar ended up fighting with this beautiful mandolin part. Let's take a listen. [mandolin] And we hear some drastic reverb and delay. Ok, so after I had a sound for this additional Taylor, starting in the sorta break part right here, we have a couple more additional guitars which were processed pretty simply with some high pass filtering. Let's take a listen. Sort of a western sounding guitar. [acoustic guitar + EQ] And each of these guitars were being sent through bus 17 and 18, arriving at this aux track on which I applied this CLA-76 — once again — only used this compressor as sort of a warmth generator. [acoustic + compression] Sort of brought down the volume a little bit too. And some more hi-pass filtering. And you can really hear the difference there. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to hi-pass filtering because I find it's hard to get, especially with popular music, the amount of volume that you want out of your overall mix if you don't get rid of these sort of low frequencies that sort of build up. Next we've got this very beautiful yet dull sounding Gibson guitar which is owned by Jason. [Gibson acoustic guitar] Which we've got 4 layers which are going through bus 25 and 26, arriving at bus 25 and 26 at this aux track which has once again some hi-pass filtering, some cutting at 500, some V-EQ — doing some drastic things which I'll cover shortly — then that track is being sent to another track where we have a spring reverb. Let's mute this really quick and I'll show you what all these sound like. It's a very beautiful dull sounding guitar. And I wanted to push it back in space a little bit because I already had very close upfront guitars here. So I wanted to push it back. Sounds pretty drastic on it's own but in the mix it works. Normally I do more volume automation then you see here but there were a couple parts that just came across as a little bit harsh in terms of the performance on this Taylor right here. I think we had some fret noise. [acoustic guitar volume automation] So don't be afraid to get really crazy with volume automation when mixing. Especially acoustic instruments. As you can see a lot of fader riding on these mandolins. And another technique that I'm going to cover is we've got this beautiful string part at the end. Let's go forward to it. Originally the producer, or co-producer of this song, Jason Cummings, had sort of a MIDI recorded string part which is this right here. [MIDI strings] Sort of just a little idea and it's not played perfectly and to have listened to this in the context of the song it came across as very MIDI. We have a beautiful arrangement, a lot of acoustic instruments, and then all of a sudden just this sort of MIDI string part. And then what we did was actually we were fortunate enough to find a violin player — sort of duplicate the part right here. [violin] Generous amount of echo applied to this. And it's not played perfectly, but when combined with this string print right here. We found a good balance. Sort of a technique you can use a lot and a lot of producers do, where they combine MIDI strings along with actual strings to get the desired organic effect. Alright, well this song is covered in love by the band Ugly Ugly Words and this has been Ian Vargo with The Pro Audio Files. If you have any questions or ideas for future tutorials, make sure to get in contact with me. Thank you.