How to mix a song with free plugins part 3/5: Guitars!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Now that we have laid down our rhythm section, it's time to work on one of the most versatile instruments of a mix: the guitar.
A guitar can play almost every role in a song, according to the genre: it can do just some lick here and there as arrangement, it can be like in metal a pillar of the rhythmic section, it can substitute the vocals in a solo part.
As you can see, there is a lot to say and a lot to do.

Let's start by saying that a guitar track can be acquired by microphoning an amp or by going straight into a d.i. box and then reamping the sound, it can be acoustic, electric clean, distorted, and all the shades in between.
The guitar sound can even be virtual: there are virtual instruments that recreate the tone of a guitar, and that you can mix like real guitars (although they obviously will never have the realism of a real one).
About reamping with guitar amp simulators, here are the best free ones, and here is a comparison article with samples of the most populars among them.

- Do we need a strong rhythmic sound? Then we need to record two guitar tracks and pan them one left and one right (around 80% left and right should be fine to give a good sense of width, click here for an article about panning);
we might even consider quad tracking our guitars if we are confident that we would be able to record precise enough.


Click here for an article about how to mix rock/metal guitars.

Click here for an article about how to mix guitar solos.


After mixing our guitar tone we need to put it in the context of the mix, to make it sit perfectly among the other instruments, and sometimes we don't want to change too much the eq of our guitar sound: here's a way to make our guitar tone move more towards the midrange without changing the eq.

And finally, here's our omnicomprehensive article about effects and distortions with free VST plugins!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4: VOCALS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!


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